NO COINCIDENCE: WRITING AN ICON OF PETER
Image courtesy of the author.
Oh the stories I could tell, the intimate moments and mystical experiences I’ve witnessed amidst these saints and holy figures I’ve gotten to know so well through iconography and the studying process before I even squeeze paint onto the palette or fill the water cup, it could fill an entire book. In celebration of the recent Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, I’m sharing the instances far too great to be coincidences, the mystical moments where faith meets grace and impossibility.
One day last summer, I shared Saint Paul’s story and someone asked if I had written Peter’s icon yet. I said, “I have a beef with Peter,” and we talked about the fisher-of-men’s unlikeability, his not believing Mary Magdalene when she ran from Jesus’ empty tomb, his aggressiveness with Paul, the Gentiles, and so many others, the patriarchal history of the church named after him, how he was very brash and impulsive, not to mention he flat out denied Jesus, three times! Then I said, “Of course this means someone will likely be commissioning him soon if things go how they usually go.” Less than 24 hours later I received an email from the Rev. Mike Trotman, rector of St. Peter’s Parkstone in Poole England, wanting to commission St. Peter’s icon for their church. I laughed and laughed, because of course I got a commission the very next day! I dreaded having to study Peter; the closer he got on my saints commission list, the more uncomfortable I became.
When it came time to gather reference images and what I thought I envisioned Peter to look like, I started drawing. I first depicted Peter as an old man sitting on the edge of a boat with a staff to help him walk. But something didn’t feel right. I felt a tug from Peter saying, “Why does everyone depict me as this old man? I was agile and full of life until the very end.” Before he finished speaking to me, my program crashed and I lost all of my work. If that wasn’t a direct, “You will not depict me this way,” then I don’t know what it was. After that, I had a very clear image of Peter and never looked back.
As the process of Peter’s icon continued, I shared everything with Father Mike, from progress images to little discoveries along the way. One particular day, I shared the completed sketch and described all its pieces, parts, and meanings and told Father Mike of my time in Burkina Faso over ten years ago when I first was introduced to Peter.
I met Pastor Karim Zongo in his office in Ouagadougou. Our group was there to meet him and I was there as a simple photographer. But Pastor Karim focused right in on me and said, “What’s your story?”--similar to the “Who’s your daddy, where ya from?” slang of South Louisiana where I live. It means, “How did you come to be in this place?”
I told the tall pastor with a shining smile that I recently lost my dream job at Disney and didn’t know what I was going to do with the rest of my life, but I was in Africa at the invitation of a friend and was very happy to be there. What Pastor Karim said to me next formed me into the person who is in seminary to be an Episcopal deacon right this very moment, something I never in a million years thought my future would look like. Pastor Karim, with his gentle and profoundly deep voice, told me the story of Matthew 4:19, when Jesus told Peter he would no longer be a fisherman but a fisher of men. Pastor Karim said, “Kristen, you may no longer be doing what you thought you would be, same as Peter, but now you are a fisher of men.” I was blown away by his words and they stuck to me like the sap-covered leaves in the African bush.
You have to understand that at the time I was about as far away from God as I ever thought I was. I mean, I had a relationship with the God of my understanding, but no prayer or formation in practice, no specific prayer rituals, definitely no church. While I was extremely against organized religion, I did have a heart for Jesus. I bought a King James Bible at the grocery store on the way to the airport, for crying out loud. Several days went by after meeting with Pastor Karim and I started drawing again. I hadn't drawn in about seven years at that point. The first picture I drew on that rough wood table of the missionary's house was a fish and the words of Matthew 4:19. When we saw Pastor Karim later that week, I gave it to him thinking I’d never see him again.
I reached out to Pastor Karim about three years ago to share that I was in the process of hopefully becoming a deacon and he was very much a part of my story. He called me on the phone in tears to say he still has my drawing hanging on the wall of his office. I hadn’t heard from him since, until two days after my conversation with Father Mike. Out of nowhere Pastor Karim emailed me, unprompted, and I burst into tears seeing his name in my inbox and a message of greeting wanting to know where I was and what I was doing. I quickly replied and shared the drawing of Peter along with several other icons I thought he might enjoy. In his response, he shared, “If text gives people 20 percent of understanding, then image gives 80 percent of understanding.” He prayed that the Holy Spirit would continue to teach me this deep understanding.
When Peter’s name finally came to the top of the commission list, I expected to spend a lot of time with him considering my initial disdain. But I realized pretty quickly that I knew Peter far better than I thought I did. His image and story came to me much faster than any of my previous icons (I had done forty-three at that point). I believe Peter was with me all along, ever since Burkina Faso and Pastor Karim’s humid office. I needed only to look in the mirror and realize I am a lot more like Peter than I care to admit. I think most of us are more like Peter than we care to admit. He denied Jesus in the face of fear; are we sure we wouldn’t do the same? He failed far more times than he succeeded. I don’t know about you, but I can relate to that. And well, isn’t that the whole point? Jesus surrounded himself with people who easily considered themselves failures. We get so caught up in being perfect and infallible, we forget God’s entire objective.
So friends, don't for one second doubt what you are called to do. Do not doubt that every moment of your life has meaning and it may not be revealed to you what that meaning is for a long time (like years or more) but it's there. Peter has been with me all along, with a girl who was confused about the path of her life and her relationship with God, a girl who hadn't drawn in many years and started drawing again on an old table sitting on a dirt floor in the middle of Africa, a girl who took pictures that influenced her work for the rest of her life, and a girl who met a sweet African pastor named Karim Zongo who represented the face of Christ himself and shared a profound story about Peter that still affects her all these years later when she’s drawing an icon of Peter the fisherman. A girl who is a third of the way through seminary. A girl who will one day be ordained a deacon, a path she certainly never saw coming, but a path she looks back on and smiles, a path that leads all the way back to a pastor's office with a charcoal drawing of a fish hanging on a wood-paneled wall in a church office in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Africa. And above all, I hope you come face to face with Peter as well, look in the mirror and remember that none of us, not even the holiest of holy, are perfect and untouchable.
The symbolism in Peter’s icon:
broken cuffs for the times Peter spent in prison
church/compass for his travels and starting the church
upside down cross and keys (top of church) for the way he died and the “keys to the kingdom”
sheep for being asked to be the shepherd
rocks for his name, “Peter the Rock,” the rock of the church
holding bunches of fish, not only as a fisherman, but Jesus asking him to be a fisher of men
boat filled with fish for the first time he encountered Jesus
a rooster for “you will deny me three times before the cock crows.”
golden fish for “the Lord knows every hair on our heads” and we are precious in God’s sight
Image courtesy of author.
