Online Conversation | Music, Creativity & Justice with Ruth Naomi Floyd

[Music] on behalf of all of us at the trinity forum welcome to today's online conversation with ruth naomi floyd on music creativity and justice i'd also just like to thank our friends at the rabbit room square halo and the bridge project who are co-hosting with us this program today as well as add my thanks in addition to alyssa's the fetzer institute whose grant has helped make the series on creativity the common good and flourishing possible also today i want to simply express our gratitude to all of you our viewers this is the occasion of our 50th online conversation since the panic pandemic began and when we first started these we were really learning as we went since then we've had over 70 000 of you register for one or more of these 50 different online conversations from at least 108 different countries that we know of and we've tried to tackle a whole variety of topics from poetry to pluralism loneliness to leadership from dying well to leading a tech wise life if you are one of those folks who are new to the trinity forum we seek to provide a space to engage the big questions of life in the context of faith and to offer programs like this online conversation to do so in hopes of coming to better know the author of the answers and certainly one of the big questions of life is how we think about work within and live faithfully within a world that was called and created to be good and beautiful and yet everywhere is marred by ugliness and injustice so how can we in our various spheres and stations help repair re-envision and create new places of beauty justice and flourishing it's a big question and to help us wrestle with it we are so delighted to welcome our guest today vocalist and composer ruth naomi floyd who has dedicated much of her life to creatively and compellingly exploring just those questions through music and the arts ruth naomi floyd is a vocalist event composer who has been at the forefront of creating vocal jazz settings that expressed theology theology and justice for over 25 years she has performed and lectured prolifically taught as a professor and or an artist in residence at a number of universities and been awarded an honorary doctorate from concordia college for contributions to the arts justice and music education the frederick douglass jazz works is her latest body of compositions which is based on the speeches and writings of the great leading orator abolitionist writer publisher and statesman and just this past may she was also awarded a national endowment for the arts grant for her new body of work the francis suite in addition to her artistry and her music she's also contributed to numerous works including the books it was good making music to the glory of god published by square halo and the problem of good ruth welcome it's so great to have you on the online conversation hello cheri it's fantastic to be here thank you for the kind invitation absolutely so you have been a visual artist a photographer a musician who plays the i think was the bassoon and the piano as well as a vocalist you've also been called an emancipatory artist and so i'd love to start out just by asking you about your own artistic journey both both as a musician and a vocalist but also what an emancipatory artist is and how you became one sure thanks for asking my parents were the product of the great depression and so they both loved art and creating but that was not an option for them it's more about putting food on the table so they vowed to themselves individually and then when they married that any children they would have would study art and music and they kept that promise and i'm deeply grateful as my sisters are too um and so we each started out playing piano and two instruments i played flute and bassoon and we all sang but it was really the point of seeing my parents be creative in areas that were broken that were troubling that were scary that were just horrifying and so my parents were urban missionaries and in the late 60s and 70s in philadelphia there was a great problem of gang warfare and so they decided to go into the community to live amongst the people in the neighborhood and combat this gang warfare so they became part of the community they lived and breathed the community they knew their neighbor they grew to love their neighbor by speaking truth of the gospel and creating and sharing an act of beauty my father worked with the youths and helped them understand imago day and that their lives mattered their neighbors lives mattered their enemies lives the rival gang members their lives mattered and as a little girl i would wash the blood from the slain gang members with my mother we would scrub the street and my mother was a creative extremist if you will in giving beauty by washing away the blood of the dead so that their mothers would not have to see the blood of their son spread across the street um so my parents were what martin luther king called creative extremists and although a violent neighborhood it remains one of the most beautiful loving communities i've ever known so when the dear friend dr john ninis first called me a medical program artist i pushed against it i thought oh i'm not really that but then i took some time to really study the word and it's one who seeks truth one who seeks beauty one who stands up for truth and one who helps others see beauty beauty in the midst of suffering darkness and despair beauty in the midst of joy and light and love you know the great tony morrison told us that the function of freedom is to free someone else and so in truth and beauty and freedom i create we are