icon, idol, fantasy, symbol

"Nine visions, a book of fantasies‎," by Andrea LaSonde Melrose, Introduction:

"Theologically, there is a great difference between an icon and an idol. The
first is an open window; the second, a brick wall. An icon is something which
to work, an icon must have some element of the familiar. ... with a way for the eye and heart to go through it and beyond it; the outward image is too arresting...

To me, the most important aspect of fantasy is this aspect of symbolism. The
story must be filled with icons and must itself be an icon.
As such, it cannot reasonably be pulled apart and analyzed because the component
parts somehow equal more than their sum. Because an icon is a lens,
a focus, what it points to will be slightly different for each person.
. ..Aslan is bigger on the inside than he is on the outside. It is the rare child who fails to recognize Aslan as a symbol..

One of the most frightening and troubling aspects of our twentieth-century
society is a seemingly voluntary alienation. We cut ourselves off from one another..Increasing interest n Jung and fantasy and fairy tales is, perhaps, a tentative turn in the tide. It is a way of saying, 'We are part of a race...I belong.'

Children who read fantasy, who have fought alongside the Last Battle, will never lack for courage. ..

To name a fear is not to eliminate it, but to be able to handle it. In fantasy
we all — readers and characters — face mysteries and fears..
and in the facing we allow parts of ourselves which have lain dormant to
surface. We find ourselves realizing that our deepest fears can be faced.

..We find common experiences through the icons and archetypes, experiences we can translate and apply to our daily lives. We find friends, and heroes, and teachers who call us to higher achievements and nobler visions.

...Finally, in true fantasy, no individual accomplishes alone.
hat is done is done in the context of community, or the context of the
sacrifice of other individuals, or in connectedness to a strong and positive
power outside ourselves..

It is here that religious fantasy differs most strongly from any other form of
literature..

Fantasy calls us to our vocation ... a vocation in relationship to a love and
power apart from the self.
It is that part of the literature which tries to help us, through icon and
commitment and relationship, to see "face to face." It tries to catch
, however fleetingly, a clear vision of the truth and it offers
it in the only language in which truth can be clothed — the language of
the language of symbol and archetype, the language which connects."

-Andrea LaSonde Melrose