Makoto Fujimura’s new book, Art Is: A Journey into the Light, reflects facets of all his earlier works and casts new light on what it means to live a creative life. Without superseding his earlier works, Art Is is an excellent first read for anyone wishing to begin reading Fujimura. All of his themes that I find encouraging are here, presented with the texture of his art itself:
- We are border-stalkers, who journey on the margins.
- Reality is beautiful. Beauty is hidden. Beauty and hope grow in sorrow.
- There is more to reality than meets the eye. Art can help us see reality in its dimensions of depth more clearly. We can still hear the music when we escape the reductionism of modernity.
- We are called to live in the new creation, already and not yet.
- We are called not to culture war but to generative culture care.
- Makoto is an artist of light, a geologist of the canvas.
Do not expect an abstract argument — not even Makoto’s art is properly appreciated as abstract. (It is concrete, as mineral sands are concrete.) Rather, the book exemplifies what Jeremy Begbie calls “theology through the arts” — not constructing theology on the basis of the arts, but reflecting on the reality which art opens up to us and considering how it meshes with deeper theological motifs. Mako explains: “Japanese writings are often lyrical and allusive, rather than linear and descriptive. They are image-based and focus on the affective and do not have clear outlines of an argument.” This is a gift to us, and reading it becomes a practice of attentiveness, like watching a bird build its nest.
With Art Is… journey into light, Mako invites us into a deeper understanding of his art, and how it has been for him a portal from darkness to light. I’ve read it twice now, and it will reward reading again. Next time I think I’ll make a list of the myriad of ways the phrase “Art is…” is completed in the book. “Art is a journey into light” just about sums it all up, but there are many subthemes. To illustrate, I will look through my annotations and marked pages… here are a few:
- Art is the quest of what life is
- Art is awareness
- Art is a gift
- Art is impossible, a gift of grace
- Art is slow
- Art is a prismatic journey of beauty
- Art is a language to dream with
- Art is a quest for authenticity
- Art is a path toward truth-telling
- Art is a feast in a scarcity-filled world
- Art is a journey into hope
- Art is generational (in multiple senses)
- Art is integration (of faith and reason, science and imagination, etc.)
- Art is a granular attentiveness to a greater Reality
- Art is hospitality
- Art is service
- Art is sacrifice
- Art is a place where everyone’s broken journey is honored and beheld until each of the broken pieces can be beautiful unto themselves
- Art is beholding
- Art is being attentive to fragile beauty
- Art is joining in the suffering of nature
- Art is play
- Art is a path to receive and cultivate the gift of life
- Art is a path toward loving what we once disdained (like dandelions)
- Art is the resilience of hope
- Art is always cross-cultural
- Art is a flow, from the margins
- Art is a liturgy of peace
- Art beholds mystery
- Art is a journey into love’s remains, prismatic surfaces, shards of mystery, a portal into a greater Reality
- Art is a miracle
- Art is to be filled with gratitude
- Art is not mere self-expression
- Art is prayer
- Art is a response to love
- Art is an expression of love
- Art is a path to explore the substance of trauma
- Art is like the journey of migrating birds to the light
- Art is a portal to our true home, like a teahouse, like a Listening Room
- Art is a journey into multi-dimensional and multi-layered thinking
- Art is a window into relational realities
- Art unveils interdependence
- Art is a magnificent longing
- Art is a New Creation story
- Art is a path home in the light
Wow, I didn’t expect to find so many. And these were just within the passages I had marked. You will find your own that speak to you.
This morning, Dec 12, I made it to Fort Lee, to The Estuary Gallery. I wanted to spend some time just sitting in front of a captivating “painting” by Makoto, which he titles Ps 139. It’s 48×144 inches, mineral pigments, gesso on canvas, created in 2020 (see his description of a related piece). I’ve written about it here (“Psalm 139 in Crystals”). It overwhelmed me when I first saw it, and I choked back tears. Today, then, was a pilgrimage.
Sitting there was like being in the final scene of Tree of Life. Or Contact. It is a portal of hope to the new creation. Exactly like Ps 139, its title, suggests. Every word and phrase of that Psalm comes alive through this work of art. (Take time to read it now. And in vs. 21-22, substitute “resist” for “hate.”) I felt beheld, known, all my pains and sorrows, joys and longings. All tears transformed. The darkness is not dark to God; there is nothing that death can take away which God cannot re-create and renew. As in Adam all died, so in Christ shall all be made alive. The Spirit rises like Living Water within us. All shall be well. As I wrote before: “Unforgettable. I felt searched and known indeed by a love greater than the stars.” This time it was everything I remembered and more.
As I wrote before: “I am reluctant even to call Mako’s art ‘paintings.’ They are multi-layered crystal refractions.” No photos can do this one justice. The light refracts on its surface like colored diamonds. It simply cannot be replicated on any digital screen. The refracted sands — no two alike — make the piece dynamic, shifting, shimmering like stars, uniting earth and sky together. Example: If you see a little white streak left of center near the top on the first photo, you might be able to notice that it has turned bright blue when viewed from the left side.
