Can Beauty Save the World?

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[Music] foreign [Music] it is wonderful to have a big crowd to hear the topic of how Beauty can save the world and it is also wonderful obviously to have Dana Joya and Marco fujimura here and and of course to have the Trinity Forum uh to uh host us and uh this is our 10th year and we're very excited about uh all the programs we've had and all the people in Nashville that have joined us to hear great thoughts and great conversations uh I'm Brad Joya I serve as uh as an English teacher and the Headmaster here I enjoyed this world and Community very much and uh and I've particularly enjoyed being a part of these programs that have brought some wonderful speakers to the school community and I'm proud to do this in partnership with Saint Paul and my friend will Norton who's right there and he'll be back up here but now it's my privilege to introduce Sheree harder who who runs the Trinity for him and who spearheads all of these programs and has done a magnificent job I've seen her work up in Washington DC and here and it's great to be your friend Sheree and it's great to have you in the Trinity Forum here please join me in thanking all her for all she's done [Applause] thank you well thank you Brad for those very gracious remarks and on behalf of all of us at the Trinity Forum welcome to tonight's evening conversation with Dana Joya and makafujimora on the question can Beauty change the world as Brad mentioned it was a decade ago almost to the day that we held our first evening conversation in Partnership between Trinity Forum St Paul and MBA and at the time it seemed like both a big idea and a big risk that we aimed at trying to provide a space for leaders to Grapple with the biggest questions of life in the context of faith and bring in some of the nation's foremost thought leaders to help us do so during the last 10 years we have tackled everything from poetry and the imagination to just War Theory considered whether Freedom can last how character is formed and the possibilities for redeeming trauma and we've sold out almost every time so at the very outset I want to express my deep gratitude both to Saint Paul Christian Academy very ably led by Will Norton as well as MBA under the Visionary leadership of Brad Joya for their partnership and their leadership and their generosity in this effort and I'll also also note that with Brad's retirement later this year this is the last evening conversation that we'll get to host together while he's at NBA and Brad on behalf of all of us at the Trinity Forum it has been just a real joy and an honor to get to work with you [Applause] thank you I'd also like to thank the sponsors whose generosity has helped make this program and many others possible including Janet and David Chestnut Jessica and Kevin Douglas David and Ashley Edwards Rebecca and Al Gonzalez Elizabeth and Bill Hawkins Allen and Gretchen Horner Eleanor and Eric Osborne Andrew McDermott Molly and Ed Powell Anna and GIF Thornton Chris and Eleanor Wells Rick and Andrea Carlton and the Andrea Waite Carlton Foundation as well as the cherish Foundation the Creed and culture fund and our corporate friends at Sims and Funk plc I also wanted to acknowledge the presence of several friends here from Covenant Christian School as well as Mayor John Cooper and Chrissy Haslam who has joined us tonight I'll also know that our very first event 10 years ago almost to the day we were joined by both Chrissy and Governor Haslam and so there's a lovely symmetry to being able to welcome you back and also just want to acknowledge and thank our trustees Byron Smith and Sam Funk our two trustees who are here in Nashville and have done so much behind the scenes to make these programs possible I also just need to say at the asset that while we are thrilled and grateful to be able to celebrate 10 years of this effort and the leadership that made it possible there's also a profound absence here tonight and heartache Catherine Kuntz was registered to be with us tonight instead I know that some of you attended her funeral today and many of you have suffered extraordinary loss over the last week it's our hope that the time together will be at least in a small way a Spur towards hope even in grief our conversation tonight questions the assertion first made by the great literary novelist Theodore Dostoyevsky that beauty will save the world it was in many ways a startling declaration that has since been domesticated into fodder for inspirational posters and Etsy Kish and one that can seem hopelessly naive or sentimental or even dishonestly slogeneering particularly when posed amidst the darkness and destruction that seems to be all around us but Dostoyevsky embedded his claim in novels full of murders and Mad Men poverty and pain and yet wrote of the possibility for Redemption and repair of Hope amid suffering and of New Life so in our own time fear and fragmentation deep Division and distrust how might Beauty form or transform our moral and spiritual imagination not only for us individually as a person but also as a people I am so honored and pleased to get to welcome two extraordinary artists and intellectuals to get to help us discuss this question tonight Dana Joya is an internationally renowned poet the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and the poet laureate of California as well as a literary critic and essayist he's published six full-length poetry collections which have variously won the poet's prize a national book award as well as other honors has been an active translator of poetry from Latin Italian and German has composed three Opera libretti is the recipient of more than 10 honorary degrees and the Aiken Taylor award for lifetime achievement in American Poetry he is also I am very proud to say along with his co-discussant I'm a senior fellow of the Trinity forum joining Dana is Mako fujamora Mako is an internationally renowned visual artist author and arts Advocate who's lavishly textured and pigmented works are exhibited in museums and galleries all around the world he is the founder of the International Arts Movement or I am now called I am culture care and Sir for many years as a presidential appointee to the National Council for the National Endowment for the Arts he is also an author whose Works include refractions a Journey of Faith culture care silence and Beauty which won the Aldersgate prize and his latest work Art Plus Faith a Theology of making I'll also note that he is the most recent recipient of the 2023 Kuiper prize for excellence in reformed theology and public life and has had two of his commencement addresses named as one of the top 200 commencement addresses of all time by NPR and got a promotion from CNN who claimed it was one of the top 16 of all time so Dana and Marco welcome [Applause] [Applause] [Music] so as we start out it probably is a good idea to begin by defining our terms and when we speak of beauty I'd love to hear from both of you what is meant by that I mean so often when we think of beauty we think of prettiness and yet I know with both of you some of your most what I would consider beautiful art whether it is planting a sequoia or even the Columbine paintings came from places of deep pain so what is beauty data would you like to start us out beauty is one of the central Concepts behind both classical civilization and Christian civilization it's so important really that for centuries I think people simply took it for granted and it's so important that it is one of the primary things that post-modernism and you know all kinds of woke philosophies attack the word itself I think is misunderstood because it's uh misused so often we think of Beauty with beauty parlors Beauty contests Beauty AIDS it's commercialized but Beauty in the classical sense is not pretty that's it's not the attractiveness beauty is a profound way of recognizing the world in which you understand the connection between the surface of the world and as it were the hidden order of the world I think the easiest way of explaining what beauty is is that is to talk about the experience and I bet there's not anyone in the room who will not have experienced what I'm talking about a thousand times in their life it's as four parts the first thing is that in your busy existence suddenly you stop and you notice