The Bishop in chess moves diagonally along the squares of the chessboard until it encounters another playing piece.
The various directions in which the Bishop can move create a cross upon the chess board. Less powerful than the Queen or Rook, one Bishop equals the strength of a Knight or 3 Pawns. Like the Rook, Queen, Knight and Pawns of the same color or player, the Bishop seeks to protect the King from capture.
Oh what drama? Just like a good novel or story.
Each player has two Bishops.
While one Bishop stands between the Knight and the Queen the second Bishop stands on the other side of the Queen and beside the King.
In this way the Bishop is the piece or character after the Queen to hold close proximity to the King.
A close ally, the Bishop along with the Queen stands close the drama of the protecting the King.
Stories, like the game of chess, have those characters around which the central dilemma swirls. This could be the protagonist, or someone with whom the central and point-of-view character is close.
In life, the closeness we hold or feel with someone has a sense of spirituality about it.
Hence we have the word kindred spirits, those people who hold a knowing about us, an understanding that requires few, if any words.
This non-verbal understanding binds us to them and the reverse.
Likewise, the faith we hold in those things that the naked eye cannot hold, that only the heart can feel, our beliefs, no religion, speak to aspects of our character.
Elucidating the set of axioms, spoken and unspoken to which our protagonist and supporting characters, her or his allies adhere cracks open the inner motivation driving them towards the goal they seek.
Our desire to engage with and reveal aspects of our personalities, our fears, doubts, hopes and dreams, propel us to write and shape our stories.
Our writing, like the work and goal of the Bishop(s) in chess operates as a protective device, shielding us from despair and loss of faith that comes when we do not address the truths inside and surrounding us.
For many, our writing serves as that place, that experience in which we can shed layers of untruth and dishonesty and reach within grasping our authentic selves, the persons we truly are, and engage with the inner child that many of us left behind when deferring to the demands of adulthood, if not our families.
Writers, like all other humans are both the monarch or King of our lives, and the protagonists of the stories, either fiction and/or non- or creative non-fiction, chronicling our living.
Writing we engage the Bishop, that which brings us into the dawn of awareness–about our self and others.