Category Archives: Rachel Burkholder

A Blast from the Past….What do you think?

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Greetings all,

Unfortunately, I had a very long day at work today, and then a pile of other responsibilities demanded attention immediately thereafter. Alas, I wasn’t able to give today’s blog the thought that it is due and you all deserve.  So, instead, I thought I might bring you something most of you have probably never heard of and the rest probably don’t remember:  The Lantern Hollow Character Blogs.  I’d love to hear that you think of it as a concept.

The original plan, laid down by LHP in its infancy, was to run two blogs at once:  One of them would be the blog you see before you–dedicated to writing and the Press itself.  The other would be simply fun:  We would blog as the characters from our books and stories!  For instance, I blogged as Meg, the young-adult heroine from my book Waverly Hall:  Relois.*  Melissa became “Uncle Ian” and Danni, from the novel she is now finally completing.  Stephanie had a lot of fun as “Renard Breen”, an insane gangster pixy.  We had enough fun with it that it spawned a third blog, where the villains could runamok.

I say it was simple fun, but it also served a useful purpose:  it forced us to regularly think and write as our characters.  And perhaps more importantly, we ran out of “good” things to talk about, and that made us dive even deeper into into their psyches when we had to put ourselves so far into their lives that even their reactions to mundane things came to light.  Have you ever actually tried to envision someone’s life, moment by moment, and not just the fictional highlights?  It’s not easy.

In the end, both blogs died slow deaths.  We never had enough time to devote to them, and there never seemed to be a readership for blogs written by people pretending to be random characters, ripped out of context, about things no one really cared about.  But it was fun while it lasted and definitely useful.  Take a look at them (while we cringe in embarrassment) and let us know what you think!

The Characters of Lantern Hollow Press

The Dark Characters of Lantern Hollow Press

Hopefully I’ll be back next week with the previously promised installment of War in Fiction!

Have a great week,

Brian

*And no comments from the peanut gallery about my ability to impersonate a 14 year old girl on-line on a blog.  Believe me, every variation of joke you can think of has already been used.  Twice.  Or three times.

The Suffering Love Which Brings Easter Joy

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…To Love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entaglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.  The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe form all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. 

I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness. It is like hiding the talent in a napkin and for much the same reason “I know thee that thou wert a hard man.” Christ did not teach and suffer that we might become, even in the natural loves, more careful of our own happiness.  If a man is not uncalculating towards the earthly beloveds whom he has seen, he is none the more likely to be so towards God whom he has not. We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the suffering inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it.

~C. S Lewis, The Four Loves

Christ drew nearer and showed us what it meant to be vulnerable unto love.  He suffered and died to redeem His people.  That is love…that is obedience to God, the ultimate expression of love. This is where we as Christians can celebrate Easter joy.  We celebrate the love of Christ as we proclaim the mystery of the faith – Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ shall come again.

The Word made Flesh – Contemplating Good Friday

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I have spent a month contemplating the reader’s heart and the writer’s soul and several rambling topics.  I have talked about Dorothy Sayers’s use of a trinitarian analogy to disclose the concept of creating.  Today, it is fitting that I should finish this month with looking at the Incarnate Word.

For every work [or act] of creation is threefold, an earthly trinity to match the heavenly.

First, [not in time, but merely in order of enumeration] there is the Creative Idea, passionless, timeless, beholding the whole work complete at once, the end in the beginning: and this is the image of the Father.

Second, there is the Creative Energy [or Activity] begotten of that idea, working in time from the beginning to the end, with sweat and passion, being incarnate in the bonds of matter: and this is the image of the Word.

Third, there is the Creative Power, the meaning of the

work and its response in the lively soul: and this is the image of the indwelling Spirit.

And these three are one, each equally in itself the whole work, whereof none can exist without other: and this is the image of the Trinity (35).

In Sayers’s analogy the Energy or the creation bound to matter is the Word (in her analogy we’d say the Energy is the written book but on a spiritual sense the Word as another connotation). In the Trinity, the Son of God, begotten not made, is referred to by St. John as the Word. 

The Word of Life. The Word made Flesh.

Today is Good Friday.

