Makoto Fujimura (Artist)

The episode you're about to listen to was released back when the Mere Christians podcast was called the Call to Mastery. Now, if you love Mere Christians, you're still going to love these older episodes because the majority of each conversation focuses on how the gospel influences the work of our guests. With that disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy the episode. Hey everybody. Welcome to the called Mastery. I'm Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Every single week, I bring you a conversation with a Christ follower who's pursuing world class mastery of their craft. We talk about their path to mastery, their daily habits, and how the gospel of Jesus Christ influences their work. Guys, today you're in for a treat. We're talking with my new friend, Makoto Fujimura. He's a world class artist whose work has been featured in some of the world's most premier galleries and museums. He was a presidential appointee to the National Council of the Arts from 2003 to 2009. He's a recipient of four Doctor of Arts honorary degrees. Makoto and I sat down and had a terrific conversation about what the new Jerusalem's 5,600 miles of precious stones tells us about how God works and how we are called to work. In response, we talked about the ancient art form of Kintsugi and how this art form can preach a powerful sermon of redemption. And we also talked about what lessons we can all take away from Makoto's, quote, slow art approach to his craft. You guys are going to love this episode with my new friend, Makoto Fujimura. Mako, it's a joy for you to be with us.

Thank you.

Thanks for being here.

It's my pleasure to be here, Joelan. Yeah.

So you're calling from Princeton today. You've been outside of Manhattan for a couple years. But you were in Manhattan for a while, right? How long were you in New York City?

Yeah, we were in Manhattan for 15 years and lived what turned out to be ground zero. So we all survived nine oven and we stayed for 10 years after.

And I was reading in your book Art and Faith, I mean, you were right there. You were trapped underground in a subway on 911 trying to make it home. I'm curious, as an artist, that experience, that trauma has to have shaped your work in some pretty profound ways. In what specific ways come to mind right off the bat as we're talking about that?

Yeah, definitely. And I have become an artist who has reflected on many Traumas of our time. And I was actually doing a series on Columbine high school when 911 happened. And so it seems like something was telling me to pay attention to these realities, paradigm shifting realities that we were facing. Almost every day there was something happening. But these were accentuated, of course, by incidents like 9 11, 311 tsunami. Japan was a huge disaster that wiped away fishing villages that existed for a thousand years. And I did a series of paintings called Walking on Water after that that turned into a collaboration. And remembering what happened in these traumatic events have become part of my work. And so after 9 11, I remember in particular being drawn to T.S. eliot's Four Quarte true masterpiece. And he considered it his best work to the extent that he didn't write another poem after that. That was his epitaph. But even though he did for 20 more years. So I spent a lot of time with this poem, actually reading out loud in the subways, empty subways of New York City after night oven, because I heard in his voice, a human voice that tried to understand trauma that turned into kind of a worship of our God. And so it's a very important work for me that first, because I identified his voice in my own lament, but also that the language of resolution, language of reconciliation, perhaps was embedded in them.

Yeah, that's beautiful. It's a beautiful poem. I love Elliot's work. So it's kind of this theme of being drawn to brokenness. Right. Columbine responding to the aftermath of 9 11, the tsunami. Is that what drew you to this ancient art form of kintsugi? And for those who don't know, tell us a little bit about this art form called kintsugi that you spend some time working with.

