Book Club Chapter 9: The Love of the Creature

In this chapter, Dorothy Sayers in The Mind of the Maker speaks to the writer's love and sacrifice for his creation. I especially enjoyed her insights into the nature of sacrifice.

But first, love. The writer's love is for his characters, not of them. It is neither possessive nor sentimental. Dorothy states that "pure, unadulterated love is the energy of creation." A creator's love for his work will be expressed by allowing it to develop in accordance with its own nature, and to stand independent of himself. This sounds so much like raising children to me!

Sacrifice, therefore, is the enjoyment of the creation process; it is a 'labor of love' so to speak. It is not a resignation to the task. She says, "To feel sacrifice consciously as self-sacrifice argues a failure in love. The merit (in sacrifice) lies precisely in the enjoyment" of it. Real love runs to the task and embraces it. (Love this.)

We've all heard the one who says, "I have sacrificed so much for this or that" and have felt the aversion to that attitude. Sayers describes this as the moralist who has more respect for pride than love. One imagines the authoritarian environment in which the moralist operates and is reminded that "grace is always preferred over legality."

She draws a very precise analogy between Creator God and man, His creation. As a writer, one attempts to create a self-conscious being (realizing it is impossible, but trying, nevertheless). A writer wants his creation to be completely independent of him on the one hand, but willing to cooperate with him in the purpose for which he was created and in accordance with the law of his nature, on the other hand. Here we see the perfect relation between Creator and creation, and the reconciliation of divine predestination and free created will.  She is able to state complex concepts in such a way that a person can really get their head around it.  I love that about Dorothy Sayers.

She goes on to write emphatically about the creature's urgent desire to be created and the agony of the creator in the process, but I will make this short as I'm several weeks behind and need to read and write about chapter 10!