What do we do when things break? | Makoto Fujimura

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What do we do when things break? | Makoto Fujimura

June 9, 2022

PART OF A SPECIAL 6-WEEK SERIES | This season is all about character and virtue — and how we can close our “character gaps” to become better people. But, what does it look like to grow more virtuous in a world with pain, trauma, and grief? Our guest for this episode, contemporary artist Makoto Fujimura, approaches this question through the lens of a centuries-old art form: kintsugi. Mako’s most recent book, Art + Faith, is available here: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Faith-Theology-Makoto-Fujimura/dp/0300254148 Like what you heard? Rate and review Beyond the Forum on Apple Podcasts to help more people discover our episodes. And, get updates on more ideas that shape our lives by signing up for our email newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/veritas/newslettersubscribe_pd. Thanks for listening!

Transcript

This season, we've talked about character and virtue, and the gap that exists between who we are today and who we want to be. In episode 1 with Christian Miller, we talked about how the evidence shows that most of us are not wholly virtuous or wholly vicious. We sit on a spectrum.

With Megan Sullivan, we talked about the trolley problem, and how we go about weighing moral decisions in our everyday lives. Dave Evans and Nancy Hill both shared about vocational decision-making and the importance of being aware of the developmental stage we're now in. And the adi talked about neuroplasticity and how we can rewire our brains for greater mental health.

In all of these episodes, we talked about tips and strategies for closing that character gap between who we are today and who we want to be. But the elephant in the room in every episode was that virtue isn't pursued in a vacuum. We pursue it in a broken world, a world where people pass over suffering or allow obedience to authority to trump compassion, a world where ethical decision-making is hard because choices aren't perfect, a world where people fail us and spouses die, a world where trauma changes our brains, a world where a pandemic forts our plans, takes our loved ones, and disrupts our lives entirely.

This is the world in which we pursue character and virtue. My guest in this episode is contemporary artist Marco Fujimura. Far from avoiding brokenness, Marco leans into fractures and cracks to create his art, or what he calls new creations.

If you're wondering how you can pursue virtue in a world of pain, or if you're wondering how we move forward after the two years we've collectively experienced, this episode is for you. This is Beyond the Forum, a podcast from the Veritas Forum and PRX that explores the ideas that shape our lives. This season we're talking about character and virtue.

I'm your host Bethany Jenkins, and I run the media and content work at the Veritas Forum, a Christian nonprofit that hosts conversations that matter across different worldviews. I am Marco Fujimura, and I am an artist. Marco's art has been featured in galleries around the world, including in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo.

And he was one of the first artists to paint live on stage at Carnegie Hall. But Marco saw himself as an artist long before all that. My mother kept the painting that I did.

She said I was two and a half, but I don't know if that's true. And this painting is just sheer gesture and color lines all over the place. But it's exactly the same colors I use today.

In some ways, that was his peak, the moment he tries to get back to. I look at that every day and I tell myself, "Oh, that's my goal today." It's to be that child really without ego or having any sense of this painting is going to do or who's going to see it. It's really out of just sheer joy.

Marco's art falls within the broad category of contemporary art, but it's difficult to categorize neatly. Another contemporary artist, Robert Kushner, says that Marco's art is unique. "The idea of forging a new kind of art about hope, healing, redemption, refuge, while maintaining visual sophistication and intellectual integrity is a growing movement, one which finds Marco Fujimura's work at the Vanguard." Marco describes his art as "slow art." That's partly because his pieces are enormous.

One canvas is over 30 feet long, and he recommends looking at them for at least 10 minutes in order to see their fullness. But it's also slow art because of Marco's process. In a recent piece about Marco's work, New York Times columnist David Brooks referred to it as "a small rebellion against the quickening of time." This rebellion is fueled by Marco's particular genre of painting.

I have been associated with Nihonga Japanese style paintings, which is really the lineage of Japanese paintings that harkens back for thousands of years. And I use traditional Japanese materials to slow down, and I'm particularly interested in 16th and 17th century Japanese history and art making. Painting in the Nihonga style takes an incredible amount of time and effort because of the materials used.

