Advertisement Raised a Presbyterian in Illinois, she became pagan in early adulthood. Then one day, while studying in Russia to become a midwife, she walked into an Eastern Orthodox church. Inside she saw an enormous icon of Mary with the Christ child, and old women were lighting candles in front of it.
King wept.
“I felt something I never felt before,” she said. “I don’t know if I’d be Orthodox today if I hadn’t had that experience with an icon. It opened a door for me permanently.”
With her two children and husband, King, 43, moved to Soldier’s Grove in 1999 and several years later was baptized with her children into the Russian Orthodox Church. She now writes icons herself and is working on an installment of the 12 apostles for La Crosse’s St. Elias Orthodox Church.
The Rev. Theodore Bergenske, who is mentoring King in writing the icons, lives at St. Isaac of Syria Skete. When Bergenske first visited the Boscobel monastery, the head monk taught him the Jesus Prayer and gave him an icon.
“Even from the first time I visited, I had this horrible feeling that I was going to get stuck here,” said Bergenske, 34, who was raised in the United Church of Christ and then as an Evangelical Christian.
The icon depicted the transfiguration of Christ. Several months later, standing at the foot of Mount Sinai, Bergenske decided to join the monastery.
Eventually, Bergenske learned how to write icons, which helps support the monastery. A year ago, after getting the St. Elias assignment, King began apprenticing with Bergenske. She brings free-range duck and chicken eggs from her farm to the monastery. They pierce the yolks, mix them with wine or vinegar, stir in ground pigment made from minerals, and create icons of saints on wooden boards.
“All of creation participates,” Bergenske said. “In the Resurrection, creation is made anew. Somehow we’re taking all of these elements, through our cooperation with God, we take all of these material things and turn them into a spiritual reality.”
Bergenske said the icons are not art as much as visual theology. He said an icon reflects both the spiritual state of its maker and of the person gazing at the icon.
Trailers are scattered across the front of the monastery grounds. One is an icon shop, filled with jars of pigment and icons in various stages of completion where Bergenske and King work together. King said she hopes to have the icons of the 12 apostles finished over the summer.
Near the entrance to the monastery, a log church was recently completed. Inside are white walls and hundreds of relics of saints. The two talked about plans to fill the walls and ceiling with icons, a project that will take years.
Standing next to Bergenske, the Rev. Simeon Gitlis, the head monk who gave him his first icon, put his hand on Bergenske’s shoulder.
“The act of painting icons will cleanse and purify him and help him become a living icon,” said Gitlis said. “The best icons are people, but they gotta be cleaned up.”
Gitlis, 60, said together, humans form a mosaic of the icon of Christ.
He said the word icon means image, hero or someone people look up to, but he said today’s icons tend to be celebrities and rock stars.
“We get to choose, of course, who our icons are,” said Gitlis. “When you look at the icon in another person, in some way you invoke the icon in the other person.”
