How (Your) Art Can Change the World
How do we care for the soul’s creative rest, and for new expressions that emerge when we give ourselves sabbath time, in the face of so much gratuitous violence fueled by our current “culture wars?”
It is essential that we strive each day to connect with those fellow-travelers, artists and thinkers who articulate a different vision of the good life.
Makoto Fujimura is one of these. Fujimura is an internationally-renowned painter of beautiful abstractions, employing an ancient Japanese layering method, known as Nihonga. In what he calls, “slow art,” he laboriously crushes precious stones to a fine powder which he then mixes with glue. These are painstakingly applied, layer by layer, to sheets of gorgeous, hand-laid papers to produce shimmering, other-earthly images.
But what draws me to him are his ideas, which are as beautiful as his art work. Fujimura has elaborated a compelling theory of beauty. A convert to Christianity, deeply influenced by the Oxford theologian N.T. Wright, Fujimura sees art as the highest form of the “New Creation” – the ultimate expression of the ever-unfolding “kingdom of God.” Beauty, art, are a form of prophetic wisdom for Fujimura, the bridge that can reconnect us to our deepest selves, one another, and the generations to come.
If this sounds heady and philosophical, nothing could be further from the truth. We are all artists, he says, when we get out of our ruts and routine, utilitarian and transactional ways of relating to each other. Whether we are baking bread, tending a garden, writing a novel or building a new business, we can choose HOW we create. We can be robotic, competitive, controlling and manipulative. Or we can follow his three “Gs” and in doing so make the world a better place.
- Genesis moments – These are the moments of liminality when our everyday perception gives way to a deeper glimpse – wonder, insight, empathy. When we allow ourselves to pay attention, to what passes by in our external and inner worlds, we will be listening to the Divine in ways that are essential not only to creativity but to our souls.
- Generosity – Fujimura insists that when we are able to realize anew the gratuitous abundance of the earth and all creation, we are able to shift from our default “scarcity” model to one of generosity with our gifts, time, possessions. We live in an infinite universe, he writes, and can grow large in heart and soul in the knowledge that we are here at God’s pleasure.
- Generativity – When we understand that we are here to co-create God’s kingdom on earth, our work radically shifts from making products that satisfy our ego needs to works that will live in the hearts and minds of generations that follow us. What do we want to leave our children as models of the good, of beauty, wisdom, kindness, mutual care?
His work is beautiful, and his writings are well worth a look during your sabbath summer time.
Culture Care
Silence and Beauty: Hidden Faith Born of Suffering
Art and Faith: A Theology of Making
Namaste.
Kathleen
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