For example, on a current project, Marco is using Sumi ink. To extract this ink, he rubs pine shoots against a stone for more than an hour. He uses time-intensive materials, like platinum and gold powder and white paints made from pulverized oyster shells, and he grinds these shells himself.

Other materials may include silk or coloring extracted from vegetables. The slowness and attention to detail that Marco employs in his art is also seen in another of Marco's art forms, Kinsugi. Kinsugi is "kin", "kin", "kin", is gold, and "sugi" means to mend.

But "sugi" also means to pass it down to next generation. And it's a beautiful tradition that I discovered while I was in Japan, but now it's gotten very popular in the US. For a few bucks on Etsy, you can buy a pair of Kinsugi-inspired earrings, or a DIY Kinsugi kit.

Indie Rock Band Death Cab for Cutie even named their 2015 album Kinsugi. But Kinsugi dates back hundreds of years in Japan and flows out of Japan's strong culture of tea. When an important tea ball breaks because Japan has many earthquakes, the family of the tea masters will often hold onto the fragments for generations before they mend.

And it is not to fix the ball so that it looks normal back together, but it is to behold the fractures first until the Kinsugi master, who is also a Rushi master, Rushi is Japan Lacker master, sees the fragments as beautiful. And then he or she will start to mend using the cracks as inspiration to create new lines and new forms. And then ultimately gold is applied on top.

Kinsugi is primarily associated with the repair of ceramics, like teapots, cups, and bowls. If a teapot cracked, the family would take the fragments of the pot to a Kinsugi master, who would then quote "glue the pieces back together with high-quality minerals," like gold, platinum, or silver. So you have, instead of a crack that is filled and made invisible, it is highlighted to become a river, a mountain.

Mako says that the end result isn't just an act of repair, it's an act of recreation. The Kinsugi ball is more valuable than even the original, as valuable as that may be. And this is a remarkable, profound reality.

The monetary value of a Kinsugi ball is increased, because the fractures are mended with precious materials like gold. Yes. But Mako says its value goes far deeper than dollars and cents.

Kinsugi cuts against our modern notion that perfection should be desired above all else. Through highlighting fractures, Kinsugi reminds us that fractures can make us more resilient. As Hemingway once wrote in Fairweller Arms, quote, "The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places." But this isn't just about ceramics, it speaks to the way that we value and repair breaks in all parts of our lives.

You know, anything that we value, we hold on to, in particular in community or in marriage, right? You value each other, not because we're perfect, right? It's something about human relationships and community and our loves that drive us toward even the fractures. And we draw on to each other because of our vulnerabilities and weakness. You've probably experienced this in your life.

Have you ever been in a relationship with someone where you've wronged the other person, where you've created a fracture in the friendship? What did you do in response? If you avoided them and created distance between you, the friendship probably ended. But if you leaned into the broken fragments of the friendship, if you saw hope of forgiveness, then you probably apologized and repaired the friendship. But even if you repaired it, you didn't go back to the same friendship.

You created a new friendship, a deeper one that is stronger now, precisely because it broke. That moment when you lean into the broken fragments before the friendship has been made new, that moment can't be rushed. There is a real wrong that you must see and own, and there is also a real hope of repair that you need to imagine.

Whatever you have experienced and whatever you long to regain is gone, it's not going to be anymore. Once I began to accept, let's say, the fracture of it, I could look at myself and look at all that I was experiencing, the brokenness that I was experiencing and say, "Can I just be okay with beholding the fragments?" Before a Kinsugi master can begin to create a new work, they literally behold the fragments of the broken piece of pottery. In Kinsugi, that moment of beholding the fragments is called the sixth dimension.

In his book, Art and Faith, Mako describes the sixth dimension, saying, "It's the Kinsugi master searching for fragments in broken pots, not for the purpose of mending them, but for contemplation. The ultimate act of the Kinsugi master is not to even attempt to fix the broken vessel, but to behold its potential, to admire its beauty." A couple years ago at a National Veritas Forum event about lament, creativity, and hope, Mako spoke about this beholding. The first thing that the Kinsugi master says is, "You came in to fix whatever you brought in, but we're not fixing anything.

