Gilded Wounds, Co-Mingled Tears: The Gratuity of God in Art and Faith / Makoto Fujimura & Miroslav Volf

For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & Culture - A podcast by Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Drew Collins, Evan Rosa

"Jesus is the great kintsugi master." Makoto Fujimura joins Miroslav Volf to discuss Art & Faith: A Theology of Making. Fujimura is a painter who practices the Japanese art of nihonga, or slow art. His abstract expressionist pieces are composed of fine minerals he grinds himself and paints onto several dozens of layers, which take time and close attention both to make and to appreciate. Mako and Miroslav discuss the theology and spirituality that inspires Mako's work, the creative act of God mirrored in the practice of art, the unique ways of seeing and being that artists offer the world, which is, in Mako's words "dangerously close to life and death." They reflect on the meaning of Christ's humanity and his wounds, the gratuity of God in both creation from nothing and the artistic response in the celebration of everything.