“The Mind of the Maker” by Dorothy Sayers

  • The Mind of the MakerI asked for this book for Christ­mas on a bit of a whim (which seems a lit­tle appro­pri­ate for an author known best for her Lord Peter Wim­sey books), but I’ve been delighted with meet­ing up with a new “mere Chris­t­ian” writer after the heart of C. S. Lewis. Dorothy Say­ers was one of that band of Inklings that included J. R. R. Tolkien and Charles Williams, and I was won­der­ing about her Chris­t­ian writ­ings. It hasn’t been disappointing.

    Say­ers inves­ti­gates state­ments made in dif­fer­ent Chris­t­ian creeds and slowly and method­i­cally builds her case for using the human act of cre­ativ­ity as a model for under­stand­ing the Trin­ity. She spends an entire chap­ter explain­ing both the help and the dan­ger present in such metaphors, but I admit that I love things like this. I’m never going to read St. Thomas Aquinas’ “Summa The­o­log­ica” — heck, I may not even make it through St. Augustine’s “On the Trin­ity” — but if some­one who can will do it and give me a men­tal pic­ture from it, I’ll hap­pily amuse myself with all the rest of the Philistines.

    Just in case any­one else is the same kind of block­head, I’ll do a quick run­down on how it works, though I admit, this is more for my own fun that by way of real epiphany to oth­ers. The book itself is what you want to con­sult for the com­plete pic­ture. Still, some­times blog­ging gets to be a self­ish act, I guess. So …

    Say­ers breaks down the cre­ative act into three parts — the Idea, the Energy and the Power. This doesn’t need to be the act of only a writer, poet, artist or one of the other peo­ple whose cre­ativ­ity is writ large enough for all to see. The same action occurs in all of us when we make some­thing hap­pen — bake a loaf of bread, tell a joke, draw a funny doo­dle. But it’s eas­ier to see with the “cre­ative types” so let’s say we’re talk­ing about William Shake­speare writ­ing “Julius Caesar”:

    • The Idea — This is the eas­i­est thing to under­stand. At some point, Shake­speare con­ceives of the play and begins to con­sider details, char­ac­ters and dia­log. The Idea cor­re­sponds to God the Father.
    • The Energy — Hav­ing got­ten the idea, Shake­speare has to carry out all the activ­ity nec­es­sary to real­ize what he’s envi­sioned. He has to write it in order to com­mu­ni­cate the Idea to oth­ers. It’s sort of like the won­der­ful scene in “Amadeus” when Mozart tells his friend and patron that his opera is all fin­ished because it’s all com­plete in his head and the rest is just scrib­bling. “Write it down!” the friend thun­ders. “It’s no good to any­body in your head.” And of course, they’re both right. The Energy cor­re­sponds to God the Son, who actu­al­ized God’s inten­tion in human flesh.
    • The Power — The power is the impact it has on the audi­ence. Again, con­sid­er­ing “Julius Cae­sar”, the audi­ence went through all the emo­tions called for — they were appalled and stirred and curi­ous and afraid — and at the end, they knew the Idea of “Julius Cae­sar.” The play might have a dif­fer­ent impact for dif­fer­ent peo­ple, (and of course, it might not have any impact at all for oth­ers) but the Power of the play is the force that would change them a lit­tle bit, stay in their mind, make them want to re-enact scenes the next day for their friends. The Power cor­re­sponds to The Holy Spirit.

    Isn’t that just an amaz­ing thing to con­tem­plate? I’ve been hear­ing of ways to try to under­stand the Trin­ity since my cat­e­chism, and it seems to me that none of them helped me quite as much as that sim­ple model. Any­one can under­stand The Son — He was, after all, one of us. We have words to read and human actions to con­sider, albeit the actions of one with glo­ri­fied human nature. And all human­ity through­out his­tory under­stands the basic idea of the gods or a god, though God Him­self is end­less and unsearch­able. But what in the world do you make of the Holy Spirit? It may just be me, but I’ve always found Him the most dif­fi­cult, the most fleet­ing and evanes­cent. He has seemed to me some­times like a shoot­ing star whose exis­tence you can only detect in the trail, in the wake and what is left behind. We know He acts in har­mony with the oth­ers, and if we’ve read Motovilov’s con­ver­sa­tion with St. Seraphim, we know that “in acquir­ing the Spirit of God con­sists the true aim of the Chris­t­ian life.” But how does that actu­ally work?

    As I said, it may be a very sub­jec­tive need to have such helps and para­bles. But in any case, I write it down in case any­one else can benefit.


    Related posts:

    1. The per­va­sive­ness of the Chris­t­ian idea
    2. And speak­ing of Harry Potter …
    3. Stem cells and Frist’s inconsistency
    4. When no one was look­ing, Cindy Shee­han went com­pletely mad

    January 14th, 2006 | Grace | 6 Comments |

6 Responses and Counting...

  • Karl Thienes 01.14.2006

    She has a great book, a col­lec­tion of essays enti­tled “The Whim­si­cal Chris­t­ian”, that I highly recommend.

  • Grace

    Excel­lent! Thanks for the tip.

  • s-p

    I’ve only read an essay by her, I LOVED it. We read the whole thing on our radio show one Sun­day. I’ll have to pick up her books. Thanks!

  • Mimi

    I’ve never heard of her, but that is an incred­i­ble point.

  • Grace

    As I said, she’s really much bet­ter known as a mys­tery writer. Her detective-hero is Lord Peter Wim­sey, and ver­sions of “Gaudy Night” and “Mur­der Must Adver­tise” — prob­a­bly the favorites of hers — show up on PBS’ Mys­tery and other places. She died in 1957.

    Worth men­tion­ing, in ret­ro­spect, that it seemed to me that a (lower-case o) ortho­dox Chris­t­ian can skip the first two chap­ters, since they seem like apolo­get­ics for (a) believ­ing that God can be known by His unchang­ing laws and (b) there is a value to try­ing to under­stand God’s work­ings through a metaphor.

  • Mimi

    Oooh, my appetite is cer­tainly wheted!

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