all his image bearers and and having been given that same creative capacity to create i am just grateful to be able to have the chance the opportunity to create beauty but particularly beauty out of the ashes yeah that's gorgeous you know there was another speech that i listened uh to of yours where you called yourself a chaser of beauty which i thought was a beautiful phrase and i've also heard you tell the remarkable story i think it was of your great great great grandmother who was known for for seeking beauty even in the midst of great suffering and it sounds in some ways like you might come by it naturally but i wonder what you have learned in the process of looking for beauty when everything around you seems ugly or dark and how you would might guide others who yearn to see the beauty around them but don't sure thanks for mentioning one of my favorite human beings ever my great grandmother it was her mother who was made to be a mule as a six foot two enslaved african in america to intimidate everyone around because of her strength because of her height they made her to be a mule a human mule who pulled the plow um and it was my great-grandmother who asked her siblings and who told and they were the ones that told her that coming from this place of dehumanization from this place of genocidal hate and evil um she searched for beauty whether a leaf a pine cone a flower a rock she searched for it she brought it back into the cabin and so she also was a creative extremist finding beauty in the midst of utter despair and evil but one of the profound gifts of blackness in america is the long historic dance between utter despair and unspeakable joy it is found in our culture in our music in our art in our cuisine in our life and so the art of seeing demands that we see it with new eyes with different eyes with renewed eyes and so eyes that have the courage to look i said i have the courage to see to even look in the mirror and lord have mercy face the reflection that's looking back at you and what that reflection brings you know eyes enough and voice enough to ask the questions or to see the questions and to search for the answers so it's it's in that courageous act of being willing to see that i think that profound um sense of knowledge and transformation in reno can take place yeah that's beautiful you know i want to ask you about love the role of love you know you have described uh both just now but also in many other times the creativity of a suffering people who essentially wove their trauma into something durable enduring and beautiful and it made me think of martin luther king jr statement that love is the strongest most irresistibly creative power in the world that there is something uniquely kind of creative and generative about love and so i wanted to ask your thoughts about love and the act of creating in that if love itself is essentially creative does the act of of making and creating also grow our capacity to love or how should we understand the connection sure you know i think of of course forever martin luther king and others i think of vincent van gaal who says the more i i think the quote is the more i think about it the more i realized that there is nothing more artistic than to love each other and i i think when we take the great command of jesus and when we treat it as an option we get in trouble when we really understand and come to realize the depth of love and love as a verb is is it's transforming it's amazing there was someone in my life for over almost 40 years who brought great grief and despair to me and other members of my family and it wasn't until i stopped seeing that human being as an enemy and seeing it as a human being made in the image of god and struggling and praying and hoping and at times honestly resisting trying to love her that it brought about empathy the greatest acts of love is really found from genesis in the beginning god created to the cross of jesus christ and to the eternity that the first and greatest artist is preparing for us but to love is to risk and creating is risk we know that art shapes and reshapes us and that um that it's there in the cross of jesus i believe that where beauty and violence collided um and beauty won and so that act of loving someone and that being uh purposely trying to to love someone especially those that seem or are viewed or deemed unlovable is in in a way that is directly connected and intrinsically connected to our art making and so i think it's powerful to think of love as as you mentioned shari as an act as an active way as a mind and i'm reminded of romans 12 renewing our mind every day to love renewing our mind to see removing our mind to create things so that we really truly believe and act that we are all created in his sight and we are made in his image you mentioned art shaping shapiness and one of the things that is so interesting that you have pointed out in various speeches is that almost all of distinctly american music whether it is gospel jazz ragtime blues soul r b hip hop or whatnot all of those different genres were birthed within the context of suffering african americans and so often injustice or oppression obliterates expressions of creativity which is part of suffering itself what do you think enabled this extraordinary variety of musical creativity amidst injustice and what do you make of the fact that it largely defines what is considered uniquely american music that's a fantastic question cherie um of course it has to do with liberation of course it has to do with chasing beauty chasing beauty is a profound disturbance it is an interruption of the flow of injustice and so searching and capturing and