As a child I was confused by the concept of this Holy Day being good.  What is good about death - the Death on the Cross.  I could not conceive  how such an awful death could be good.  But I as I have grown older and more versed in the traditions of the Church, I am convinced that the Church understood something that I often forget and as a child I did not comprehend.  The Cross is the good Death, if there ever was one.  It is the Death that defeated Death. The Cross is where the Incarnate Word expressed the fullness of the Idea and Power of the Creator.

And this is very good.  We are saved through the passion (derived from the Greek word pascho meaning to suffer) and sweat and blood of The Word – the Son of God.

You may ask what does this have to do with writing or reading and I’d have to tell you everything.  To carry on with Sayers’s analogy and even St. John’s, The Word is the calmination of creation.The Idea is made flesh and given Power.  This Power is what sparks the idea for me to create and influence others through writing/reading. I cannot nor will I ever divorce myself from the source – The Idea, The Word, The Power.

I am reminded of a quote from Chariots of Fire.  

“I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast!
And when I run I feel his pleasure.”
― Eric Liddell

Change that to read “God made me for a purpose, but he also made me with a story. and when I write I feel his pleasure.”  God the Triune, who is Idea, Word, Power / Father, Son, Holy Spirit, is the giver of life and words and, ultimately, stories.  And I write for HIS pleasure for HE is my source.

Therefore, I can reflect on Good Friday and indeed say that it is good and look towards Easter Sunday with glorious hope and joy.

The Weight of the Writer

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I have spent the last three weeks rambling about my thoughts as I reread The Four Loves, The Mind of the Maker, and  An Experiment in Criticism.  It has been a busy week since last Friday and to my shame I have not read as much as I’d like to have.    That being said, I do not want to neglect my post or the promise that this month was themed around my ramblings on these books.

The Power of the Idea in the form of the Word is still making its rounds in my head. Sayers spends a good deal of time on this subject and rightly so.  Writing is a powerful tool and communicates not just stories, but ideas … revolutions … religion … war … hate … redemption.

I have to ask myself, what am I communicating?  What Idea am I putting into Words that will have Power with a mind?

It is dreadful to think what the wrong words, wrong ideas will do to a weak mind.  It is exhilaration to think of what the right word, right ideas will spark in the right mind.  It is a heavy burden for an author to consider.

We see this power in the reaction to Harry Potter.  There were so many people who were for the books, against the books, who praised them, who cursed them…the criticism goes on and on. There is power in the ideas that Rowling wrote.  Magic.  Something that we all fear and/or desire. But I think that those who get caught up in the debate about magic miss something.  They miss the real issue of her books – Death.  Or rather the fear of Death and conquering that fear by facing it with grace and humility.  Magic is the foil that Rowling uses to deal with a more powerful, more real concept that many of us don’t want to think about or consider.  Rowlings’s heroes are able to live full and happy lives because they face Death with humility and acceptance. This is a lesson for all of us – the Power in the Idea.

However, going back to the concept of Magic, I must ask the question, does the use of magic detract from the message?  I still know of people – good people, whose opinions I trust and admire – who dislike the books on the grounds of magic.  I have had many an argument with friends and family on this topic: is magic within a fantasy story good or bad?  I heard/read the news articles about the kids that were snooping into real magic/dark arts and things because they had read about it in Harry Potter. Do I blame the books for putting the Idea into their heads, or is there a greater issue here?  I read the books, I heard about magic, but I did not go off and try to do magic in the real world. I suppose I had read/heard enough about magic to know that within the confines of the pages magic was a medium to be respected and outside of the pages, magic was a force to be feared and avoided.

Magic is dangerous and very real.  It is not something any one should tamper with.  There is no “good” magic in the real world.  There is the power of God and there is the power of devils.  And the Bible is very clear about this subject.

Yet, I think of Tolkien and Lewis and how they used “magic” in their worlds.  Gandalf is a wizard and he wields power.  In Narnia, Aslan talks about the Deep Magic that created the world.  These are arguably good forces in the stories.  I suppose what I must consider is not the means but the Idea behind the means.  What do these forces in the book represent and what are they trying to teach?  Just like in Harry Potter, the magic is a foil to the greater concept of Death and how we deal with the notion of dying.

I am still not sure where I stand on the issue about the use of magic in writing and the fear of the implications in the real world. It is the weight that a writer must bear as he/she thinks about what they are writing, why are they writing, and what are they ultimately communicating to their readers.

