Icons + Prayer

Our icon and prayer classes are designed to help you cultivate new habits. You will gain greater confidence in your personal prayer life as you learn to listen, center and recognize the Divine all around you.

The process of writing an icon provides directions, or a compass, to the heart of Christ. God created the human in his ‘ikon’, or image. In Orthodox theology, all icons represent a person, but ultimately represent Christ, the Prototype, the Word. Each of the 22 plus steps in the process of writing an icon is steeped in theology. Each is seen as a mystical step closer in the journey to God’s heart. In the same way, when we pray with an icon, we do not venerate the object, but ultimately, that which lies beyond, and at the same time, within the heart of each of us.

Orthodox Iconography and Prayer practices

“It is small advantage for the eyes to see if the heart is blind. The great world brims over with his glory and he may only dwell where a person chooses to give him entrance.”

-Abbot Nicholas