Operation Homecoming, Part 3
February 13, 2007
From one of Makoto Fujimura's "Refractions" essays, writing in response to the Amish school girl who tried to offer her life for her classmates, with the implications for artists:
"Here, in a miracle nobody noticed, is a bugle call also directed towards us artists. It begins in a belief that our lives are lived for others. Arts should let 'the other ones loose' from the bodage of decay, apathy and loss. To the extent we are able to do that, to that degree we will see a new langauge of expression that is not self-centered, but self-giving and generous. Yes, I believe that art can, and ought to, exist apart from wars. But the only place where this has been the case in the history of the world, a place called Eden where a poet named Adam dwelled, is today hidden inaccessbily beneath, or abve, the rubble of Iraq."
"Here, in a miracle nobody noticed, is a bugle call also directed towards us artists. It begins in a belief that our lives are lived for others. Arts should let 'the other ones loose' from the bodage of decay, apathy and loss. To the extent we are able to do that, to that degree we will see a new langauge of expression that is not self-centered, but self-giving and generous. Yes, I believe that art can, and ought to, exist apart from wars. But the only place where this has been the case in the history of the world, a place called Eden where a poet named Adam dwelled, is today hidden inaccessbily beneath, or abve, the rubble of Iraq."