Yeah, so my wife and I now co founded with a kintsugi Master Academy, Kintsugi. And kintsugi means kin is gold and tsugi means to mend. Tsugi also means to pass on to the next generation. It's a beautiful term of mending with gold with Japan lacquer urushi, which was a technique that evolved out of tea tradition, high tea tradition of 16th century Japan, and began in 1500s or even beyond that in Korea, in China. But it didn't become this refined form until, I would say, 17th century. And after what happens in Japan because of many earthquakes and of course after the tsunami, you discover these broken ceramics everywhere. They somehow remain. And what the tea master, let's say, if you had a very important vessel that was used in high tea, they would often hold on to the fragments for many generations and then give it to a urushi master, Japan lacquer master at some point when it is ready to be mended. But they don't fix it so that it's back to the previous shape they mended in a unique way that would accentuate the fractures and then either pour paint on top with gold or sprinkle gold on top and potash it so that very fractures become highlighted and become a beautiful pattern. And to me, this is the greatest example of theology of new creation because of what we know from the accounts of the gospels of post resurrection appearance of Jesus. Jesus came back not only as a human, but as a wounded human. And his nail marks are still with him and it is through his wounds that we are healed. So that to me is one of the most important thing to talk about when we talk about theology of making. And I have a chapter in my new book, Art and Faith because of that.

It's really, really beautiful. It's a beautiful picture, that piece of art that'll preach a pretty powerful sermon by looking at these broken pie made more beautiful by the gold that has mended them together. All right, so you mentioned art and faith. I thought one of the most thought provoking themes of the book is the distinction you make between a theology of fixing what's broken in creation and this theology of creating into the new. Can you share your perspective on the difference between these two ideas?

Yes. I notorious for listening to sermons and then labeling them as either plumbing theology, theology of vexing, as you know, or does it have the gospel generativity, gospel new creation, what I call new newness in them. And what I mean by that is many of the sermons of course, correctly point to the cross and redemption and invitation that God has given us to find hope and salvation in Christ. And of course that is at the heart of the gospel. But as N.T. wright notes, Bishop N.T. wright, you know that's only part of the gospel. We often miss the entirety of the gospel from creation to new creation. And therefore the sermon sounds like, well, we're going to fix you and we're going to give you tools to do that. And you know, if you attend Sunday school, we'll give you more tools and you can go back home and fix your pipes. And you do that and it's successful and you come back rejoicing and you bring your neighbor and you are given new tools to continue to fix your pipes. But at no point already it is spoken about why you are fixing the pipes, what is going through the Pipes. And I spend considerable amount of time noting that there are many things about what is going through the pipes, you know, the water of the Holy Spirit, why of new creation. That is fundamental to what we are meant to be doing on this side of eternity. I talk about this in the book and what I call theology of making. Theology of new creation is very much based on very orthodox understanding of the Gospel, but noting that we have this important opportunity. And when we preach plumbing theology, it might be easy to create programs, but it doesn't do much to help us understand our role in. Particularly in serving people who cannot serve themselves or, you know, to help the poor or to create beauty.

Yeah, this is so beautiful. I've been thinking a lot about, and you touched on this briefly in the book, but the largely overlooked detail in John, chapter 20 of Mary Mistaking Jesus as the gardener.

Yes.

And our mutual friend NT Wright's the one who initially tipped me off to this, and I've been like, diving deep on this. And I believe, of course, there's not a comprehensive theology baked in this little verse, but it's a symbol, Right. Of a comprehensive theology all throughout Scripture. Right. Jesus is pointing us back to the first Garden of Eden. And just as God inaugurated the new creation but left it largely unfinished, he called Adam and Eve to help him fill the first creation. And same thing at Easter. Right. Jesus didn't bring the kingdom in full. He inaugurated it and appeared as a gardener as a way of winking at us and saying, it's time to garden again. Right.

Yes, exactly. And that is such a beautiful passage, you know, and I love that he didn't come back on this, you know, as a king on the horse, you know.

Yeah, he could have.

He could have. Oh, yeah. He could have been anything. He could have been anything and could.

Have been a fisherman. He could have been a general. He could have been a king. He was a gardener.

That's right. For him to first of all come back as a human being is remarkable because look what he went through as a human being. Right. He suffered more than anybody could imagine, unjustly, and yet he chose that form to be present in our midst. And what he looks like is not this, you know, person with necessary power or status or prestige, but a gardener who stewards, who tends to the soil. And I talk about this as my approach to culture, which is cultured care rather than culture wars. To be able to look at cultural soil as something to tend to, not to fight over. It's not a battleground, but it's an ecosystem, to steward God and to take care of and to nurture. That's a fundamentally different way that a Christian can approach time.

