Sunday, Day 43: Almond

The mandorla is an image of two concentric circles that overlap, creating an almond-shaped middle ground of bright light. Its light envelops Jesus and The Theotokos (Mother of God) in certain especially important icons—including the icon of both the Resurrection and the Ascension, which will be celebrated this coming Thursday in the Orthodox tradition.

The mandorla shows that Jesus is a bridge between heaven and earth, between what was and what will be, between an old way of understanding God through ritual and tradition and a new way of knowing God through experience and action. The mandorla shows us that no one sphere can reveal the whole mystery. No one circle can encompass the whole story.

The Resurrection journey, if we keep at it, keep walking the Road to Emmaus for a full 40 days, keep grappling with the strange appearances of Christ between Easter and Ascension, reveals both how little and how much we know. It reveals how deeply the disciples longed for Jesus-in-the-flesh, to touch him, to prepare food and eat with him, to hear his voice.

Mandorla is an ancient word for almond. In Greece, almond trees are the first to bloom, usually in January, a symbol of a new year, a new beginning. They are visited by swarms of bees that ensure the pinkish flowers with bright red centers will eventually yield green ovals that slowly split open, allowing the almond shells inside to grow hard for harvest.


We press almonds onto Eater bread to remind us of the way the oval-shaped light encompasses both heaven and earth, old and new.  But almonds are on New Year’s Bread, too—a reminder that Jesus’ story is cyclical, tied inextricably to the natural shifts of the earth. We have to live that story again and again if we want to discover new ways of seeing, new connections between old and new. 

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