something it could it could be something you'll hear a bird song it could be a tree it could be a child it could be a landscape it could be a work of art and you first of all arrest your attention you stop to basically be in the presence of this thing secondly you recognize that you're getting pleasure by being in the presence of this thing in fact pleasure may be too cite a word what you are doing as you're participating in joy by being in the presence by stopping your life your attention for a moment to bask in the presence of these this thing and then thirdly as you arrest your attention as you bask in the presence of this thing you begin to see something through this object through this thing about the shape of the world you'll look at a tree you'll think of it as beautiful but as you look at it suddenly not necessarily in an intellectual sense but an intuitive instinctive Essence you'll understand that the shape of the tree is a reflection of where it is of its relationship to the sun uh to the Earth to the wind and you'll have this penetration into the world and it reminds me of Saint Thomas aquinas's one of his many definitions of beauty is that beauty gives us pleasure in the very Act of knowing and then as you're having this moment of essential perception about the hidden secrets of existence suddenly it stops uh it's because you don't possess it you can't control it you can look at that thing for another hour but you won't have that moment come back in the profundity which you experienced it and you'll have to in a sense come back to it at some point and so what beauty is is I think our most profound and natural way of understanding the reality of the world I mean we can do it scientifically by measuring things we can do it conceptually by by saying the abstraction of a tree you can measure the tree but what beauty does is it speaks to you simultaneously at all of your human faculties you see it you feel it you sense it it enters your imagination your emotions and your intellect simultaneously without asking you to to divide it so it is talking to you in the completeness of your incarnate humanity and that's why it is the most natural way of knowing the world because we experience it the way that we experience the world Moment by moment and it doesn't Force us to simplify that experience into an abstraction or measurement when I was thinking about beauty in in the context of this conversation in particularly here at Nashville and as Dana was speaking I um remember it I I'm a Survivor on 9 11. I was trapped in the subway underneath when The Towers fell and much of what I do as an artist is in response to that day and as Sherry mentioned I have already been doing my imaginative work through trauma of Columbine and other issues and I remember one day I woke up my loft literally faced Ground Zero there's a building in front of it which was half gone but as I walked out of my loft you could see Ground Zero this is this became home where my children grew up and as we were taking them to school blocks away I would see the fragments of buildings shining in the morning night and there was profound Beauty to that the Japanese definition of Beauty has always connected with sacrifice and death 10th Century poems walkout poems began to Define Japanese aesthetic it talked about not the cherry blossoms as they are beautifully blossoming now but as they are 40 they're falling onto the ground the wind blows and and Japanese considered this dying Beauty to be the most beautiful and there was a sense of data Ground Zero I going through trauma you are surprised by that when when something speaks to you out of these moments of darkness and you begin to discover that there is something that is causing you to pay attention to even though you may not want to because you your mind is frozen and just trying to survive and as an artist I I began to think that later on and as as Dana began to articulate this in Washington DC in the most unlikely places to find beauty we you were providing Beauty through Jazz through Shakespeare through poems and as we worked together to try to advocate for the American arts in some way in this culture wars decimated land um I I often recalled that moment when I saw those fragments uh in ground zero I could still see them they're now brand new buildings but but they're still in my mind very fresh and um and and so for many years I I had to deal with the memory of both the memory of that but but also the potential of that let me build on what just one sense in terms of what Marco has been saying is that one of the great human benefits of beauty is it allows us to consider things that would be intolerable and unbearable without in a sense the the constellations of beauty yeah and if you look at the traditional uh sense the classical sense of what art is it's to Delight it's to instruct it's to remember and it's to console and so the constellations of beauty I think are fundamental to civilization we would not uh be able to Bear some of the truths of human existence without it you mentioned the Japanese aesthetic which involves suffering and you have been quite involved in a traditional form of art called and I'd love for you to kind of explain a little bit about it and the metaphor that you have used in terms of the Artistry involved in repairing a broken vessel yeah after attention is given and the final product being something that doesn't gloss over the breakage but actually transforms into something even more beautiful yeah so I I have a box here which I painted and we have been my wife and I has in um have been involved in create creating Academy kinsugi which is a very small effort to sow Seas of conversation about beauty and broken times and what we have found is that there's a profound connection that people have that allows them to articulate what the inner soul is crying out but we are we don't have the language to be able to share so this this fall is it comes on Japan but it's a Korean ball which is a significant historical detail because it is um it is through Korean culture that Japanese tea masters of 17th century and 16th century have developed this aesthetic around articulating what is common what it what is even associated with poverty and life that is unnoticed something that is profoundly beautiful and and when we think about Beauty we often think of imperialistic you know Perfection uh perhaps but this form of Kentucky is profoundly the almost the opposite you you highlight the fractures the fragments themselves are considered to be valuable precisely because they are broken so the Team Masters of 16th century were serving tea with Korean bowls to Shogun or wardos who were about to invade Korea this this was a Supreme Act of transgression and and and they paid for it with with their lives they were saying something very important and beautiful about what happens when you instead of throwing out fragments in Japan there are many earthquakes and important tea where will break Team Masters will see that as a new way of understanding what they were about what they were trying to communicate and so they began to practice beholding the fragments rather than fixing it right away they have this almost this ritual that is passed down through generations kin means gold is the term that Japanese use but kin tsugi tsugi also means to pass it on to the next generation so it's a generational work of beholding the fragments first and then eventually it will be given to a Japanese lacro master urushi master to be mended into this beautiful mandible highlighting the fractures and as Sherry said this contigible is far more valuable than the original because there's a collaboration into the new of the Russian Master mending with care and love what was once broken but not only it is mended to be reused it is mended to be made more beautiful because of those fractures so this this to me is a fundamental um entry point into actually Christian theology as we uh move into this Holy Week I think it's good to remember that Jesus resurrection accompanied with his body is his wounds that is clearly recorded and I think it's it's a fact that we miss often in thinking of the triumphal Return of the Messiah um he is a wounded Messiah and he chose to have those wounds with him as he showed to Thomas his wounds and so that reality to me is is something that is so profound