Totally. And let's go a level deeper on the gardening analogy. Everyone knows the parable of the sower. Very few people pay attention to the parable that comes right after the parable of the weeds, right?

Yes.

Jesus called us the good seeds of the kingdom, right? The seeds don't stay in the gardener's hand. We're out there in the soil to create into the new, to create for the eternal kingdom of God. So let's make this a little bit more pointed and practical. Marco, what does that look like practically in your own work as an artist? What is the difference between an artist who operates with this plumbing theology, I'm here to fix the pipes of the old world, versus an artist who creates into the new heavens, the new earth, the new creation?

Yeah, that's a great question. And I actually spent time walking around Israel thinking about that passage, and I came to really realize, you know, we called it the parable of the sower, but it's not about the sower. I mean, the sower is God. And, you know, people who do God's work, and so they're doing the work, you know, and it's not about the seed, because seed is a kingdom seed, which is perfect. You know, it's all about the soil, right? And so I spend my time here literally cultivating soil. I have three acres of land here, and I couldn't garden in the city, so I never had this experience. But when I moved, I spoke to a lot of gardeners in my neighborhood, to farmers, and learned a lot about what does a soil, good soil mean. And as the parable states, you have to, you know, pay attention to, first of all, remove the rocks, you know, because there are many. Once you dig into the soil, you find many rocks, and you have to remove them. And that's hard work. So before you do the planting, you have to actually spend a lot of time, in my case, like three years preparing the soil so that I can plant my tomatoes, you know, then. Then after that comes weeds, right? The weeds can choke up what you have planted. And, you know, you would think that here, even if you have good soil, the weeds are so abundant, right? They grow so fast. And so you have to pay attention. Constant care is needed. And then you have multitude of blessings that come from a single plant, single seed. And the generative possibilities are so remarkable because it's not just that you create a good tomato, you cook with it, right? You dry it and you make so many different things with it. So to me, art is exactly the same. Artists spend a lot of time preparing, removing the rocks and tending to their creativity, imagination. Whether you are visual artists like me or writer or a stage director or movie maker, they have to do the hard work beforehand to prepare the soil so that when you plant your seed that it will take root. And then once it takes root, you have to tend to it. You have to make sure that it is lovingly stewarded so that the seed has a chance to grow. And then what you make actually is a generative beginning of a. A new way of living, right? So what you make hopefully will be giving birth to 10 other works or even more. And then you are to steward those things. And so it creates abundance in the world that is so struggling with scarcity and competition and mindset, that limited resource mindset.

That's good. I think there's this connected idea in art and faith about this idea that we've fallen for post industrial revolution that everything we do has to have some utilitarian purpose, right? And that's not true if we're called to create in the new. Not everything has to have some explicit function. I thought you made this argument in a pretty compelling way. Can you share the essence of that argument with our listeners?

Thank you. First of all, pragmatism and efficiency are good things. We are so appreciative of, you know, whatever that industrial revolution has produced. And yet if that becomes a way to define human beings, then we are nothing but, you know, efficient machines, right? And worse yet, the machines are able to replace us because, you know, they're, they're able to drive for us and they're able to do things that, you know, we used to think it's only humans can do, but now with efficiency and pragmatism to an extent that has become so amazingly useful. So what we have to do is to recover a sense of humanity that has been lost because of our drive to what I call utilitarian pragmatism. Pragmatism itself, as William James defined it in early 20th century, is a good thing thing. And it's very much about, you know, purposefulness and utilitarian reality. But, but when it becomes the odd definition of how we educate and how we define success, then we begin to lose sight of the potential generative potential of every human being to rise above utilitarian pragmatism and provide ways of looking at the world and creating a new world that has ab built into Them which machines really can't do. They can multiply certain information, but they cannot in a way that human beings can have dreams. That makes the future creating resonance, let's say in between the machines that we are speaking on today through audio methods to create resonance. There has to be more than this efficiency, this utility right now. Machines may have those, the potential to have that, you know, but so far we have not been able to focus on that to create something new.