We're going to behold the brokenness. We're going to look at the fishers, and we're going to hold the fragments for file and look at it until it is beautiful." And then we can think about mending and to make new. It is this sixth dimension that allows us to mourn what was lost without losing sight of the hope for something new.

Mako relates this meditation on brokenness to his experience on 9/11. As he struggled to behold the fragments of his tribeca neighborhood, Mako experienced a breakthrough. I had to wake up every morning and face ground zero.

That was my home. And my children grew up as ground zero children in New York City. What that taught me was that, first of all, a trauma like 9/11 doesn't go away.

No matter how much you work through it, there's always going to be like hairline fractures that you don't notice. Like 20 years later, I am still finding them. But what the approach to this is, if we run away or just ignore that, let's say, and live in a separate world, what usually happens is that trauma will catch up to you anyway.

And it will seep in in the more potent ways than if you were facing ground zero. Mako sees what we've gone through over the past two years with COVID as another communal experience of brokenness. There's no one alive today that has not been affected by COVID virus in some way.

And that means all of us have stories to share, certainly suffering and difficulties and grief to bear upon each other, to carry each other's sorrows. But instead of doing that, we want to improve ourselves and to perhaps feel better about what's happening. But just moving on doesn't work.

Same thing is going to happen to us, what happened to me in ground zero, which is we realize we are at a loss of the new norm that we work so hard to gain. And then at that point, what do we do? And there's going to be despair that sets us back. There's going to be communal fractures that happens.

And so we have to begin to address this. But what if, instead of immediately trying to move on, we chose to behold the brokenness, turn the loss, and imagine the hope a bit longer? In trauma-filled times, what we can do is learn to accept, first of all, that this trauma is not going away, right? And I can't fix it. Mako says that the art of Kansugi was born out of moments just like this.

My understanding of Japanese history, food of trauma and violence and cruelty, and yet this art form, T, out of art form, a T, which San Norikyu began to create in the midst of that feudal war time. And what Kansugi represents, it flows out of that aesthetic. It's very much an antidote, really, to how we can move forward in this challenging time.

Hi, this is Carly Riegel, the assistant producer of Beyond the Forum. If you're loving the podcast so far, we want to invite you to continue engaging in these important conversations by signing up for our newsletter. Each month, you'll receive thoughtful content about the ideas that shape our lives, updates from our student and faculty partners, and other Veritas news and events.

You can sign up today by visiting veritas.org/newsletter. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the rest of the show. Over the past few years, Mako has begun hosting Kansugi workshops through his Academy Kansugi. Participants in these small group classes are led through the process of beholding and mending broken pottery as a means of peacemaking.

I think that's a proper way of lament. It might even be a way to grieve. Many participants who participated in Kansugi workshop told us that it was absolutely healing for them because they began on the journey of healing, not trying to fix it, but trying to mend to make new.

But Mako says there's a surprising obstacle that participants have to face before they can behold and mend. When we do Kansugi experiences, we ask people to look for broken things. And oftentimes, I did the same when I first began to journey with Kansugi.

I thought I can't find it. It's my home that's broken because I will throw them out. That's what typically people say is, "I don't have anything broken." Through practicing Kansugi, Mako says his perspective has shifted.

After doing Kansugi for a while, I see cracks everywhere. And even the other day I was in a restaurant, I heard somebody put down their plate and I knew that a chip in it. Now how do they know that? It's a human capacity census, a highly attuned to things that are fractured and broken.

And Mako sees this same shift in his academy participants. After a while of paying attention to the fractures and going through that process, you get highly sensitized to broken things. And you see broken things everywhere, actually.

Nothing is perfect. Absolutely nothing on existence is perfect. Now we may think a new iPhone is perfect and it should be, right? When we bought it, it should be.