I I don't really have words to express it it will require a poet to understand it but that that's what Kentucky can bring to us is the entry point into imagination in a fragmented and traumatized time yeah you know it's so interesting that you said that uh beholding necessarily proceeds prepare um or recovery uh and even just drawing on what you were saying earlier Dana so much of beauty depends on apprehension and perception and attention being given but seeing is usually not a terribly straightforward act I mean we um we're in a deeply distracted age uh you know I think about like the Georgia O'Keefe who said that to see takes time just like having a friend takes time how do we learn to see I think it's not just seeing it's hearing it's tasting it's feeling it's all of those things the capacity for beauty is universal you know I think almost everyone experiences it but some people have greater sensitivity than others and what you do is uh you train people I mean one of the importance of of having literature and art in primary and secondary education is the recognition that one of the things you're educating children is their emotions and they need to have inhabit emotions that they have not yet experienced directly so that their imagination can become uh large enough to to include those so that when they experience those things later in their life they're prepared it seems to me as Christians it's fundamental that when Jesus spoke to people he almost never indulged in theology he told stories he gave Proverbs either cited poems and you could say well then what was he thinking I mean didn't he know how to give a sermon and that's implicit I think in a lot of a lot of people that you know it's like why don't they just say things directly I you know Jesus is an example how if you want to Enlighten someone you tell them a story because the story has many different entry points give you an example when I was a young child and I heard that the parable of the prodigal son I knew it exactly what it was about it's about bad kids I was one of them as I got older I realized it was about the difficulties of Parenthood and as I got older still with with a kind of a brother much younger than myself who was always getting in trouble I realized it was a story about brothers and it is all of those things because it gives you a constellation of things that just inexhaustible and allows uh different Vantage points and that's that's what makes people uncomfortable about beauty is that why can't we have a story that when we tell people they become demonstrably better in a predictable way uh and uh and I and I think that you know you see this in in on the you know the in terms of woke things they only want stories that are you know essentially illustrate these things but that's not the way art operates that's not how Beauty operates by allowing us to see things about the world that we have not noticed or we had forgotten it in enlarges us as humans it enlarges our our ability to discern the order of the world and its relationship to us so how do we teach ourselves to see by seeing that's why you take you know is there anybody in this room even the sisters who have not traveled thousands of miles to be in the presence of something beautiful people plan their whole year to do this they bring their children along because they understand the formative power it is and if you can see untarnished creation in Zion or Yellowstone or something like this it tells you so much about God and about the world that God created us and every one of those experiences builds and allows you to compare and to deepen even if you go back to the same place again and again and again you'll understand how your own response to it has changed over time it's deepened or how much of it you've forgotten I mean one of the interesting things about old age is I reread the books that were important to me when I was younger and I discovered that the authors have changed them in the meantime it is not the book that I read originally and it's I'm learning as much about myself as I am about the books but that's why you know we need in a sense to make Beauty part of our life in whatever way is accessible to us because it is the most natural way in which we have a relationship with creation and the Order of the universe Marco I want to ask that you the same question because as I recall you have given the advice before to spend at least 15 minutes just looking at a painting and this is advice has actually become somewhat famous because David Brooks took your advice planted himself in front of the painting and then said it was miraculous so what does one see after 15 minutes that one does not see at the outset yeah we learned not to see unfortunately um but I'll I'll get to that question through telling a story um when I was a on the grad at Bucknell University in Lewisville Pennsylvania I had grown up in both cultures Japan and us and I I my English was was not good and and so I had to write a short essay every week in response to a short story that was assigned to me and I just couldn't do it I I had a hard enough time reading a short story and yet my professor kindly took me under his wings he he sat down with me every Thursday to look at the paragraph that I somehow managed to write and worked on rest of the essay it was only one page but it was very hard I didn't remember and every week this happened every week and I eventually but my my professor to my astonishment saw in the paragraph that I could write or eventually a whole essay something in me that I couldn't see myself and I was painting and I was writing in the studio at the same time I remember reading primary O'Connor while painting creating and edging and dealing with this whole journey of a bicultural person bilingual person trying to keep up and yet my professor saw something in me and I I kept on taking classes for some reason with them and eventually I create a writing class and in in that class I had to keep a diary of my journey and in that diary I remember writing um and there's a long way to answer your question but why write so in a sense why is it not just how to see but why is there a reason for me as a young student to desire to cultivate that like what what is what is behind that and I'll never forget his answer he wrote back and he said in in a diary is one of the most important questions you can ask you know in life and in in literature but the question is I want to push you to ask a question in a different way he said why live why live and it hit me that many years later as I look back that is exactly the question that allow me to delve into this impossible task of being an artist because in order for me to answer that question I had to be faithful to the gift that I haven't given which is the gift of sin I see things that other people have hard times seeing and I pause a beauty even in ground zero and I find that experience to be healing now that that's not necessarily normative I I don't suppose but but it is universal and I find that when I exercise my gift I am not only helping people to see to slow down but I'm also helping people to ask the same question why this and why do do we each of us Endeavor every day to wake up and to see a new day and are we able to make something new with the fragmented eyes that we have and and to that question I I keep going back to literature I keep going back to TSA yet I keep going back to Shakespeare because that has been you know what's what's interesting is that I I was with Dana Dana's leadership um helping the cultivate American love for the Arts and we did a project called operation homecoming which was your initiative the soldiers coming back from Afghanistan and helping them to write and that experience kind of taught me exactly because these soldiers that that question why it is is still in their minds and and it's it's a large question in their minds and and so they're writing down these beautiful writings many times and I asked myself you know how much of literature how much of the odds is in with direct response to trauma delighted and I I and after the pandemic I rethought this and I think entire civilization is built on that question yeah and and so so therefore it's literally in the front lines of trauma of of wars that these great masterpieces Dante to Hemingway to you know JD Salinger coming back from