Yeah, but thinking about the picture Scripture holds out of how God creates in Genesis, all throughout Scripture, but especially Genesis 1 and 2 and Revelation 21 and 22 that he creates with both function and quote unquote, needless extravagant beauty, right. The New Jerusalem's foundation has 5,600 miles of precious stones, right. And I, my guess is those stones don't serve a functional purpose. Right. But to me, I've been meditating on this lately, right? It means that sometimes it's okay to redesign a website even if it doesn't lead to more conversions. Right. Or paint a painting, even if it doesn't sell, or decorate your home for Christmas, even if you can't prove the ROI of that investment. Right. Are you tracking with me here?

Absolutely. I start the book, Jordan, with the concept of a satiety of God, which theologians talk about as an important concept but not talked about. That much asset of God is that God doesn't need us.

Yes.

At all. God doesn't need a creation. God is all sufficient, self sufficient. And so why did God create? You know, God created because God is love. And love generates beyond utility. Right. If we're dating on, we're going on a date, you don't do plumbing, you don't do accounting. You know, you go to a museum, you go to a concert, you go see a movie because you have a wonderful meal. Those things that love produces tend not to be very utility driven. They certainly move way past the survival basic levels. Why is that? Because we are created to be creative. We are creatures of the imagination, creatures that can dream the future. And love happens to be in that domain that allows us to dream together. And that is because we are created in the image of God who created the universe out of sheer love. God didn't have any needs and you know, any reason like I would perhaps to create out of, you know, my own needs. And that is a remarkable thing to start, you know, every Sunday on. It is like God doesn't need us. But God is love. And God welcomes you here broken people, God to join God in this co creation Co adventure to explore the gratuity of the universe, the extravagance. Right. What makes a star shine? You know, is it just light? So is it more than that? And what is the sound that we hear? You know, and those are things that we can't quantify and you know, we might be able to understand the details of it, but you know, we, at the end of the day we are just in wonderment and we are surprised, as CS Lewis said, surprised by joy. Because we are filled with the reminder that this God is God of abundance, God of extravagance, God of love.

Yeah. And a God who certainly doesn't need us, but invites us to co labor with him in building that eternal future. Which is just mind boggling to me. You said in the book that you heard a pastor say, and I've heard many pastors say this quote, there are only two things that last eternally. God's word and people. Everything else is going to burn up. And quote.

That's right.

I think a lot of people have heard this and it's just, just point blank incorrect. Right. You know, scripture makes clear this. Right. The new creation inaugurated by Jesus, the eternal kingdom of God is earthy and filled with culture as we see in Revelation 21, 22, Isaiah 60. I'm curious for you personally, like how does that truth that the new earth is going to include culture, is going to include art? How does that fuel your personal hope?

Yeah. So reflecting on Isaiah 60, one of my favorite passage. Yeah, yeah. Shepherdashes coming into New Jerusalem full of pagan kings bringing their gifts. You know, and Dr. Richard Mao has written a wonderful book, a short book on this, thinking about it. But that, yeah, that is just as you noted, it's astonishing to think about. I mean, so that means that everything that I see in culture matters to God. Now some things are twisted, some things are made into idols. You know, we are, as John Calvin said, idol factories. Christians are creating idols all the time as well as non Christians. And our hearts are rendered to be so against this notion of God's goodness and love. And yet because of Christ's intervention in us. Right. You and I can be having this discussion about this new creation that is bursting forth from a little mustard or seed of creation. And God is going to do the rest. You know, we may only be able to do very, very little. You know, Gerar Tolkien has a wonderful small short story that he wrote when he was having a writer's block and, and it's called Leaf by Niggle.

It's my all time Favorite?

