on True Art

“We have lost the essence of what it means to be an artist. True Art does not chase after novelty – it is a sensor quest for the new order of what God is creating, toward fully realized humanity. Using our senses, Art poses deeper questions rather than giving easy answers. To be truly human in a liquid reality, we must resist the culture of fear and cynicism. The World That Ought To Be is not a utopia, an unrealizable fantasy; it is instead created out of sacrificial love. To love is to quest for the World That Ought to Be. Love is enduring, and love uses all of our senses. Loves is generative, and will create the stage for the New to appear. The role of the artist in a liquid reality is to awaken all of our sense through creativity and love. Our quest will be to live more fully in the liminal zone between heaven and earth, the old and the new …

“With all the solid notions being washed away, as new fears creep into our consciousness, we must insist on reminding people that there is a Stage behind the stage, a Reality beyond the reality. And instead of reminding people of the cold earth, we need to awaken them to recognize the deposit of what is to come. There is a banquet waiting for us beyond the veil. If all is in flux, our task is to touch the fragile earth with the promise of heaven, creating the ‘still point of the turning world’ in the eye of the storm of life. The gospel of Jesus makes this possible.”

— Makoto Fujimura, “The Aroma of the New” in Books and Culture

(I’m posting this from New Orleans where I am working with teams of teenagers from 5 different states on something called the Restoration Project. They, too, are working toward the World That Ought to Be, the world brought into being through the New Creation in Christ Jesus.)