experiencing beauty is a a form of resistance and this is most powerfully demonstrated in the profound beauty in the midst of unspeakable suffering in the african-american spiritual it's the primary root of almost all american music it's derived from the african-american spirituals so what i'm saying is there be no blues there'd be no ragtime there'd be no hip-hop jazz rnb country hip-hop pop music without the african-american spirituals so the african-american spirituals were created by the enslaved africans in america and and the question like is always not far from my thoughts when when singing or hearing or experiencing is you know that old question that's asked in the old testament how did they sing a song in a strange land and so the slaves took their everyday express experience of plantation life and incorporated the hope of the spiritual and physical liberation and creative body and music that stands the test of time i wish they were here to know that the melodies they uttered the melodies that they created limits of profound and devastating suffering would stand the test of time and would be the root of almost all american music that is beauty in the midst of us ashes i wish they knew i wish they were here that those african rhythms that they brought with them when dragged to this country would be a part integral part that basic material would be integral part of what it means to be american music and that it would be played created um in the sense of performed around the world so it's it's powerful it's a profound example of creating as resistance i want to ask you about your most recent project which in many ways encapsulates many of the themes that you have dedicated much of your life to studying and to um well immersing yourself into performing as well as studying and that is the frederick douglass jazz works project where you have essentially paired a series of improvisational jazz compositions with the words of frederick douglass and we'd love to hear more from you about this in many ways reading frederick douglass's works i think of almost a march you know rather than an improvisational uh sort of jazz composition but what led you to devote putting it devote several years of your life really to putting his words and he was a word guy more than a music guy his words to music well you want to talk about beauty in the midst that is frederick douglass i i think in another life i would have been a historian i love history i love studying the patterns of human behavior and i decided that if i'm going to communicate in jazz improvisational music and i've done a lot of decades of study of african american spirituals and blues and gospel and jazz and other [Music] of what you noted sheree that there's a lot of words a lot of powerful poetic and prophetic words so i started studying him thought it would be a couple years it turned into almost a 10-year study and i mean this is in a google search this is like going to the uk going to ireland going to scotland thankfully my music you know when concerts and things put me there but i was able to stay a day or a week later and i'm going to the lincoln library and schaumburg and new york public library for 10 years and just gathering and understanding the culture of the time what he faced his courage his strength his um you know his boldness and speaking truth and um at the end of it i was writing a train and i said i'm just gonna long train right i'm gonna read some of my favorite uh fredrik douglas speeches and um a couple nights before i'd come up with some to me it was very odd composition of two double acoustic double bass two double bass um and voice and uh i didn't know what to do with it and i put it away and was reading one of his speeches that rhythm of that composition reminded me of that's the words and the patterns and the rhythm and the speech i came home and the words fit like a glove i completed composed two more songs surrounding it where the music came first and then i added the words of the words came first and i added the music and i thought it would just be a trilogy but it turned into a whole body of music where we actually have too much music now we have to decide which ones are going to appear on the album but it's been a powerful time and i think so many times in our culture we examine the fruit but we have to go all the way down to the root to really understand and so i'm grateful for that time of study and really surprised and deeply grateful that the lord allowed me to use my creativity as a composer musician of all girls and flowers to create this body of work where every lyric i sing are the words of frederick douglass and jazz or improvisational music that's great yeah you've mentioned before the link between remembrance and hope so it's not at all surprising to me that you would engage in historical study and i wanted to ask you about that that that link um you know why that is and that you know obviously part of the way that music keeps remembrance alive is by retaining and recalling our stories you know stories of our history but there are many stories in our history and not only those of individual persons but also of peoples too that can bring shame shame whether one is a victim a perpetrator complicit absent unaware of whatever it is and it seems that shame rarely brings hope or healing so i'd love to hear more from you just about the way that music and creativity make possible not only remembrance but a form of remembrance that could bring hope and healing yeah i i love that question thank you for that question you know there's been many um writers and poets and artists and musicians attributed to this quote but i love this quote