Yeah, Niggle. You know, there was a little man named Niggle who had a long journey to make, right? But the story begins, and he ends up. He's a painter, and he ends up only being able to paint one leaf on canvas. And, you know, what happens is that God takes that leaf and multiplies it right in new creation. And that's the best picture I have of the excitement that I have every day. Jolyn in the studio. Like, what I may be able to do today may be very limited, you know, compromised by my own limitations and my own sinfulness. But if I can be faithful in small things, God is going to take that and create a whole new forest with it, you know, a whole new world that I can only see if I am faithful to that task, right? Even if I am, you know, frustrated, even if I feel like I can't do it, face that canvas every day knowing that God is going to back me up. You know, like, God is this. God is God of grace. He doesn't need me to do this, but God wants me to do this. And so here I go.

That's beautiful. I love it so much. By the way, if you're listening, you're like, what in the world are these guys talking about? How does our work physically last in eternity? Go read Isaiah 60. Go read Revelation 21. Go read First Corinthians 15, especially verse 58, where Paul says, somehow, miraculously, what you do is not in vain. Go read First Corinthians chapter 3, where he talks in more detail about what lasts and what doesn't. Mako, you said in art and faith, you pointed out that I thought this is really smart, that this younger, quote, unquote, nun generation, right? Meaning this group of people marking none when. When athron forms whether they belong to a particular religious group. They're not walking into churches anymore. And you say that quote, now they are limited to experiencing God authentically, primarily through culture and nature. End quote. How can Christians experience God?

Through culture? Yeah. And then connected. You know, nature and culture should be connected, but we have disembodied them. And especially in Western culture, if you go to any, you know, nations like Japan, nature and culture look at films by Miyazaki and you see what I mean, that nature and culture are meant to be grown together. You know, they're not to be disconnected. And I think for us, we need to learn from the younger generation because they're onto something. They've seen the trauma and experienced bullet holes in school, you know, classrooms, and they seen us Lose sight of the most precious resource we have, which is nature and the environment. And we are faced with our own propensities to win at all costs, to fight the battle that we think we must win in order for the next generation to be able to keep what we hold dear. But the next generation is telling us, no, don't fight that war. We don't want that war. Because we see in front of us our own effort, the capacity to care for the grounds that we were standing on is more important, right. To preserve what we have, but also to expand into the future of what we dream about. A world that is more just, world that is more fair, world that is more beautiful. And these are good things. Now, there are many things about these ideals that we know is limited by our own foreignness, but we need to learn that their music, their art, we are swimming in them, by the way. You know, we can't, like, eliminate, you know, music and art. You know, we can. That's what dictators do because they help us to dream and they help us to understand that even in severe scarcity, right, we can look through that prison cell and write a beautiful letter called A Letter from Birmingham Prison. You know, and that's what dreams are made of. It's not this fluffy stuff. It's substance of things hoped for. And so that is where faith can kick in. And the younger generation, even though they rejected institution of the church, perhaps they're not ready to throw away Jesus or the spirit. I think I hear their music, I see their movies, and I'm just convinced that there's a spiritual awakening, but happening outside of the church, happening, you know, in the margins, where these creative young people dreaming about something that we have lost touch with.

Yeah, but it's a call for the church to engage in creating culture because.

Absolutely.

You quote, unquote, win. I hate that word. But by telling the best stories, by making the best films, not quote, unquote, Christian films, but films that, as Andy Crouch says in Culture Making, his great book Culture, Culture Making, move the horizon of possibilities for others. Yeah, right. Like, I've been thinking about the TV show this Is Us, which my wife and I love, We've been watching for six years. I feel like that show's done more to prick the conscience of American culture about adoption than anything in recent memory. Right. And I don't know if that's created by a Christian or not, but thank God for common grace and putting that on the heart of those creators. And I think it's stirring people's hearts on that topic, what else can we stir people's hearts to by just making the best movies and the best art and the best novels that point to truth, not necessarily explicitly mentioning Jesus's name every single time.

