pantocrator ink

A little over a year ago I decided that I wanted a tattoo on my upper arm of the Christ Pantocrator, one of the oldest icons of Jesus Christ. The oldest known Pantocrator image was written in the sixth century, and it survived the iconoclastic periods of 730-787 and 813-843, housed in the monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai desert.

In Greek, the word Pantocrator means “ruler of all”.

While I wanted a classic image, I wanted it to have a modern twist. My friend Paul Soupiset is an amazing graphic designer and illustrator in San Antonio. I fell completely in love with his work when he did a Moleskine painting a day as a Lenten discipline a few years ago.

Back in February while I was in San Antonio for the Faith Stories retreat, I asked Paul if he would design a Pantocrator image for a tattoo for me. He graciously agreed, and I was delighted to receive an image from him a few weeks later.

My tattoo guy made a few small changes, but stayed pretty true to Paul’s original design.

Here’s a photo of the finished piece, taken right after Julian finished inking.


As you can see, the symbolism of the original images is represented here. In his left hand, Christ holds a book with a cross on it, depicting the Gospel. His right hand is raised in blessing. There is significance of the posture of his right hand – with his thumb, ring finger, and little finger bent together symbolizing the divine and human natures of Christ and his index finger and slightly bent middle finger held upright.

The letters on the top left and right are ‘IC’ and ‘XC’, which symbolize Ieosus Khristos, the Greek shortened form of Christ’s name IC XC.

Jesus’ face follows ancient traditions, with a high forehead to indicate wisdom, a small mouth closed in contemplation, and eyes that appear to peer into the soul.

I couldn’t be more pleased with the final product. Thanks, Paul!

create pulchritudinem

Early this year, I got this tattoo on the inside of my left wrist. CREATE PULCHRITUDINEM. It means 'create beauty' in Latin.

One day when a friend and I were discussing possible tattoo designs she was thinking about, she said, "I feel like you needed that for yourself this year." I agree. Now, one can debate the merit or necessity of a tattoo, but that's not what I'm going for, so don't feel compelled to weigh in on that here.

It is a message, primarily to myself, and one that has kept me going thru the challenging times I alluded to in the previous post. Creating beauty is something that I feel compelled to do, and it takes many different forms...helping to curate worship stations, hosting people in my home, knitting, sewing, and photography, to name a few.

The last couple of years I lived in Birmingham, I was part of a small-group Bible study that, if you examined it from afar, seemed like the least likely group of women to fit together for such a purpose. Yet it was a rich experience. Over the course of time, we probably exchanged hundreds of dollars in the form of shoes, jewelry, books, and lunches, without much money ever changing hands.

We met during lunch on Fridays and usually did a book study of some sort. At one point, we went thru The Purpose-Driven Life. I know there are many, many people that love that book and gleaned much from it. I happen to not be one of those people. With one exception. The section on What Drives You?

As a pre-cursor to talking about that section, we all asked that question of others in our lives. I sent out an email to one of my brothers, some friends from forever and some from not so long ago, my mom's best friend, people young and old. All of the answers that I received boiled down to two things:

seeking truth and/or creativity

While I know that is true, and it is something I can easily articulate for myself, it still blows me away to know that people can see that. Occasionally, I still pull out that list and marvel that it boils down to those two things.

Create pulchritudinem. Looking forward to more in the days and weeks to come.