The Power of the Word

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So it is Friday and time for us to continue to wander through my thoughts concerning The Mind of the Maker, by Dorothy Sayers.

Sayers makes a very intriguing analogy about writing – as all analogies it has its faults and should not be taken literally; it is after all an analogy.  She postulates that we can look at writing from the perspective of trinity. (As a strong believer in the Trinity, I enjoy seeing trinitarian concepts done well – Sayers does it well).  To make my point or rather to explain my rumination, I must give some background.  And the best way to do that is in Sayers own words:

For every work [or act] of creation is threefold, an earthly trinity to match the heavenly.

First, [not in time, but merely in order of enumeration] there is the Creative Idea, passionless, timeless, beholding the whole work complete at once, the end in the beginning: and this is the image of the Father.

Second, there is the Creative Energy [or Activity] begotten of that idea, working in time from the beginning to the end, with sweat and passion, being incarnate in the bonds of matter: and this is the image of the Word.

Third, there is the Creative Power, the meaning of the work and its response in the lively soul: and this is the image of the indwelling Spirit.

And these three are one, each equally in itself the whole work, whereof none can exist without other: and this is the image of the Trinity (35).

Idea,  Energy / Activity,   Power

I could go on for days on this topic – Sayers wrote a whole book on it.  As analogies go it is one of best, for me as a writer, to understand the art of creation –  the Art of the Creation.  I know that it is an analogy and Sayers is clear to point out the known flaws in case anyone decides to get cheeky or too serious.  Analogies are a way of helping us understand the unknowable, the mysteries of life.  Bread & Wine – Body and Blood, Marriage - Christ & the Church, but I am not here to talk about these things today.  But these are examples of unknowable things that have very real analogies to make their mystery a little more knowable. (Is it bad that I used an analogy to explain an analogy?)

But back to my ruminations about the trinity of creativity – Idea is the thought, Energy is the writing or written word, and Power is the impact of reading.  Power of the word is what I have been mulling over in my mind. Sayers mentions a very bad habit that we have of dismissing words as “just words.”  We say this to comfort ourselves when words have wounded us or others.  ”Sticks and stones may brake my bones but words will never hurt me,”  is a pithy saying full of lies.  Words do hurt.  Words can also, edify, strengthen and encourage. We use words to comfort because there is power and influence in words. And all our trite sayings only prove that point.

[O]nce the Idea has entered into other minds, it will tend to reincarnate itself there with ever-increasing Energy and ever-increasing Power. It may for some time incarnate itself only in more words, more books, more speeches; but the day comes when it incarnates itself in action, and this is its day of judgement” (111).

All three are working together, the Idea, Energy, Power, of thought and creativity, thus effecting the reader for good or ill.   Sayers uses the term “day of judgement,” which if you are like me, will immediately give you negative connotations.  But I don’t think that this is what Sayers is actually getting at.  It is judgement  because the action is a reincarnation of the previous Idea/Energy/Power and through the incarnation the truth of the Idea/Energy/Power is revealed – a judgement.

Words have power.  Tell a little girl she is pretty long enough and she will undoubtedly become vain.  Tell a child he will fail at life, he will either prove your right or wrong based on his character and fortitude.

Last week I talked about the types and kinds of books and their effect on the their readers.  I suppose I finally got to the part in Sayers’s book that sort of proves the point I was trying to make. By reading we are experiencing the the final part of the creative process the Power of the Idea as it is revealed through the Energy.  This Power, as a concept of influence, in and of itself is not “bad” as we think of bad nor is it good.  It is simple an element that is part of creativity.  However, the content and the strength of the Idea is the important thing.  Reading the wrong sorts of books like hanging out with the wrong sorts of persons will effect the character of the reader.

I’ll leave you with a parting quote that I am still ruminating on that illustrates the point I’ve been trying to make:

 But Pentecost [revelation of the Power - Action based on the culmination of the Idea/Energy/Power] will happen, whether within or without official education. From some quarter of other, the Power will descend, to flame or smolder until it is ready to issue in a new revelation. We need not suppose that, because the mind of the reader is inert to Plato, it will therefore be inert to Nietzsche or Karl Marx.  Failing those, it may respond to Wilhelmina Stitch or to Hollywood (112).

*Sayers, Dorothy L. The Minder of the Maker. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1979.