Well, and it's not just so that we can convince people to be pro life, you know, that we make these movies. That's a utilitarian purpose. And sure, it's more. More effective, maybe long term, but what it does is it actually redefines what pro life means. Yeah.

Talk more about this.

Yeah. When we create generatively, when we believe in the lives of people and their characters in these stories that come alive in us, you know, that will do several things. One, it increases empathy in us that we are more emotionally aware of things that are brokenness that are around us. But also it raises the horizon, as Andy says, you know, to dream bigger and to say, you know, if this is true and if this is possible, you know, I find this story to be beautiful, then not only that reality has grown in my heart, but that is, reality is true. Right. So we don't have to, let's say, fight this ideological battle and use the arts. And I've noticed this propensity in the Christian church to say, well, you know, arts are great because you can use it. You can use it for discipleship, you can use it for Christian formation. Well, that may be true, but you're missing the very fundamental reality that art itself is God's gift.

Yes. Amen.

And so it doesn't need rationalized, you know, sense of usefulness, but it's good and true and beautiful in itself. And that's why we can celebrate or we can be the first to support an avant garde in a little town, you know, that we live in. Because whether the person is anti God, atheist, angry with the world, if that theater is good, you support it. Because as a Christian, as we talked about, Isaiah 60 tells us to, we are to help refine goodness in the world. And the person may not be aware of God, but maybe that will give us an opportunity backstage to share something about our journeys, our broken journeys that, that, you know, made us who we are. And the fact that we get excited waking up every morning to look for abundance rather than, you know, fighting against scarcity. I mean, those are things that everybody needs, you know, so we don't have to be, you know, have all these checklists of things that, you know, we have to abide by, while these things are signs of things that, you know, God's presence in us. But, you know, art is fundamentally Has a reality of its own.

Very, very beautifully said. I'm glad you went a level deeper. That was great. Hey, Marco, I'm curious if you see a connection between this idea we've been talking about, that your work matters for eternity and your commitment to getting really great at what you do as an artist. Is there a connection there?

You know, I think so. I am a very ambitious artist. I want to be the best artist that I can be. But I'm not competing against anybody else. You know, I. Well, that.

I mean, it's just in the way you said that. It's not I want to be the best artist in the world. It's the best artist I could be. It's the parable of the talents. You're not called to have the most talents. You're called to steward the talents you have. Really?

Well, exactly. That's right. And I learned this very early, you know, because there's so many people more gifted than I was. I was placed in a graduate school with best Japanese artists in Japan. This was the school, the top of the top. And I saw my classmates do things that I was astonished. You can do that. And I realized that my gift might be very small. I called it my slice of expression. And I was so fortunate because I realized that's what I'm supposed to cultivate. You know, I can't be Takashi Murakami, who was my classmate. I can't be Hiroshinju, who was my classmate. But I can be Makoto Fujimura. I can be the best Mako that there can be, there ever can be. And that's my goal. And so I spent last 30, 40 years doing this. And I think that's if we can find those, let's say, limitations rather than potentials, things that we're not good at very early on. And our limitations can become our friends. And that allows us to focus on things that we're supposed to do in the world. So I never really worried about what other people say, what critics say, what our galleries say, or even what I say to myself. Because I know that at the end of the day, if I'm faithful in my slice of expression, God is being honored. And to me, that's enough.

It's like what Paul said. I think it was in First Corinthians. Corinthians. Tim Keller expounded upon it beautifully in his book the Freedom of Self Forgetfulness. I don't care how you judge me. I don't care how I judge myself. I care how God judges me. And God judges Me based on my. My stewardship of what he's given me to steward. I read that David Brooks of the New York Times described your art as, quote, a small rebellion against the quickening of time. End quote. That's such a David Brooks quote. I love that so much. And you yourself describe your art as slow art. What do you mean by that?