the war traumatized too so so I think this is a relevant question about the odds and it goes back to the question of beauty as you know that beauty is not just a Sentimental nicety but it's essential to answer that question I think in western civilization uh the one of the most profound changes that Christianity brought was it allowed people in the West for the first time to see suffering as beautiful to see the Redemptive nature of suffering because uh everybody who's ever lived on the planet knows that suffering is inevitable death is inevitable that our our mortality makes existence itself precarious but it is the Christian Viewpoint that understands that that is in a sense Central to the go to the beauty of our of our existence Beauty being in a sense an ability to see into the very heart of existence I was in the uh in New Orleans last week doing a series of talks and readings and I went to the New Orleans Museum of Art where they have two very beautiful galleries that Samuel H Cress when he dispersed his Arts collection across the States gave to all these cities that he had had stores in and the Christian Saints almost always hold in their hands the instrument by which they were tortured and killed yeah and it's an emulation of Christ who uh in a sense we glorify the cross which was the the symbol of the most ignoble death in the Roman Empire to say that those things by which one view of existence demeaned and destroyed you seen properly were beautiful they were the instruments of this our Salvation I mean sometimes the extreme Saints will actually be holding their own head you know or whatever else or you know St Lucie will hold her own the eyes on a platter but in a sense uh they insist on a radical revision of what existence is and what uh what a good life is whatever you know in a with a life of ultimate value which is a life which in a sense achieves Redemption that is such a complete radical rewrite of the Greek notion of what existence was what dignity was what success was and and it also is a wonderful sentence in uh a novel by James Baldwin called Sunny's Blues it's about a brother who's a good brother who has a badly behaving brother who's getting out of prison and he totally disapproves of his brother he can't sympathize with his brother until his own daughter dies if he has this line he says my pain made his pain real and I think that that's part of what in a sense the that greatest portion of beauty which allows us in a sense to see the darkest aspects of our own existence and to understand that within the overall plan of existence within God's creation they are beautiful because they are true and that is why saying it's pretty it's decorative it's attractive it has nothing it really misunderstands Beauty what's the most beautiful play in the English language it's probably King Lear in which a father turns on a daughter daughters turned on a father brother turns on brother husband turns on wife uh Master on servant the entire order of the world collapses in the most uh horrifying cruelty and violence uh only in a sense as a precondition for a kind of redemption of the people hit it and you can say Well that's pretty uh it's not attractive but it's real uh it's it is like those people we know who have redeemed their life who have in a sense taken their life to a higher level it came almost always through suffering I mean there are probably a few people that are got it all easy but I think you know the rest of us you know uh get Our Truth uh Pain by pain but rather than complaining about the pain we uh you know we learn from it it's a wonderful uh sentence by the Roman philosopher Seneca who said if you resist your fate it drags you behind it if you follow your fate and by faith he means the bad things that happen in your life if you follow your fate it guides you dig into that Beauty transform I'd love to hear from you Dana but also Marco I would love to hear what does it actually mean to pour gold into the fissures you want me to go first yes okay um once I again I have to go back to Beauty as an experience your busy life you make up you have this impulse it's almost uncontrollable to stop for a moment and actually see something actually witness you experience something you're doing it because it gives you a pleasure enough you know not all pleasures are fun I mean people pay 18 to be terrified at a movie you know so there's there are there are Pleasures which are you know which are deeper darker Pleasures that you're you're feeling the pleasure that you begin to see in a sense the form of a thing of the form relates to the things around it how the particulars of a thing uh interact with the the overall shape of the thing and you get into a kind of Circle of perception and if you stand at the Grand Canyon it's literally dizzying trying to take in what you are seeing and in that moment if it if you if you are have allowed yourself you begin to understand uh something this is why I just can't accept you know the the put the post-modern notion that beauty is a cultural creation that people create something and call it beautiful to give them more power over other people if you stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon there's nothing about that experience of beauty that makes you feel better and bigger you understand your insignificance uh in in basically the cosmic scheme uh and yet you understand the inestimable privilege of being part of that of knowing a creator that could make that and bring you to the to bring it to witness it now as you go through and you look at these truths which are more uncomfortable truths and you accept them as true you really have only two Alternatives you can forget about it the moment you walk away which is what most people do or you can say I must in some small or large way change my life to accommodate that that's what erika's favorite you know famous line when he's looking at this broken statue of Apollo and the Vatican it says the statue which is missing all of its limbs it's Mis you know it's the missing its head it's just a torso it starts looking at it and seeing this Vision in the sense of of broken Humanity it goes do most you must change your life and that's what art tells us entertainment says come in get scared eat your popcorn and leave uh you got what you paid for you know don't think about it but what art does is it makes you encounter something which opens at least the possibility of change and as we go oh you know the things that move us when we're seven are not the things that move us when we're 14 or 21 and they shouldn't be because our capacity for perception and reflection or if it's the same thing we see it and experience it rather differently but it's the this is what I think Aquinas says which is to say that as you see the truth uh I mean I'll give you the most Stark one we are all going to die if you understand that as a truth and you accept it then every moment of your life becomes precious you do not waste your life do you lose thine label entered you have to change your life to accommodate that and I saw I think that's what it is so you know what Thomas says is that pleasure brings you to knowledge the knowledge brings you as you understand that it is true to love you uh you who in a sense you accept and assimilate those things in a sense which are true about your own existence it's very difficult because it's not it's not American you know we want things we want you know everybody to win we don't want anybody to to suffer anything but that's the simplification I think of American popular culture it's certainly not a Christian point of view which which says the glory of our existence is the opportunity to transform every moment of our life to make the slightest action in our life have value when seen against our mortality and Eternity and if that isn't Redemptive I don't know what is so gold is expensive it's costly and it's really interesting right when you think about we do these Kentucky experiences and people bring in I we encourage people to bring in something that means something of that some some object that holds memory for them and oftentimes people bring in toys that they have when they're in childhood and the arm broke off or that we all came on um and we have some profile moments where we spend time mending it and then you have to put gold in the fractured parts and why