Shattered Icon

Mosaic of the Transfiguration of Christ, St. Catherine Monastery, Sinai, Egypt.

1/22/05

Both this poem and Transfixed & Transfigured were inspired by the image above, from St. Catherine Monastery in Sinai, Egypt.

This face,
crafted of thousands
of tiny, broken bits
of pottery.

So unseemly for Your glory..
yet so appropriate.
I and my own are but
broken vessels.
What you have taken
unto Yourself,
You have transformed
and made whole.

And so I hope,
looking upon this
transitory likeness,
that You have taken on
the broken clay,
and from it crafted
such beauty as
could never have come
before you assumed
and redeemed
what was shattered.