“Justice itself requires the imagination of abundance — the conviction that another person’s flourishing does not diminish yours. The artist who stewards her imagination faithfully is, in this sense, a justice worker. She makes space for the kind of beholding that justice requires.”
– Makoto Fujimura
“Why art in such dark and troublesome times? Why art when the world is stricken of joy, with so many in despair?”
– Makoto Fujimura
“We often imagine giving as subtraction, as erosion of self, silence as weakness. But kenosis is life-giving and as powerful as presence: the pouring out that makes possible the flourishing of the other. The space we relinquish is not abandoned; it is offered. It becomes a form of hospitality.”
– Makoto Fujimura
“The question before us is not only: ‘How do I do my work well?’, but also: ‘What, exactly, has been entrusted to me to care for?”‘That is where Culture Care begins.”
– Makoto Fujimura
“The act of making in the Advent season is itself waiting for the apocalypse — not the end of the world, but its unveiling.”
– Makoto Fujimura
Practicing Resurrection
“We are called into Culture Care, this act of mending the fractured soil of culture, so that beauty and mercy might grow again. And this mending, this gentle insistence on tending rather than consuming, is itself a form of transfiguration. Where there was only shadow, we can plant seeds of light in hope. To speak of Hiroshima and Nagasaki today is not to rehearse guilt or assign blame; it is to name the wound so that it might become a womb.”
- Makoto Fujimura
“Art is not found in flashy fame or selfish ambition measured in human clocks. Instead, we must realize — and honor — that there are particular seasons. It is the gentle cultivation of spaces and community where beauty can flourish. It is the willingness to wait, to be attentive, to tend.”
– Makoto Fujimura