would you spend you know over a hundred dollars doing this Kentucky process for a toy that maybe was vital on us well the cost of that right the value of that is not in the object itself but in in the memoriam what you possess that is attached to your mother mother's ceramic that you found in a closet somewhere that is broken chipped that means something for you to spend time mending to make new but but we we you know and we don't perhaps think that gold is costly and the process is costly because the memory itself makes that worth renewing that memory in in a fresh way so I as an artist I spend every day in the studio pulverizing minerals these madokai azerite and and I use gold and platinum and silver so I intentionally choose very pure authentic expensive materials and people have asked me you know well you could use acrylic yeah that would be you know much cheaper and and I you know and it's faster definitely because it's fast drying and and the uh you know colors are pre-selected for you and so forth and and I I always had this in the sense that you know in in a Faso culture um it it the end becomes the goal and the process is ignored and and in order for me to let's say Guild canvas with gold or paper gold you know that's that takes like a week of worth of work of what I call solo art to do and so it is costly not just in the materials but in time but the whole purpose of doing that is to almost just like into the accentuate what I need in in my fragmented life something that is more valuable than what even the memory of what I can create even if the work is something of enduring value but for me it's it's the process itself so as I as I use gold I use these materials I you know it's always you have to pound the gold into gold sheets that's microscopically thin I don't do that Japanese Artisans do that you have to pulverize the minerals in order for them to be Prismatic layers that create this refractive surface and layers and layers sometimes over 100 layers before I start the paint those that process itself captures something very profound to me as something necessary for me to be able to articulate what what life can bring us or the the and that that does change my life because it allows me to focus on and practice being present with God in the studio why I am creating in just a second we're going to go to questions from both the audience and let off by Will Horton but before we do I was struck by what you were talking about Dana the the experience of awe and wonder as one stands before the Grand Canyon and how it leads one away from any sense of domination and stands before just overwhelming Beauty I remember reading not too long ago that one of the few things that can break through deep distrust and division is actually a shared experience of awe and wonder but to have that experience of all and wonder is something that runs so counter to our deeply distracted age and requires a Readiness and a cultivated imagination if you will and and I'd love to kind of hear your thoughts about how can we not only as as a person but as a community cultivate the kind of imagination capable of awe I it's not an event it's not a a trip it's a way of living you know in a sense you know of when I moved back to California after living in the East for 20 years I moved into the hills of Northern California and you know some of you actually some of some people in the audience have been at my house one of the things that I decided to do my wife and I decided to do is to be able to name every bird every flower every tree whether it's that tree that's look at that bird and because what happens is you go from looking uh you know because you see the perception your mind wants to put it someplace so it puts a bird tree vegetable but if you can actually name things you begin to notice the specifics of it and it's the same thing with music it's the same thing with art but I think it's and it's sort of a similar to what uh Mako is saying it's an ability to slow down your life which is always busy which is always over committed and to actually inhabit the moment and the place where you actually are so that you see it you understand it I mean I can now recognize the birds basically by their cries you know I'll hear them well there's a red tail hawk above means arguing with the Ravens and always and so and so what but I think there does is it builds an attitude of attention and respect and if you are attentive and respectful to something um it's weirdly attractive to people you know what I mean and so I mean you know I mean it seems to me that so much of what we need to do in society is to lead lives that uh invite uh and reward other people you know in a sense there's an attitude that they don't they don't see they don't witness in their everyday life because it's you know run through stuff as quickly as possible you know consume things as much as possible and it's just the just the opposite so uh art I do believe it's like why do people talk about the weather because it's raining for everybody whether you're a Republican or a Democrat you know whether you know you're a Christian or an atheist your people instinctively start on something you can agree on it's too hot it's too cold it's rather wet and what it does is to remind you of your common Humanity that's why in almost every culture When a Stranger Comes you feed them you invite them and feed them because people are not going to kill you of you know maybe my family but but usually over a meal you know because you you are acknowledging the person's Humanity their hunger their you know their exhaustion and it Begins the relationship on a point of agreement I think that's an another reason why in America it was interesting uh who created the National Endowment for the Arts does anybody know the president Richard Nixon not the person you'd say well here's the Arts guy and uh and it was Nixa felt that he had come into a divided nation and he felt that if you could create things which people could experience outside of those divisions it would help heal society and I think he was you know he was right in that I don't know if the Nea has lived up to that I don't know if the Arts in general have lived up to that but I I do think that they have that power of of healing and also the power of instruct instruction because if I'm talking to you not as on an intellectual level where you know exactly what you believe in but in terms of what you're experiencing what you're feeling what you're seeing I can take somebody who's deeply different from you maybe even suspicious of you and you'll be sharing a reaction and so you will acknowledge your common Humanity rather than your differences Adam named the animals and some would say that that's the first instance of poetry and I was astonished when I was speaking to a kinsuki Master and he was showing me chips um and people can Ziggy master each chip has a name we call what we call a chip he would call it differently like a shell a clam shell chip or a bird's beak or and and I it made me pause and think about what we do with our wounds what we do with our fractures we're not very good at naming them first of all we don't behold them we we want to get to a place where somebody dominates you know nominees over Diego or wins in some way but you know I the the gift of kensuki of beholding is is to is understand that each fracture is different than unique and it deserves a name and therefore our First Act of creativity and naming anything is to slow down enough to pause to behold and we should have hundreds of names if especially as Christians we are dedicated to heeding those wounds to bring Redemption into every fracture to pull gold we we have to be the master of Kentucky Master right having studied our lives and our communities lives our friends our families our neighbors our congregation to be able to name that fracture as a poet would to bring into attentiveness that unique crack the chip that that is so important to Value as something that would might even be an entry point a pinhole into an entire Way new way of being thank you Michael thank you Dana we're going to turn to questions from each of you and the first one will come from will Norton the Headmaster of St Paul Christian Academy will lead us off well thank you both that was wonderful before I post the first question I wanted to thank Brad for this Legacy