In Praise of Holy Women

partake. 39
With primary tools of pen, pencil, pigment powders, paint pots, paintbrushes and
cheap, imported plywood, Sister Joanna is not only attempting to ‘shape or reshape
the human conceptual world’ through images, but also is aiming to give us a new
(or renewed) vision of the
iconographic image itself,
focusing on the personal and
interpersonal, on energy as
well as form, on relationship
that is above emotion,
saturated by self-awareness
and intellect. These exterior
dualities mirror the
practised interior reality of
the artist: her soul as it were
In 1972, a certain art historian, V.A. Volkov
ostensibly ‘formed a very high opinion of the
wall paintings, surprising even himself with
his appraisal: “And this after Italy!”, he said
with a laugh.’ It appears Sister Joanna did not
receive much feedback, if any, on completing
her commission for the Fellowship, for she
adds, ‘I do not know what response it drew
locally’.
travels a two-way road, repudiating self-expression along one avenue and
thirsting for God along the other:
Creativity for me almost = [equals] seeking God’s will…. You detest
your self-importance, your work: those cold, soulless, lazy lines
that express nothing – you confess to your dilettantism…. [and]
by coming to hate what is ‘yours’, you love Him in yourself. You
do not trample His gift underfoot nihilistically and ‘satanically’,
but you obediently desire to develop it, and offer it back to Him. 40
Eucharistic
The best definition of man, his chief characteristic, that which makes him
to be himself is gratitude, thanksgiving. What distinguishes the human
being from every other animal is our privilege to bless God and to invoke
his blessing on other creatures and things. The human animal is a priestly
animal. We continually offer the world back to God, and in that act of offering
we become truly ourselves. 41
On 11 September 1935, Julia wholly and definitively offered herself to God,
by taking the monastic habit. ‘…[I]t was the happiest day of my life…at that
moment I was given the grace of such complete devotion to Christ that I have
not experienced otherwise either before or since.’ 42 In her diary entry for the
day, she writes, almost breathlessly:
Now I feel the apocalypse of Christ approaching. Be of good courage.
Believing in our time means believing in the apocalypse of Christ. My soul is
so suddenly lit up with clarity. Even so, ‘Come, Lord Jesus’. And if I love Christ
39
These wall paintings and icons are now on permanent loan from the Fellowship of St Alban
and St Sergius to St Anne’s Orthodox Christian Parish, Northampton, England
40
BOUL, 485
41
Metropolitan Kallistos, op cit, paraphrased
42
Autobiography, op.cit.in BOUL, 161
32