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At that time, many of these artists were producing works intended to shock, mostly filled with obscenity and violence. Suddenly, reality trumped creativity: what happened in their own neighborhood was far more obscene and violent than anything they had imagined. In the safety of Mako's studio, these artists rediscovered other values—beauty, humaneness, gentleness—and their works began to reflect them. Gretchen Bender, an avant-garde artist who had worked to "decode gender and sexuality," began making a different kind of creation. She folded hundreds of white origami butterflies and arranged them into a beautiful pattern, inspired by a real butterfly floating across her face days after 9/11. Gretchen called this her "resurrection moment."

For six months the artists held exhibits, performances, poetry readings, and prayer gatherings in this safe place. As Mako later commented, "Our imaginative capacities carry a responsibility to heal, every bit as much as they carry a responsibility to depict angst." The church once stood as a steward of culture, its patron as well as its guide. If we ignore the world outside our walls, we suffer as much as its inhabitants.

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Previous columns by Philip Yancey are available on our site, and include:

Surveying the Wondrous Cross | Understanding the Atonement is about more than grasping a theory. (May 27, 2009)

A Dream That Won't Die | The meaning of the election; the work yet to be done. (March 2, 2009)

A Surefire Investment | How to pray in the midst of financial catastrophe. (February 3, 2009)

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July 2009, Vol. 53, No. 7