of the Trinity Forum that he has set in motion with many others as I was reflecting on the conversation I was thinking about the MBA campus and I had the opportunity to serve with Brad for 11 years and there's a lot more Beauty and statues and things like that that he's cultivated and so those legacies of both attorney forum and that are very evident here so I wanted to start by that good evening glad to pose the the first question and then we'll we'll be able to line up with next to the microphones there for the following ones but the ones that I would have is it um is it just a paradigm shift for an audience that is eager to cultivate more Beauty and even just reflecting on this week of Nashville I was shown a picture of a rainbow going over Covenant before we came over here and thinking of that fracture and Beauty in the midst of that and that that moment you know is is it a paradigm shift or is there a discipline that you would say that you point to in your day or as an audience that maybe uh has where busyness is is really one of the greatest antidotes to cultivating Beauty what would that discipline be with your own life or things you've seen in others or is it really just a paradigm shift you know what I think about um as I reflected or you're going through I had a privilege of being at the 20th 20 years commemoration of Columbine High School spend some time with the families and the victims there's a Survivor there he was a d student who the Iraq University escaped having been shot in the head and in the leg he somehow crawled out of the window his name is Patrick and he in the hospital they were trying to save his life he heard this voice oh actually he heard this voice before combine incident that Jesus told them I am choosing you for a reason and he had no idea what that meant and as he was coming out of his coma the first thing he said was I am here to forgive I forgive and I went back to home and I don't know what that means that that is a particular story of one person but I I also know that there's something about what he heard that we are somehow seducted I mean for one thing after the pandemic we're all survivors there's not a single person on this Earth who is not a survivor because of this deadly virus and so that means as Dana said there's something common that we get to share and and they might be different for each one of us they should be but but at the same time there's something to share and and I think as Columbine High School families and Community came together after that and to this day there's a strong bond I suspect that in your culture here in Nashville that may happen and I I think because of that the rainbow or promise that that is over Covenant is is profoundly real whatever that means and and I I certainly as an outsider I don't know what the future will bring but but I I know ing my own work as an artist having survived that day and then and then whatever to serve my community the best I could and still noticing hairline fractures in my life in in from that day that it's a it's a journey that we go through as I said very uniquely each of us in each community and I am privileged to be here this evening thank you for carrying on this task of speaking into culture speaking into this City and and this school um and and to me you know there may not be answers but to me there's a enlargement of this generative questioning that I do as an artist that is profoundly real and important to me and I I want to do something with that I don't know what but there's it's an impetus of a seed thank you you know I'm not a resident of Nashville and so I feel little right to comment on this my first reaction would be that a rainbow over the school is a commercial fabricated easy response to the Terrible particularity of the tragedy I'm much more moved when these things happen how Ordinary People come and they literally build a shrine of a thousand individual responses which uh whatever their you know merits or demerits individually have a cumulative impact in a sense of of honoring the grief of an event like roadside crosses to me are you know that are have things added to are tremendously moving because you know they they uh they they look at rather than a way from the the tragedy which I think is is what the lesson of beauty tells us but you ask about I think another question that's a more a more enduring question which is about is this require a paradigm shift if my answer is this country is deeply in trouble when most of the of the people not just young people anymore are always looking at their cell phone or always listening to something I mean I'll go through the redwood forest and people have headphones on listening to music uh and this may be just my weirdness but it seems to me that uh in order to be fully human we have to develop our inner life our the interiority of our human existence and that's it requires silence it requires contemplation and it requires them to say I will not spend my life being distracted by watching tick tocks or or whatever which may be you know quite amusing Moment by moment but it seems to me we have a country that's largely addicted to that I think that prevents us from realizing ourselves spiritually intellectually aesthetically I'm always the Grouch thank you do you have a question you can come on up our three guidelines are be brief be civil and be a question and so we look forward to the first one Ranjit guptara you are beautiful people then like you kindly gave a poetry lecture once and it produced a spontaneous poem for me that's never happened before since thank you and your artwork likewise has brought me to tears so thank you for the beauty you engender and others that you create it's almost a you it's an affection uh in a positive way the question I bring is one that's troubled me for a while and it's brought to a point this evening in the Jewish scriptures in Isaiah chapter 53 I believe it says that Jesus had no beauty that people would desire him and then yet in Jeremiah it says that he is the desire of the Nations and what is it about Beauty and desire uh you mentioned that perhaps Adam had the first poem in terms of naming the animals I'd like to counter that by saying we humans are his handiwork his poemma his manufacturer and what is it that is special about Jesus that you see in that dialectic between Jeremiah and Isaiah that I'm still puzzling with thank you for um okay well in a simple St way Jesus is important because he's the son of God but if I put that aside and I look at from a cultural Viewpoint Jesus completely up-ins and reverses the human values and so the word beauty is almost never used in the Bible it's there a few times but when the Bible wants to talk about what we're talking about in Beauty they call it Glory you know what you think about this and it's the radiance of reality I mean uh Jacques maritan the great to Mystic philosopher of the last century said in terms of beauty beauty is the Splendor of existence radiating onto the intelligence and so what Jesus does is to take all of those things that we think are primary and say they are secondary the rich man is hardest to get into heaven the the uh you know when man when the first time Jesus's uh existence his Divine existence is spoken publicly because it happens mystically during the Annunciation Mary really says when she in the visitation she says my soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior and how does he tip by him he is exalted he is you know he the rich he has brought the mighty down from from their seats he's exalted the poor and the humble he has filled the Hungry with good things and the rich he has sent him to your way once again in the very first moment of the Incarnation being announced it's saying that this is going to change everything about the order of the world and so Jesus shows us that the the wounds as Marco said that the wounds by which he is killed are the most beautiful thing about him because they are the source of his sacrifice his suffering and his redemption in fact the Romans had to create a new word to describe what's this week uh they had a word called patio or a deponent verb which means to Bear something and they created the word passio passion because they wanted a word that described this experience that didn't fit into classical civilization the passion of Jesus which is a way of