I am currently in a doctoral program, studying semiotics—cultural symbols—which requires a great deal of reading. Probably the greatest benefit of an education is the wise guide (teacher) who can give a curated tour of the best there is in any given subject, and such is the case with this program. Dr. Leonard Sweet has opened the door to an entire world of scholars and theologians who look beneath the surface of things and reveal mysteries. Now I would like to open that world to you.
A Theology of Making
Fujimura mentions the Island of Misfit Toys, and really, that is what artists’ enclaves are, and writers’ groups, and acting troupes, and so on.
One of my daughters finally found her people when she joined the Bot Ball Club (making robots that would challenge each other). A Misfit is someone who does not fit within the bell of the curve of a category—call it “the norm.”
But misfits do fit somewhere.
It is terribly lonely to fit nowhere, but the courage not to fit in some places comes from fitting at least somewhere. That is our church’s mission, really. Whoever you are, whatever you do, we will make room for you to fit here with us, for if the Lord loves you, and we have the Lord, then … we will learn to love you too, and you us.
Agreed, some varieties of neurodivergency are chaotic, and leading is not their strong suit. So how could the family work together to give them some space to create freely while also providing more order for those who work best in that environment? We found it challenging, too.
If You Can Talk, You Can Sing
My dad used to say, “If you can talk, you can sing.” He meant that language itself has a cadence. We know the difference between what a question and a statement sounds like, for instance.
That is cadence.
Every person who speaks is a musician, a singer, by nature.
I wonder if we could say that every person who was a child is an artist? Children do not wonder if they are creative or artistic. It goes without being said that they are. If there were never shame and humiliation, if there were never a sense of competition and worrying about being exposed as less-than, maybe we would all grow up knowing we were creative, imaginative, musical, artistic. We would relish God’s invitation to create without the inhibition of embarrassment or inability, or cringing in fear at the inevitable smack-down. We would throw ourselves heart, mind, soul, and strength, and with great joy, into the project.
Excellence versus Exuberance
Am sure you can relate to this classic dilemma: on the one side are those who argue for excellence in worship music, we must have the best in honor of God. On the other side are those who argue that a joyful noise from all those who would love to be part of the worship team is better. Fujimura is an excellent, a renowned artist. But I want to believe he would find beauty in every artistic offering.
I appreciate how this book brings the essence of primal intelligence into the life of faith. Like Karl Marx before him, Fujimura recognizes the creativity of every human being. This is in great part what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God, and likewise, to be invited by God to create into the New.
Yes This, and Also That
As soon as I finished reading, I asked an Artificial Intelligence to help me summarize, and the Large Language Model picked up on what was making me—at first—uncomfortable with Fujimura’s description of his “theology of making.” I have become increasingly aware of “not this but that” thinking all around me, when quantum thinking says “yes this and also that.” It seemed as though Fujimura was saying: not theology of plumbing but theology of making.
Where the AI Got It Wrong
The AI said it this way:
- “Theology of Making: Fujimura proposes a “theology of making” rather than a “theology of fixing.” He invites Christians to see creation, beauty, and art not merely as decoration or utility, but as acts of spiritual renewal and participation in divine creativity.” [my italics]
However, the AI and I both missed what Fujimura was really saying: “God does not just mend, repair, and restore; God renews and generates, transcending our expectations of even what we desire, beyond what we dare to ask or imagine” (p 31).”
For those of us who work among the broken, mending is good work, honorable work. And for those of us who work among the suppressed, empowering their voice and agency is redemptive, restorative work. This is the “fixing” of the soil Fujimura speaks of (pp 55-57). For those who need redemption from the garbage heap (“nobody wants a broken pot”), repairing, and restoration (p 59) is of enormous importance. Our stories are precious to God.
God Is Both Fixing and Making New
This is living into the second point AI gave me:
- “Beauty and Brokenness: Drawing from his experience with Japanese kintsugi (the art of repairing broken pottery with gold), Fujimura uses it as a metaphor for redemption—beauty emerging from brokenness.”
