Being a Sub-creator

 

What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful 'sub-creator'. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out int he Primary World again.

- "On Fairy Stories", J.R.R. Tolkien

I sat at my desk whilst in Oxford, with a view at the window out toward the main quadrangle of Wadham College. It pleased me very much to sit there with a few books and my journal. Naturally, when I am in Oxford I feel the remnant presence of the footsteps of those beloved authors and thinkers - C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dorothy L. Sayers, Owen Barfield, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Burton. I walk the paths of Christ Church Meadow and admire the knotty, old trees that look like Ents (from Middle-earth). I shop in Blackwells Bookshop imagining Dorothy L. Sayers working there under Basil Blackwell. I pass by the Narnia door and lamp post off Radcliffe Square and imagine C.S. Lewis stomping by a few times a week to meet his brother Warnie for lunch at The Mitre. It is easy for me to see the beauty held in the imagination, from the past, and into my present. I think of how these places not only inspire me now, but inspired centuries of students and professors in various ways. 

I am there. My feet trod along the same streets. I seek to re-visit some of the books by these writers that I love, as if to have another conversation with them whilst walking in their footsteps. I want to know their daily life and routine. Where did they grab a meal and tea? What books were they reading? Did they travel out of town, by train, bicycle, or car? I might make-up a story in my head about a meeting or lunch they might take with someone, as I head down The High for a spot of lunch. I might imagine their wanders through the flowering meadows in the middle of the city. And I imagine them sitting at their desks at home, writing their next book. What inspired them that day as they were out and about?

Tolkien coins the term and ideas around sub-creating. He explains that God is Creator, of everything we know and don't know, see and don't see. He has gifted us with abilities to create as well, through art, music, words, work, business, etc. We are all creating a story to tell. So, we in turn become creators, yet since we are not God, we are sub-creators of a secondary world, underneath the umbrella of the one true God as ultimate Creator. It is under these realms of the creation we explore our talents and gifts by way of sub-creating.

When I first discovered this through Tolkien, I was so inspired. It was a way of explaining and confirming what I had always thought to be so important. To do good with what I have been given. For me that good has always been writing and creating something - whether that is journal entries, poems, stories, or blog posts. But for others, it might be completely different. Yet in the same air of creating 'something' it is sub-creating. It may never be complete in our lifetimes, yet it is not in vain. Our work, our efforts will be perfected in the heavenly kingdom. Tolkien's short story "Leaf by Niggle" is the perfect companion here to illustrate that idea. 

When I sit down at my desk to write wherever I am, I always keep this in mind. This idea of being a sub-creator, for it is a gift from the Creator. Just holding that thought close and near inspires me to do my work of sub-creating, even if it's only a few minutes, or a small thing.