Stumbling into Grace: Merging Two Selves Into One

PATHEOS
By Tania Runyan

Makoto Fujimura. Sacrificial Grace, 1997. Mineral pigment on paper. 

I had been living a double life. I attended a large evangelical church, where I prayed, sang, and gave my money and time. At the same time, while riding the train downtown to my publishing job every morning, I wrote poems. Both of these lives manifested the “real” me, and one was not more valuable than the other. But sustaining two identities with equal passion cannot last long. One afternoon at a local Barnes & Noble, I wandered to the newsstand and spotted a new acquisition: Image: A Journal of Arts and Religion. The cover image, "Sacrificial Grace" by Makoto Fujimura, gripped me with its decided lack of grip. This abstract, color-streaked waterfall “counted” as religious art? I wanted to enter it with my arms open, allow it to drench me with its mystery. [More]