Yeah, so I spend most of my time preparing to paint, right? So I pulverize pigments, and some of that is mostly actually done by collaboration with pigment shops in Japan. So they find these minerals and they pulverize them in the right way. But they know me, so they know how I like it. So they cater. It's an ecosystem of care, culture, care really, that cares for me, for, you know, over since I was a student. So they send over these materials and I adjust them, pulverize them myself, and then mix them to make paint. It takes time for glue to melt to make paint, to let it dry several times before you use it. So you're talking about like three days before, you know, one single element can be put on canvas or paper. And then I'm layering them multiple times, sometimes over 100 times, so that it takes months before I can even get to actually paint that flower that I want to paint or imagery that I want to make. And this is, I call it my discipline of praise and awareness. Because through that time, it becomes such a wonderful way to pray and to understand God's heart. And so the studio is the most sacred place that I know because when I come in here, you know, I'm able to focus and be fully present in the presence of God. And everything I do is like a bonus to me because that is fundamentally what God has called me to, is to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord in my studio. You know, meanwhile, the world is falling apart, and I'm here praying for that as well. But, you know, that my art becomes the slow art of paying attention.

That's great. I love it. Hey, Maka. Three questions we wrap up every conversation with. Number one, I'm curious just in general, which books do you find yourself recommending or gifting most frequently to others?

When I mentor younger people, I have the list of books. I would say two most given is a book called the Gift by Lewis Hyde Hyd. A remarkable, remarkable book that is a paradigm shifting book for anybody interested in creativity and imagination. And the other is T.S. eliot's Four Quartets. I think this is one of the greatest gifts from 20th century that will certainly be in the Shippo Tarsus but one that is such a illuminating work for us today, especially in time of pandemic times of trauma and the language to not only generate hope out of those times and fractures, but give us a language to create with.

That's a great word, guys. As always, you can find Those books@jordanraynor.com bookshelf all right, Mako, who would you most like to hear on this podcast talking about how the gospel shapes the work they do in the world?

Oh, have you spoken to Satyan Devados? No.

No.

Tell me more. He's a professor of mathematics at University of San Diego or San Diego University. It's a Catholic university there. He is a remarkable, remarkable thinker. Privilege to call him a friend and someone that's been helping us map out Fujima Institute work, but he would be one to recommend to you.

It's a great answer. Great.

I love it.

All right, so, Maka, one last question. You're talk an audience of Christians who believe the work they do matters for eternity, and thus they care about doing it really well. What's one thing from today's conversation you want to reiterate to them before we sign off?

Yeah. That we are sons and daughters of the great artist, the only true artist of the kingdom that has actually given us to be princesses and princesses and. And therefore the vast reality, the possibility that God sees in us is so untapped. Right. That we can only spend the rest of our days to encourage each other to grow our wings, to be able to fly higher and, you know, and stop jumping. Try to jump, you know, jump over the hurdles of moralism, but, you know, grow your wings of imagination so that we can truly fly together into the. The new creation.

It's beautiful. Michael, I just want to commend you for the masterful work you do creating into the new. Thank you for reminding us that we are created in the image of a God who creates not to sit back and wait for the kingdom, but to create into it, to create for it, to create signposts, as Bishop Wright says, to that eventual reality. Guys, Mako's terrific newer book is Art and Faith, A Theology of Making. You can learn more about all of his work at Makota.

How do you say the website makoto fujimura.com.

That'S it. And we'll put a link right there in the show notes. Mako, thanks for joining me.

Oh, man, it was fun. Thanks.

If you want more from Makoto, seriously, go check out that book, Art and Faith. He says, I got an older book that I haven't read yet called Culture Care that I've heard is terrific. Man, I hope you guys enjoyed that episode. Hey, if you're enjoying the called Mastery, be sure to check out our brand new podcast called the Word Before Work. Every week I bring you a very short 5 minute devotional helping you respond to this radical biblical idea idea that your work matters for eternity. Just search the Word Before Work or Jordan Rayner in your favorite podcast app. It'd be super easy to find. Guys, thank you so much for tuning in into the Call to Mastery this week. I'll see you next time.