Bookends of the Day

God as a living author, whose span of activity extends infinitely beyond our racial memory in both directions. We never see His great work finished. Here and there we seem to recognize something which looks like the end of a chapter or the last page of a volume; or an episode presents itself to us as having a kind of completeness and unity in itself.

- Dorothy L. Sayers

The light is fading more quickly these days. I sit now at my little cafe table by my big windows, and just a few minutes ago, the room was ablaze with light. Now it has become a muted, softer glow. A cup of tea was just added to the table, after steeping in the kitchen, along with the book The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers, which I am slowly and intricately grasping in great delight. Oh, this book is a treasure of notes to the writer, or any creative person. She reminds me that to be the closest to God's image, we are to create. Simple and pithy. That is D.L.S. I have been reading more and more of her books lately, and everything I read is absolutely wonderful. I am dancing in her insights and stories. 

In this book, I nod in agreement with her as she describes the created characters in a story, and how they have their own independent will, just as we do, and we were created by God. Authors do not seek to possess the characters and have them do whatever the author fancies. It is hard to explain this sometimes, but D.L.S. does it for me:

...he never desires to subdue his work to himself but always to subdue himself to his work. The more genuinely creative he is, the more he will want his work to develop in accordance with its own nature, and to stand independent of himself. Well-meaning readers who try to identify the writer with his characters or to excavate the author's personality and opinions from his books are frequently astonished by the ferocious rudeness with which the author himself salutes these efforts at reabsorbing his work into himself. They are an assault upon the independence of his creatures, which he very properly resents.

I love her notions that an author stands independent from the characters, rather than being absorbed in their own work. Reading this was such a comfort to me, that I am not the only one who writes like this, and wants my stories to be separate from me, where the characters of my create story will follow their nature, not mine. I am not writing autobiography, but a creative imaginative story to take us into another place and experience. 

This is what I am contemplating as I sip my mint tea. D.L.S. has given me so much to contemplate in this book, and I eagerly absorb it all like a dry sponge. I am so thankful to sit here now, as mundane and slow as it is. By my window, the sun sinks lower and lower, the trees dance in an evening swirl, and the sky is scrubbed clean. These are the kinds of evenings I love as a season begins a transition. A beauty emerges in the rays of light. I delight in the fading light, as I do in the morning, growing light. Something about the bookends of the day offers the most thought-provoking scenes of colour and natural beauty. I sit here in wonder. It is nice to do that sometimes. Just enjoy the moment in thought.