But once you begin to use it, it's no longer perfect, right? So there is something about this process that's really very much about reality being honest. And the academy participants quickly come to realize that the truth of Kansugi reaches beyond ceramics. We live in the world that has this expected sense of perfection, this immaculateness about the world.

And yet the world is not immaculate. The world is immaculate. It's broken.

It's fractured. And you find things everywhere if you are open to this. Coming out of the past two years, it's hard not to see brokenness around us.

We don't have to try. It seems like it's everywhere. But Mako says that we can take courage from knowing that it's in these types of circumstances that great art is usually born.

If you were to remove authors and artists who were not directly influenced by frontline trauma, you would lose 80 percent of it. You would not have a world's great literature. You would not have Hemingway.

You would not have Dante. You would not have Frangelico who painted during the Black Plague, right? You would not have Gerald Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, literally, you know, Pavecine's children escaping the Blitz, right? So we kind of know this, but we don't realize how much of world's great art symphonies, music, art, has been forged in such a time as this, the dark, dark times, when they didn't know if the future could happen. In other words, the past two years don't necessarily lead to hopelessness and despair.

If we have eyes to see and hearts to imagine, our brokenness can against all odds lead us to greater hope and creation. If we take the time to behold and reflect on how the fractures have shaped us, then we can be bold enough not just to repair but to create. Now we all know that we're faced with bleakness and disasters, you know, looming fractures everywhere, right? But maybe that's what we need is to understand that human life, civilization, has always been fragile, vulnerable.

And whatever we find ourselves living for, the ideals that we spend our time cultivating, those are things that can only come when we face that darkness. And we say, despite what I see, despite what is happening, I'm going to create. I'm going to believe that there's a future for our children.

But we cannot get there unless we are able to face that reality together as a community and to really be able to, instead of just trying to program ourselves to be perfect and to look perfect and to have this facade, this mask on all the time, we have to begin investing in ourselves as we are broken. You might be thinking, well, of course, Mako's a professional artist. He creates for a living and has the background, skills and talent.

But me, I'm not an artist, I'm not especially creative. But Mako invites you to tap into your childlike imagination. Everybody's an artist until third grade and somebody tells them they're not and we believe them but we all created to be creative.

And it's the question of how we tap into that place of sanctified imagination. This access to creativity, regardless of your age or artistic ability, has greatly informed Mako's theology. In his book, he expands upon this idea of, quote, "the theology of making." The theology of making is knowledge of God through making.

So it is theological discourse, but it is really something that I believe people can access without even identifying themselves as a Christian. Through creative acts, whether that's caring for your flowers or painting the next Mona Lisa, you can know God in a unique and powerful way. Mako says that this connection is wrapped up in how we were designed.

We are uniquely gifted in every sense, so none of us have the same way to look at the world or to be able to steward what we have been given. And so that means all of us have this unique role to play and all of us are created to be creative and all of us are creatures of the imagination. And we have a responsibility to cultivate that and this side of eternity, so whatever we make can be part of God's choice to choose what we do instead of what God can do, which is infinite.

God is waiting for us to make and to multiply what we have made, just like fishes and lows, you know, the boy's lunch gets multiplied and that's the same way that I believe God works in new creation. And so every day counts, every day is precious, every moment is a moment to act in that faith to create something new into the world. And it doesn't have to be art, you know, it can be anything, it can be a word of kindness given to a child, you know, or somebody who is unable to understand what's happening right now.

But whatever that may be, that act of beauty, creating beauty and providing mercy is going to endure the test of time when God is able to not only resurrect us, but resurrect what we have done, resurrect what we have said, resurrect anything with faith. It's going to be waiting for us as a new world and on the other side of eternity. Part of the reason that I invited Mocco on the podcast for this season was because I've been hearing a lot of people talking about getting back to normal.

When will we get back to normal? Will we ever get back to normal? Opinions differ widely. Recently, a survey was done that asked people about their hope for a return to normalcy. Four out of ten people said they thought we'd be back to normal within a year, while three out of ten thought we'd never get back to normal.