saying it's a person doing bearing love and Duty through suffering uh and you know and so now we take a passion a minute to all of the these sorts of things but it is that complete reversal of seeing the order of reality which Jesus and Christianity brought to to and transformed to Western civilization uh so it's no longer the people who are have the most power the most might the most held the youngest but that there's Beauty in everything which is part of creation and that was a a growing moment for civilization I think yeah it's a kind of inversion and I Isaiah I don't know the we have a renowned Theologian here so I should ask him but um you know that there's so many times the translation of the Bible fails to capture the poetic Nuance so um there's so many times when um the word that you use poema you know used in Ephesians 2 8 through 10 um James uses it and and we often translate that as as doing the word of God you know and that that's okay that's an industrial translation but it doesn't capture the poetes of the world which literally means to be be a poet of of the word of God so it's not just doing the work of mercy and work of Faith but it's also being a poet of the world that changes a lot of things for me at least when I think about James you know warning to us that if we do not become doers if we don't do not become poets then we become kind of narcissists of our faith that we don't see what is the faith the huge ramifications what faith can bring into the world and and and open up so many possibilities we we want to be certain about uh that interpretation so that we we can be right maybe so to me the reality of what I call Theology of making which from creation to New Creation the entire Bible is is is about making to me um and and so God created God is not just a source of beauty I contend but God is beauty so therefore as Marathon you know in in his conversation with George discovered that there is this reality of Beauty in modern times which which is exiled to to the to the margins and it's no longer at the heart of this course and so domestic language Translating that into modern times we have to recover that as a central principle along with truth and goodness or bringing that into an educational discourse every preaching should reflect that every preaching should reflect by the way what Mary did in response to married or Bethany did in response to Jesus tears which is to bring the most expensive possession that she had which was her wedding art to break that open to anoint Jesus and as he carried that Aroma into Jerusalem because he was arrested in Gethsemane he could not cleanse himself entering Jerusalem he carried that Aroma to the cross when we think about that and what Jesus said in Commendation with Mary when the disciples were grumbling and saying we could have sold that and fed the poor it's an expensive perfume why is he doing this extravagant wasteful thing Jesus was very adamant said leave her alone she has done a beautiful thing to me Carlos beautiful and good thing to me whatever she's done will be told whenever the gospel is told and so I think it's it's an imperative we we have to recover at least in the church if not in the world this centrality of the sacrifice of beauty that flows from creation to New Creation and and when we do that we will perhaps find ourselves being healed being redeemed and so that that's why what I you know I I am not only honored to be here with you today but to me having a conversation with Dana what what we Endeavor to do is is not just to bring poetry and art into a discourse but but to help all of us recover that sense of centrality of the Gospel that's why we're here and and and so so the passage in Isaiah 53 Ephesians to uh they're Central to that because there's two goddess instructs Us in two ways through scripture and through creation so the other thing is to awaken us to Creation uh which if you're living in a suburb in your car listening to the radio you've forgotten about uh you know you know to make us understand the glory of God there it it just it as well as in scripture because the two are the two are coexistent I see a long line for me that we're not going to get to all we'll take two more questions uh so let's some quick questions and quick answers so I was wondering if you had any insight as to how we might address this whole idea of beauty and appreciation of Beauty with very young children and um I I teach a little kindergarten I do a lot of nature walks we look at Art yeah we read poetry but I'm hope my hope is that that I that will create a hunger in these children that will carry on through life is that is that a realistic hope because I feel like the culture is just overwhelming well the second thing that you asked is all important you cannot trust the culture you cannot trust by and large I think the public education system to raise your children as they should be raised and so you just have to start with the inadequacy and the dangers of the president the reason I think that I became a poet though I didn't really recognize my vocation until I was about until I was 19 was when I was a child both of my parents worked in fact my both of my parents had two jobs so when my mother would come I come home she'd make me do the housework with her and everything else which was good training for adult life and she was a Mexican-American woman with very little education but she liked poems and she had been had memorized them or had to you know memorize them as part of her early schooling and grammar school and they were very precious to her I don't think I understood entirely why until I was an adult but she would just start to recite she could say it's many many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea that a maiden there lived whom you may know by the name of Annabel Lee and that Maiden she lived with no other thought into love and be loved by me I was a child and she was a child in this Kingdom by the Sea and we loved with a love that was more than a love I and my inability and I would hear this and I sort of knew what it was about but I didn't know what it was about but what happened is that it cast a spell over me and that spell uh arrested me in the moment of pleasure in this beauty and brought me dimly to uh expressions of by Poe and transmit my mother of their losses of their Pains of of their uh tragic loves in a way which enlarged me and and it taught me that there was another realm of perception another realm of existence that was different from the fairly rough and dirty neighborhood that I I was raised in and and that became a resource for the rest of my life so what I would say is that is to bring your children in ways suitable to their life experience the things that are beautiful and joyful and true and have them hang around them and see what sticks it should be music it should be poetry it should be art and protect them in some ways from the the vulgar and the mendacious uh and the violent uh things that are in our society and and Trust the power of their nature and Trust the power of the art to do those things to them which are necessary but I teach poetry I make my students memorize poems because once they memorize poems I don't have to teach them the poems teach them they incorporate things which are transformational which changes their relationship to poetry and the language yeah absolutely I gave a commencement I just said Judson University several years back and I titled the kinsuki generation and it was it was just like you know marketing where you kind of coin something that doesn't exist and sadly it has become children at the kindergarten children in elementary schools that high school college they are becoming Kentucky generation they have to because they're facing trauma and they they don't have the language to deal with that in culture at Large dead so one of the ways that I find myself doing is to listening to children create looking at their artworks and I find extraordinary things and them that are very truthful about what they're going through but also there's Beauty and Hope and and to me that that is like one of the greatest Joys that I've discovered is that because God does not give up on us or any culture there's they're always little profits around and the spirit is working in their lives in in ways that are so unexpected that they may even be somebody