On Iconography

Living as I do in an area of Cleveland where the churches are locked, I've had to find other places to pray. I've set up a designated corner in one of my rooms for prayer, and, being deprived of the Eucharist, I've gone for the next best thing: icons. I'd like to say just a few words about icons both because I've found them to be very helpful and because I think we've lost an appropriate appreciation for them, especially in the West.

This is the one that I pray with daily.

The question that ought to immediately come up, especially to our pragmatic, deeply dualistic American minds is: why icons? Why use something (that is, some thing) in prayer? Shouldn't we just close our eyes, calm our thoughts, forget the world, and sit in the darkness? The answer to this is both simple and complex - we use things in prayer because we are things.
Let me be clear: I am not arguing that we are merely things - that idea fails to uphold the dignity of the human being. If a person were merely a body, the old adage "Love people, use things" could easily be reversed without any reprehensible consequences. In this case, personhood could be measured based on utility, just as the worth of a car or a machine is measured based on what it can do and how efficiently.
On the other hand, the belief that we're merely spiritual (or any of its contemporary manifestations - e.g., that I am my mind, situated in this globulous but ultimately accidental and incidental mass of cells; more classically - my soul is my true person, trapped within this prison which is my body) likewise fails to uphold our dignity. Why? Because we are our bodies (or, as Thomas Aquinas put it, anima mea non est ego - "My soul is not 'I'"). Without my body, there would be no me. I learn through my body, I explore the world with my body, I am open to contact with other people through my body. If this were not true, none of our displays of affection would have any meaning - a kiss is not merely a pressing together of slightly squishy meat parts, but an expression of personhood.

So why icons? Simple: we respond to our world through contact with it. By seeing it. By feeling it.
Initially, when I started praying with icons, even this argument held no weight for me. It wasn't enough to merely know myself as human, I wanted to jump to the divine and leave my body behind (in truth, this amounts to leaving my self behind, which, being a man still under the effects of sin and fallenness, I am not ready for yet). So in the beginning I didn't understand icons - I still don't, in the sense of an intellectual understanding that has seen all facets and knows them intimately. BUT I knew that the Church has had a long, long, looooonng tradition of praying with icons, so I trusted the Church, even against my own rational inclinations. In this sense, icons also teach us humility. Why? Because it is something that is not "I," it is something that confronts us with something other than ourselves (art participates in this dynamic as well, to a degree). In trusting the Church's tradition, we submit ourselves to her who acts as our mother in faith.
A secondary point - intellectual understanding is not the same as understanding. The intellect is powerful and beautiful and wants to order all things, turn them over, analyze them, and, in that way, exercise dominion over them. The problem with this is that, powerful and beautiful as it is, the intellect is not nearly powerful enough to apprehend the depths of the cosmos, the fascinating and intricate connections between all things, nor the depths of the human heart. The intellect, for all its goodness, often falls to the temptation of killing wonderment. If all questions are answered, then what use is curiosity?  What is worth our attention? By attempting to grasp everything with the intellect, we lose sight of the deeply mysterious quality of life, the universe, and everything. It is impossible to "know" a person in the sense of having examined all their facets. In fact, to know a person "intimately" is to know them as mystery.
This, on a different level, is what happens in praying with icons - they are mysterious, just as persons are mysterious, just as God is mysterious - not because they haven't been "solved" yet like "Unsolved Mysteries," but because they address the whole person, head and heart.

Robert Stack my be cool, but I doubt he'll lead you to fulfillment.

As Blaise Pascal wrote, "The heart has its reasons that reason doesn't know." So why icons? Because with Job, I know that my vindicator lives, and from my flesh I will see him (Job 19:25-26), even if that means that, with Job, my skin will have been stripped off (Job 19:26) - the skin of my pride, my trust in my own power, my reliance on intellect without heart. For this I long - to be stripped of that skin, and to behold Christ, my Lover, from my flesh.