Source: http://www.alexandrmen.ru/books/nebo/nebo.html

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There are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the Kingdom of God.

Lux. 9,27

The background on icons is called "light".  This is a smart sky. 

 From a letter from Y.N. Reitlinger to Fr. Alexander Menu

About Sister Ioanna

Our calling is already here on earth

to gather the kingdom of heaven.

Y. N. Reitlinger, in conversation

Let our lights, burning in different places, not go out,

so that we can pass the baton...

From the letter of Fr. Alexander Men

At the end of the twentieth century, an exhibition of icons of Sister Joanna (Reitlinger) opened in one of the halls of the Rublevsky Museum.

Entering from the threshold was stunned by the spirit of joy, joy, depth and truth that the icons breathed. It was a manifest Presence, and the one who entered was overwhelmed by the joy of recognizing the Light.

I first saw her icons in the Moscow homes of Father Alexander Men's parishioners, whose circle I entered in the mid-70s of the now last century. It happened like this: you entered a room and from the threshold you recognized the hand of an iconographer you did not yet know. You ask your friends, and they explain to you that there is such an old woman, a nun, who has returned from emigration, lives in Tashkent, and visits us in Novaya Derevnya in the summer. Or, they say: we don't know who wrote it, Father Alexander gave it to us for the wedding. In Father Alexander's office there was, apparently from the same letter, a fiery Elijah in the wilderness. I remember how a new icon appeared on the analogion in the church on Palm Sunday, from which it was impossible to depart, "The Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem," and it was painted by the same hand.

And then the day came when Father Alexander introduced us, leading me to her with the words: "Yulia Nikolaevna is also an artist. She doesn't hear, so write notes." And we began to talk – or rather, she spoke, and I wrote the beginning of the sentence in her notebook – she guessed about the continuation, and I listened to her answer (or question).

It was a happy communion — in a state of almost intoxicating joy, the nearness of the Kingdom, the sky, joy — something else, dear to eternity, secretly peeked through the simplicity of the visible: the shutters open to the courtyard, the oilcloth on the table, the dull-colored tea that was still served to us at that time ("but it does not spoil the complexion," Father Alexander joked), the pale green wooden gate, the rowan tree in the window.