General
Art of Fugue
Japanese Poetry - Beauty in contrasts
Christ as Savior and Judge
Sculpture and the Kingdom of God

Valentine’s Day
Love and God’s Uncontainable Delight In Us

Christmas
Christmas - The Light Has Dawned
Christmas and the Meaning of the Incarnation

左上：ロジャーラウザーとTRIORAY２００９クリスマスコンサート

上：四日市市での『The Heart of Bach』オルガンコンサートの後、牧師とヘルパーの方々と

右上：２０１０年１１月アメリカ、チャタヌーガにて。Global Missions Conferenceで宣教と芸術について話す

下：２０１０年４月稲毛海岸教会のコンサートでマナオルゲルパイプオルガンを弾く

右下：西千葉教会でのコンサートの後、コンサート企画者の川浪さんと

Above Left: Christmas Concert in 2009 with Roger and the Ray Trio (Roger, Abi, Yoshimi).

Above: Performer, pastor, and helpers after “The Heart of Bach” organ concert in Yokkaichi

Above Right: Sharing stories about music and missions in the Global Missions Conference in Chattanooga November 2010

Below: Playing the Japanese built Mana Orgelbau organ at Inage Kaigan Church in Chiba April 2010

Below Right: Picture with Mrs. Kawanami who arranged my concert at Nishi Chiba Church

What is sculpture? According to Dictionary.com, it is “stone, bronze, wood, or any other hard material fashioned into a three-dimensional figure.” According to the modernist painter Barnett Newman, “Sculpture is what you bump into when you back up to see a painting.” Makoto Fujimura, a Christian Japanese contemporary artist, suggests sculpture affirms and celebrates the physical while also showing its eternal significance. It tells of the “gospel of incarnation” by fusing spirit and mattter, heaven and earth, whispering of God becoming flesh, giving incalculable worth and meaning to this physical world.

How can sculpture such as “To Fix the Image in Memory XIII,” (Vija Celmins, 1977-82) consisting of one rock and one identical image made of bronze, display worth of this magnitude? Replicating the smallest detail of this ordinary rock, the sculptor helps us “fix the image” and understand its value through her incredible amount of care and time. “Back Yard” (Liza Lou, 1995-99) is a life-size picnic scene that took three full years to make, assembled with millions of glass beads, forming all the details down to the clothes-line, laundry, and more than 250,000 blades of grass. She transforms this ordinary scene into a “heavenly” one of joy and dazzling color, expressing the importance of matter in her own way.

Adding plants to sculpture seems to make the meaning more profound. “Everything that Rises Must Converge” (Sarah Sze, 1999), part of an exhibit we saw at the Contemporary Museum of Art (MOT) in Tokyo, consists of ordinary objects like lamps, ladders, Ziploc containers, and bottle caps strung together along with wires and lights, stretching all the way up to a power outlet on the second floor. Plastic plants randomly appear here and there throughout the work, but right next to the outlet sits a single living potted plant, the “true” plant, if you will, from which the exhibit emanates and receives its “life.” As a Christian, this plant speaks to me of the fullness of life that all matter will one day possess.

Aren’t plants themselves a kind of sculpture? Walking around Santa Fe, New Mexico, the third largest collection of art galleries in the world, we saw many artists use real seeds to represent potential for life. The most powerful use of plants I ever saw was “The End of the Twentieth Century” (Joseph Beuys, 1983-5), part of Tate Moderns’ permanent collection in London. Consisting of enormous horizontal columns of basalt, it had the look of a ruined ancient city. In each column, a hole had been drilled and filled with dirt (not pictured here). One of these holes contained a sprouting plant, symbolizing life bursting forth in the midst of ruins. From a Christian perspective, we know that from this broken world, life will come with such vibrancy that all life as we know it will be essentially dead in comparison, like that plant compared to that rock.

In sculpture, artists flesh out the relationship between the physical and the “trans-physical” (see above Perelandra quote), the imminent and the transcendent, the temporal and the eternal. They increase our passion for seeing the reality of heaven, where things are more solid, not less, and the smallest rock is of infinite worth. Through sculpture, we can glimpse heaven “through a glass darkly,” the glorious completed state of life and fullness God will one day bring to all of creation. How can we not be in “wonder-full” awe anticipating such a world?

“The organ and disaster relief: An American organist in Japan” was published in October 2011 by The Diapason, an international publication devoted to issues related to the pipe organ. The article tells the story of how Roger began using the pipe organ in the disaster relief since March 11, 2011 and paints a picture of how survivors have responded to the organ.

Read “Beauty through Japanese Eyes - The Tale of Genji as a Window to Japan” by Roger Lowther published in the Winter 2010 issue of Japan Harvest, a publication for pastors and missionaries in Japan. The article describes the artistic and historical significance of The Tale of Genji, as well as insights it gives us into Japanese culture. Genji can even show us what attracts Japanese to the God of the Bible and lead us in worship of Him. You can also read the rest of the article “Beauty through Japanese Eyes - Part 2,” published the following year in the Winter 2011 issue of Japan Harvest.

“The Spiritual Power of Bach’s Organ Music in Japan” was published in the March 2010 issue of The American Organist, the most widely read organ publication in the world. Musicians, and even organists specifically, are being called into missions to help plant churches. See how the music of J.S. Bach is having such an emotional, intellectual, and spiritual impact on lives of people in Japan!

Also, in the Summer 2010 issue of Japan Harvest, Roger wrote an article entitled “Short Films and Church Planting.” The article describes one way the arts can be used and is being used in church planting, in this case, through the medium of film. Jitensha (”The Bicycle”) is a new film by Yu Shibuya, a screenwriter/director/producer friend of ours here in Japan. He has seen tremendous success as an artist through using his “spectacles of grace” to see redemption and healing in the Japanese culture. You can order Jitensha and see other films of his by going to www.studio-re.com.

“The Arts in Mission: From Peru to Japan” is an article published in the Fall 2008 issue of Japan Harvest. A revival is occurring in the artist community around the world, and many of these artists are finding there way into church planting teams, learning as they go how to use their craft as artists to help build community and bring the gospel to the hearts of the people. Some of their stories are told through this article.

You can also see Roger speak live about Japan in a worship service at the megachurch First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida by going to our blog.