that music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life and so what is the most important element in music it's silence it's that pause it's in that pause of what has come before and what is coming that we can live we remember the past remember the good and the bad uh the ugly and the beautiful but it's in that pause in that silence that we can push forward to the to the future you know that famous quote from hans christian anderson that says um you know where words fail uh music speaks and you know it's in that act of listening i believe that music can bring about so the notes are important harmony is important all the elements of music are important but it's in that pause and so it it does bring back that remembrance and to remember that to remember is to recall and it's to honor the lives you know an enslaved african said when she saw a member of her tribe coming to the plantation she said are we yet alive to see each other's face and remember and so actively remember is a a testament is an honoring of those that have gone before us but it also is a way to propel us and force us and drag us and bring us and accompany us and walk alongside of us um to continue to create so i think the music but particularly that silence you know you think of bebops and all these this you know convergence of notes upon notes and and then there's that silence that that really brings about what was played and what is about to be played you know what we call you know already and then not yet and i think that in that remembrance and in those silent moments that's where it's powerful and that's where music has its most powerful way also you know i'm a jazz musician so it's also the improvisation of of that risk of jumping off a mountain without a parachute the risk of creating on the spot and even though you study your theory and you practice and you're prepared um and you know the art of practice and you understand that at that moment you are jumping you're leaping you're risking and in that risk you fall i mean in jazz you get tired of falling and you you know you stop falling you do what you need to to minimize that but it's in that falling and in remembering that pain and suffering of that fall that when you go and in jazz which is so powerful is that there's the next note that determines whether it was a wrong note so it's a theology of grace you know uh critic asked miles davis oh this is powerful what you play there's two parts or four parts where i don't know how you got from that note to that note and that dynamic and miles davis just said oh that's where i made a mistake i just corrected in the next measure in the next beat and i think it's profound that we and those that follow the first and greatest artists have it have the theology of grace that where we've made a mistake we have a chance to make it right in our nation cherry in the history of nation we've made many mistakes but we have another opportunity another beat another measure to get it right and it's remembering while actively forging ahead but taking time to be silent and respecting that silence and not having that silence that's beautiful so we could talk for a long time i know there's a lot of questions waiting but before we do this um i'm anticipating that there are probably many people watching who like myself will never be musicians i cannot carry a tune in a bucket but um given that you have spent um a quarter century essentially you know studying performing embodying you know sort of this intersection of of theology and artistry and beauty and justice there are probably many people who are eager to be creative catalyst even if they don't have artistic talent what would you tell them what can they do to be creative artistic chasers of beauty and catalyst for justice even if there's very little musical ability sure to see to see beauty in the ordinary i did a series the photographer of taking ordinary objects that we never really really take time to look at and to see the beauty of them and really the beauty came when it was a close-up of the the object or the thing and and so it's powerful taking time to really look to really see but in the sense of creativity as a catalyst for justice to become an ally if you see injustice become an ally for those of us there's some of us and and hopefully most of us who are willing to be an artistic accomplice that's creative so it's not i agree with you i it's actually putting that love into action but in the midst of suffering and grief and lament um we look to the first and greatest artists who created out of nothing and so we're living in a broken world and a pandemic where um you know we have to cultivate a path towards loving and caring for each other um you know it's francis schaefer's saying imagining letting imagination rise above the stars that realizing that art matters that art matters in a broken world that art matters that art shapes that art reshapes us that art builds that art rebuilds us and that um you know the mystery of creating um is infused with the first and greatest artists and so create and and use it as an act of love but begin by seeing and valuing and supporting those that can carry a team for supporting those that are creating encourage them and be an ally and accomplish but create all of us are creatives we create in different ways and on different levels and different volumes and different values but create and bring beauty in the midst of that that's great i see we have many questions that have come in already and if you're joining us for the first time you can not only ask a question but you can also like a question that gives us a better idea of what some of the most the