While talking with Mocco about Kinsugi, I realized, is back to normal even desirable? Or should we be longing for something greater than that, longing for a new creation? Mocco's theology has something to say about that as well. Mocco says that Kinsugi is really a foreshadowing of what Christian theology calls the new creation. The bookends of the Bible are the creation in Genesis and the new creation in Revelation, and in between those bookends is a bunch of sadness and brokenness, with one big miracle, the death and resurrection of Jesus, right in its midst.

Now there are two things to note about the new creation. First, the resurrection of Jesus is the first hint of that new creation, and it tells us something important about it. When Jesus rises from the dead, you may expect his new creation body to be perfect and without blemish, but that's not what happened.

When Christ appears, post-resurrection appearances, Christ is with his wounds, the nail mocks, still with him, and it's through his wounds that we are healed. And we have access to this new creation through his wounds. And so this is Kinsugi's reality that the Japanese, venerable Japanese tradition has somehow captured.

The resurrected Jesus still bore the scars of their crucifixion in his hands and in his side. Why? Some think that it's a lot like how Mocco's art is a small rebellion against the quickening of time. But in this case, it's a rebellion against our idea of perfection and beauty.

Jesus' scars are beautiful because of what they accomplished, his death for the eternal life of all who believe. So when it comes to new creation, don't expect that it will be perfect in the way that you now think of perfection. Open your mind and heart to be surprised.

The second thing to note about the new creation is that revelation makes clear it's not a return to the original creation. Just like Kinsugi doesn't aim to mend or repair a broken piece of pottery to its original state, God's aim and creation is to create some something new and more valuable. The new creation is more valuable for two reasons.

First, because there's no more sadness or brokenness, the writer of revelation says, "I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Look, God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. No more death, no more mourning, no more crying or pain. As my former pastor once said, and I'll paraphrase, "You may not believe that the resurrection or this vision of the new creation is true, but don't you want to?" And the other reason the new creation is more valuable is because it includes human creation or culture.

The creation image of Genesis is a garden, and you might expect that revelation would return us to a garden, but it doesn't. The image of revelation is a city. And what's the difference between a city and an uncultivated, wild garden? Culture.

Our working in conjunction with creation and with the Creator to build something new. It's like apples to apple pie, or trees to tables, or mud to teapots. And it's this aspect of the new creation that Mako enacts every day.

This is amazing, miraculous stuff. Once I began to understand that what I felt as a child, this flow was not given so that I can build my resume, but it needs to be given away to the world freely and as great as filled as possible, and that's not just for this world. That's for another.

And once I started to connect those dots, I was just simply reading the Bible and understanding that every page is filled with generative potential that is given to us as just gift of grace. And so to me, moving forward, as hard as this time has been, this is a fresh opportunity for us to recalibrate and to value the things that we ought to value and to encourage and empower each other to create so that we can together, discover this new creation. This season has been about character in virtue.

And in this episode, we've talked about pursuing character in virtue in the only way we can, in a world of brokenness and hurt and pain and sadness. But the new creation vision is that when we're closing our character gaps and when we're pursuing virtue, we're building something that will last. And like a Kansu gi-bohl, it will be more valuable than it ever was before.

Hi again, this is Assistant Producer Carly Riegel. To end our third season, we at Beyond the Forum want to take time to say thanks to all the folks who helped us get this show together. Our first thanks goes to our guests for this episode, Makoto Fujimura.

Thank you for joining us and for your contribution to our understanding of the role of art and creativity in a well-lived life. I would hardly recommend reading Mako's book, Art and Faith. There's a link to order a copy in the podcast description.

We also want to thank our production team for the season at PRX. Galen Beebe was our fearless editor. We also had Jocelyn Gonzalez and Morgan Flannery working on audio.

And our final thanks goes to Jason Saldana and Genevieve Sponseler for strengthening our Veritas PRX partnership. We love working with you all. And of course, we want to thank the students who host and plan these forum conversations, as well as the John Templeton Foundation and all of our donors for their generous support of our conversations.

Alright, that's all for this episode and the season. Thanks for listening to Beyond the Forum.

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