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Kaleidoscopic Reverie:
Bishop Maxim’s Colorful Doxological Expression
Fr. Stephen Muse
St. Porphyrios the Kavsokalyvite observed, “You have to be a poet to be a Christian.” Bishop Maxim’s intensely beautiful new volume, Illu- mination and Surprise, easily convinces us that every Christian must also be an artist. The hidden life of the Holy Trinity in its infinite, unbounded creative potential has fashioned every human being as a liv- ing work of art, flung into being from the Divine Pot- ter’s hand, imbued with a spiritual potential to en- counter and discover the world anew, as Adam did in naming the animals, by drawing upon a potential for encounter beyond the known, that is inherent in each soul’s unrepeatable uniqueness.
Through vivid kaleidoscopic renderings of his encounters with persons and the created world, illu- mined from within by an uncreated light, translated into paint, Bishop Maxim offers us a lavish char- cuterie of color and form revealing the infinite pos- sibilities of doxological expression in response to Holy Wisdom Who declares, “the Lord made me the beginning of His ways for His works, and He estab- lished me before time was in the beginning before he made the earth.” [Septuagint, Proverbs 8:22]
The book moves between the wordless impact of intense varieties of images spanning cultures, artis-
tic styles, and poetry with brief reflections curating the reader’s journey through a series of paintings. With his keen inner theological eye and skillful art- istry, Bishop Maxim lifts up saints, theologians, sci- entists, philosophers, politicians, kings, characters from novels, movies, rock stars, ordinary people, and the struggles of war, illumining each in ways that surprise us. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once remarked, “It is not how the world is that is mystical, but that it is.” The paintings seem to emerge from within the light of a gentle, all-pervasive hope and joy in the thatness of the persons and things pre- sented. As the book unfolds, the variety of scenes, portraits, and themes begin to combine in ways that invite a palpable joy within the reader and a renewed hope in the possibility of the redemption of all cre- ation.
These paintings and reflections are the offerings of a creative artist and faithful Bishop who paints with joy and the freedom of abandoning himself to the Light of the eschaton of the New Jerusalem. Mov- ing with the consummate skill of a mature artist be- tween traditional byzantine iconographic style and vivid new impressionistic brushstrokes reminiscent of Van Gogh, Kandinsky, Matisse, and Magritte; from
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