No wonder that Mako often reminds us of William Blake’s poetic exegesis of Psalm 139:
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”
Indeed, Mako’s art is to show us worlds through grains of sand.
Goldenwood NYC is sponsoring a retreat this coming weekend, To See a World in a Grain of Sand, focused on Art Is.
I’m very much looking forward to participating in this community event. And I’m grateful to be invited to dialogue with Mako on creativity in the arts (as conveyed in Art Is) and the natural sciences (as presented in my little interpretative essay, “Poetry includes science”: George MacDonald and the Scientific Imagination). Participants will be given a copy of the current draft of that essay. I am in talks with Winged Lion Press for possible publication in 2026. Contact me if you would like to read a draft.
And here’s a post of Eric Barfield, a friend and a musician in Nashville who has been reading Mako’s books. Makes me want to be there, to experience that kind of music in that kind of way. Eric’s post juxtaposes a recent musical experience with comments on Mako’s art. It prompts reflection, times two, as music and art each illumine the other.
Update after the retreat
To each of you who participated in the retreat this weekend, here is my prayer for you:
Enter the wild with care, my love
And speak the things you see
Let new names take and root and thrive and grow…
It seems to me that these singers are describing what you are doing as you enter into your art. From the wild, you are showing forth the things you see. In the darkness, beauty will take root and, in community, thrive and grow. Through your art you will carry us, in the reality of the Spirit’s work within, around, and through us, into the New Creation. Thank you.
Speak their names: This post provides context for the above song, with a liturgy at the end (scroll down to the bottom). “Speaking names in love,” is one way — like doing your art — to practice living in the New Creation.
Painters Prophets Poets: This post has a downloadable PDF that explores Music of the Spheres (Section 3, #38-56). Several of you were interested in hearing more about that. There’s also a video here of Malcolm Guite delighting in the feast of books and reading one of his own poems on music of the spheres. If you’re looking for a sequel to “From Music of the Spheres to the Harmony of the Universe” (an Appendix — behind the veil! — in my MacDonald essay), start here. Bonus: other stories that make it into this PDF are some Japanese works in tribute to Mako and Haejin, some works of C. S. Lewis, Kepler’s explanation of the Star of Bethlehem (appropriate for reading this Epiphany), one of my favorite stories of women in science (search for Elizabeth Hevelius), and a section on science and art from Leonardo to Galileo (which I hinted at in my remarks on stage). As with the MacDonald essay, read this PDF not for information, not in haste, but as lectio divina, a form of storytelling closer to poetry than to an article at Wikipedia.
And finally, what a gift of beauty to us was the snow! I hope it did not cause you inconvenience or hazard, but for me, it made my spirit soar. So I leave you with one more quotation from MacDonald, from a book set at Christmastime with a theme of how storytelling heals the soul:
As I led Adela, well wrapped in furs, down the steps to put her into the carriage, I felt by the wind, and saw by the sky, that a snowstorm was at hand. This set my heart beating with delight, for after all I am only what my friends call me – an old boy; and so I am still very fond of snow and wind. Of course this pleasure is often modified by the recollection that it is to most people no pleasure, and to some a source of great suffering. But then I recover myself by thinking, that I did not send for the snow, and that my enjoyment of it will neither increase their pains nor lessen my sympathies. And so I enjoy it again with all my heart.
George MacDonald, from Adela Cathcart, ch. IV.
Update January 16, 2025
On Goldenwood’s aptly-named “Enlivening Work” podcast, they’ve just released a recording of the conversation between me and Mako and David Kim, held on the campus of Princeton Seminary as a public event during the retreat:
Goldenwood Institute, “Why Wonder in the History of Science Helps Us See Our World Anew,” dialogue on creativity in art and science with Makoto Fujimura and Kerry Magruder, moderated by David Kim, December 13, 2025, Gambrell Room, Scheide Hall at Princeton Theological Seminary. Recording available on the “Enlivening Work” podcast, January 16, 2026. Show notes:
“This conversation between artist and Goldenwood Institute Dean of Nature Makoto Fujimura and historian of science Kerry Magruder was recorded live last month in Princeton at a Goldenwood event titled “Why Wonder in the History of Science Helps Us See Our World Anew.”
Moderated by Goldenwood CEO David Kim, they explore how wonder and imagination are essential to both scientific discovery and artistic practice. Drawing on the lives and work of figures such as Kepler, Galileo, George MacDonald, Darwin, and C.S. Lewis, this wide-ranging conversation invites us to rediscover a deeper way of seeing—one that awakens hope, enlivens faith, and helps us reimagine our work and our world.”
My thanks to Mako and David and the Goldenwood staff for their invitation to participate in these indeed enlivening events.
