Exile

From Ikon

oucaer

Opening Reflection

As we stand on the threshold of a new year, in a new home, we can feel ourselves returning to the perennial question – what is this thing called ikon and what is it about?

We have music but this is not entertainment We have poetry but this is not a literary group We have creative instillations but this is not an art’s collective We speak of justice but this is not a political cohort We explore faith but this is not a church We have esoteric rituals but we are not a cult (well maybe that one is open to question)

But in the midst of wrestling with this difficult question we must be careful to remind ourselves that what we are doing is not brain surgery or rocket science… it’s infinitely more difficult.

We are joined together by our sense of exile, by the feeling that we are lost in the world, that we inhabit a lost world, that we have been decentred by an apocalyptic intervention which has ruptured our place – so that our time is out of joint, is still to come, our place here is not here. In this place we are out of place, we are out of joint.

But we seek to make our home in this non-space of exile. Just like the young man who stopped at an Inn late one evening in the midst of a long journey. That evening he befriended the Inn keeper and stayed up late into the night. Early the next day he readied his house for departure. The Bar keeper came out and asked, ‘where are you going’. To which the traveller replied, ‘away from here’. Again the Barman said, ‘yes, but where are you going’. Without looking up the traveller replied, ‘away from here’. Finally the Barman got argitated and said, ‘you have already told me that you are leaving us, but what is your destination’. Then the traveller stopped what he was doing and looked his friend in the eye, ‘I have aleady told you my destination’, he said, ‘it is away from here’.

This intervention which has decentred us, has opened us up to a new form of artistic experience – transformance art. A form of reflection which challenges us to be transformed, to transform, to incarnate the text ‘God’ in the text(ure) of our flesh.

This arid desert wilderness in the oasis of our daily lives is not a place where we seek meaning but where we create it.

For the next hour the black box is a secret space, a sacred space… a place where the trans-mundane meets the mundane… but only if you let it be that place…

If you are willing to walk into that space where you sit, entering that space in your stillness… then welcome to ikon…

Images

Cary welcomes us to the new space	Chris and Shirley	Discussion of "Home"	Discussion of "Home"
Jon getting ready to tell the story of Larne and Bob Marley	Long fingers wrapped around a pint	Pete telling a story	Strangers in the midst of the Safe Space
The Benjamins join the fun	Where would we be without Ben?