who is angry at God crying out against God it's it's completely outside of our circles but I find myself listening to some of them you have to be Discerning but some of them because they have things to say that is true about our world and they have something to say that revealed not only the fractures but they're waiting to risk what they do as artists what they do as musicians what they do as as dancers to School goal of sacrifice into that and I I can bet you that in the group that you teach there are these voices that are that come out that that may surprise you but there may be a way a portal into something completely new one last question so having an uh experience with something is really like overwhelming and personal and I think a lot of times feels incomplete if you don't share it I can barely hear you can you speak to Siri okay thank you so having an all experience just something can feel incomplete if you don't share it and it's very personal a lot of the time so sometimes maybe most times when you share something like that it can be received um by being just like dismissed or having some kind of negative reaction like that and maybe it's because experiences are so personal but that kind of feels like a wound or makes you feel reticent to sharing again um but I don't think that's a good option so I'm interested to hear how you would practice following that fate and not being dragged behind it I I think the answer is once again it's it's a process that continues across your whole life I mean most of us are very different from one another we try as we're socialized to You Know cover that up you know we you know we are standardized more I as a poet have been surprised that my most popular poems these are poems that are translated into other languages are often the ones that I didn't think anyone would like yeah because they were they were too different they were too odd but it's uh I recognize that it's actually the individuality and the the expression of the differences which allow people to enter them and bring their own differences now part of it is to say because since most people when you when they're talking to you once again are are talking to anybody are always trying to label things put them into pre-existing compartments uh but your your ability whether you're an artist or a human being is to find ways of framing those things which are unusual uh perhaps even disturbing to somebody in a way which they'll listen to and and they'll post that's the beauty the beauty of beauty is that that arresting of intelligence that dwelling in pleasure uh happens before you uh in a sense try to intellectualize it in fact Jacques maritan calls Beauty preconceptual knowledge uh because you haven't been able to abstract it compartmentalize it and it's dwelling there in in the fullness of its complexity and I think that's what you're asking which is it's a part of it is just is to be able to develop your own style your own rhetoric which allows people to sort of entertain an idea and understand it before they they try to compartmentalize it yeah and um I I'm exactly the same experience as an artist I I painted work that I think nobody would understand or nobody would want to see and um often those are the ones selected to museums and and I I'm I don't even know understand the painting myself you know that's that's how alien it feels to me but there's something about that right that because the sense of awe and wonderment yes it's University shared but it is particularized and you talk about the subjective and objective but I I don't think we give credit enough to the understanding of this mystery of who we are in in terms of community in terms of the otherness of those who we don't share anything with and as we have done Kentucky experiences around we've done or I can see the experiences we train people to run these experiences over a thousand people last year did them it's amazing how much of that wonderment and all with people who didn't expect it when they came into the room it's only a three hour two hour three hour experience from high-end uh major companies you know managers who are like competing against each other to to little children that there is this sense that all of a sudden the portal of wonderment and all breaks through if we can slow down and use our hands and and feel somatically something about the world which actually exists you know it's not on your iPhone you know it's actually in front of you and and the Brain starts to respond differently and what happens is we we are drawn out of a subjective mirror and and into this realm which a lot of times in this culture we are unfamiliar with which is this and in Asian cultures that's all they know is that you know family and community gives them their identity and meaning we think we have to come up with that so we we end up wrestling against I think the fabric of creation that way you know we can lose ourselves um in the other way too so it's not ideal but both end and and I think you know one of the discoveries that I'm making as as I uh as I Journey on as an artist is that there is something what we call esoteric is is is also something of a portal that the people have a need for now artists if there are artists in the room you have to you have to go there and you have to develop that you know not not just because it's a esoteric but because it's that peculiness of of alienness that you find yourself somehow tapping into you don't have words for it you don't have a category for it no one's going to tell you to do it and that's exactly why you should do it because it's impossible because only you can journey into that realm and then that the rest including your judgment of that be you know when the years later looking back at your work as we wrap up tonight we'd like to leave you with a few invitations as well as thanks I first want to invite you to check out The Book Table outside we will have copies of Dana's most recent poetry collection meet me at the Lighthouse as well as mako's most recent book Art Plus faith and encourage you to check that out secondly want to invite you to Avail yourself of an opportunity Spilled Out on your chair to join the Trinity Forum society which is the community of people dedicated to advancing the Trinity forum's Mission of cultivating curating and disseminating the best of Christian thought there are also many benefits involved in being a member of the Trinity Forum Society including a subscription to our quarterly readings where you can find things like T.S Elias poem introduced by Marco or Gerard Manley Hopkins poems introduced by Dana and as a special incentive to do so with your membership or donation of 100 or more we will give you a free book of your choice either Art Plus Faith or meet me at the Lighthouse so would love for you to Avail yourself of those invitations furthermore if you would like to be involved as a sponsor we would love to talk with you if my colleagues could just stand up and wave their hand so you can see them that they would be a great person to talk talk to about those opportunities and finally if you have friends that she would love to talk about tonight's evening conversation with but who aren't here we will be recording or we are recording tonight's event it will be up on our website and our YouTube channel in just the next few days as we wrap up it's always appropriate to end with things there are many people who labored behind the scenes to make this evening possible so I want to just thank our sponsors again whose generosity was pivotal to tonight's conversation our partners Brad Joya MBA and Will Horton at St Paul Christian Academy the staff at both St Paul and MBA and particularly Jeanette Leggett and Langan Coleman who labor behind the the scenes and our volunteers Ashley larmer Lauren Hester and Amy Richardson along with photographer Allison Akins and videographer Barry McAllister I'd like to give a shout out to my stalwarts colleagues the Trinity Forum our brand new VP of operations Tom Walsh Molly wicker and Brian daskem and then finally of course thank you Dana and thank you Marco oh that's right [Applause] [Music] thank you all for joining us and good night [Music]
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Length: 95min 14sec (5714 seconds)
Published: Fri Apr 07 2023
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