It is just that yes God is fixing the plumbing and also God is making new.
To go beyond this is where kainos comes in, the “new newness” (p 47). “Every act of creativity is an intuitive response to offer back to God what has been given to us” which God takes pleasure in and includes into God’s own continued creative acts (p 117).
Faith and Grace
The AI did sense that Fujimura is describing:
- “Faith and Grace: Fujimura roots art-making in grace, suggesting that to make is to mirror the divine act of creation, a form of worship and communion with God … a call to live creatively, seeing all making as a sacred participation in God’s ongoing creation.”
But I think there is more here, this is the horse growing wings part, the becoming more than a healed horse, but rather a Pegasus which can fly (p 79).
Fujimura also described the gift of Jesus, and the gift of creativity God calls each of us to spread lavishly into the world.
Utility versus Extravagant Generosity
AI suggested this is:
- “Culture Care: He encourages “culture care” instead of “culture war,” arguing that artists can help nurture and heal culture through acts of love, imagination, and generative beauty.”
In fact, Fujimura sees this as a lack in churches today, being run on utilitarian business economy models rather than the extravagance of gift economies.
Some of My Favorite Moments
There were some special personal moments reading this book—
- Curt Thompson, William Blake, T.S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson.
- Meditations for me,
- that Christ’s tears are still here with us for us to breathe in, and feel on our skin.
- That Jesus took with him Mary’s perfume to the cross, a rich, heady aroma that reminds us, with Mary, that we can face the “storms and plagues of life” because we have seen the resurrection (p 141).
- For us, Mary’s intuitive anointing of Jesus marks us all who are in him with “fragrance from life to life” (2 Corinthians 2:14-16).
If the church is really going to be a part of this, then we need to give every church member “dominion” for their “creative journeys of faith” (p 99). Primal Intelligence marked this same necessity. If people are told what to think, what to believe, what to feel, what to say, and what to do, and kept within their stalls, then of course they become sheeple.
In what practical ways can we give dominion to the people in our care, so that they may be empowered to create?
Addendum on Semiotics
Fletcher explains imagination and creativity as an evolutionary trait of all thinking beings, no matter how simple, it is imagination that can project from A to B and makes plans for arriving at B.
That tracks with what I learned from Crystal Downing in her book Changing Signs of Truth: to be the Signifier is the form that a sign takes, the letters of the sign, or the picture of the sign, or the sound of the sign (or the scent or feel or taste). A picture of a tree, and the word “tree,” and the sound of that spoken word “tree” are all Signifiers. I would add that the feel of rough bark, or the scent of pine, or the sound of rustling leaves might all also be Signifiers. To be the signified is the actual thing itself. To the simplest mind, perhaps a lightning bug, the Signifier might be light and the signified the insect producing the light. The lightning bug makes a plan to fly towards the light and does. A to B.
But last night, as I was thinking about these things, I realized that as engrossing as each of these books are in their own right, this is a course in semiotics. So how do I think about what I am reading from that perspective?
I thought about our Professor, Leonard Sweet’s concept of narraphor (“narrative metaphor”) as it appears in this book—the art of Kintsugi and of yobi-tsugi, making peace between otherwise unrelated shards, and how Fujimura offered the broken pieces of his life and another artist’s as illustrations of the narraphor. I also have an illustration of the truth this narraphor describes:
Neanderthal Narraphor
To the ancient master tool-maker, this piece of rock would not have been a first choice. It’s lumpy, misshapen, with obvious occlusions of other minerals, a failed geode perhaps. Internal holes would mean the whole thing could just crumble, or snap. But the craftsman made a tool of it anyway, and the lumps end up being quite a nice hand hold:
When I saw this tool, I fell in love. This is an ancient metaphor of what a master can do, and it seems as though whoever used this tool loved it too, it is well-worn, perhaps handed down from mother to daughter.
The semiotic eye sees signs within signs, narraphors in everyday objects, like a prehistoric scraping tool. This is how good stories are told, speaking the signs within.