questions of the most interest are so to start off i'm actually going to combine two somewhat similar questions even nappier asks can you share some of your favorite recent artists who best embody the idea of chasing after beauty and then relatedly fritz heinzen asks are there other jazz musicians and composers who have very successfully combined jazz and religious themes that you would recommend to us sure i'll answer the second one first of course um there are many um i think of the great maryland williams i think of course of duke ellington and sacred song sweets um there's there's several that have brought about that that uh the combination of jazz improvisational music and and lyrics and music of faith that communicate that faith um for me i don't see a divide between the sacred and the secular but my disagree has been lyrically committed to justice to love and to the gospel of jesus christ and done primarily in jazz improvisational music so there's many but those two are two of my heroes of course there's james weidman who is a mentor to me who we heard walk together children in the start at the top of the the time together there's the great flautas composer james newton who has composed in european classical music and has done a profound um body has a profound body of music that speaks to and draws upon the creativity of connecting music with faith please check james wyman and james newton out and there's so many many more um for the second question which i forgot so can you repeat that sorry yes it was quite related even after you're asked can you share some of your favorite recent artists who are best best embody the idea of chasing after beauty okay wow um there's so many wow um you know i have to say in some ways the great writer thinker and um and in a way pro prophetic james baldwin as a writer and as an artist really continue to chase after beauty and acknowledge the tensions in his life when he refused and he continued to create and continue to chase beauty even when they left america and had america in his rearview mirror and even when he came back and even when he saw that things appeared when they appeared to change the root and the centrality of what was going on had not changed or had not moved in a way that was fast enough and so he's a great inspiration to me for many reasons but um he continued to reach for creativity and for beauty in the midst of a lot of despair in his life in the midst of you know attempting suicide in the midst of a depression in the midst of rage he continued to seek beauty until his last breath and even at this last breath he said i hope that somewhere in the rumble of my life there's something you can reach for there's some beauty there and that's our hope isn't it our hope is and the truth lies in the lord jesus christ where beauty has already won so a question from anne sharer and ann asked how does the embodiment of the arts relate to the to the physical suffering of both ourselves and those who've gone before us i think it's the art of lament look at all the great works of art the great bodies of music and we see that when truth telling about lament of that total and utter despair against pushing against unspeakable joy and that dance in between it's powerful you know nietzsche says you know life will be a mistake without music of paraphrasing um but you know and then he also says nietzsche says i cannot believe in a god who doesn't dance and i'm glad that our god dances but the same one who became a man of sorrows for is this same one who sings with us sings over us with joy and so that the greatest blue singer never stops singing and so that jesus never stops singing so i think it's that that combination that combined that community that that intrinsic um waves of together of that lament we have to tell the truth we don't give space for a limit we don't give provide um space for it or a place for it and when we get to living and when we're present in it and when we acknowledge it when we carry it it's then that the truth is told and some of the most powerful bodies of work have come through acknowledging and truth-telling through the lens of beauty but most certainly yeah that's great so our next question is uh from an anonymous attendee but it's a clarifying question that actually i think you just touched on and they ask is it creativity that gets us to justice or is it specifically beauty and if the latter could you please clarify how beauty gets us to justice we all know what beauty looks like you never have to say is that beautiful and although we live in a world where it's shoved down our throats what beauty is if indeed we have come to know the most beautiful one we understand what beauty is because we understand looking at other human beings that we are made in the image of the most beautiful one so stereotypes aside beauty in a combination of creativity is the one that points us to justice when we say and when we look at someone in the sense of justice i'm talking about how we treat each other and we say that is not good we are participating in an assault on imago day and we more importantly are saying that god made a mistake and that we know better and so that we become an art critic to the greatest artists ever now and so i would say to be very clear that it's in creating and in seeing beauty combine that it's a powerful way it's a profound way of confronting justice and and all you have to do is look at the gospel of jesus christ to see that again and again and again and again our next question comes from jackie veal and jackie i hope i pronounced your name correctly but jackie asked do you feel like you were destined to create this body of work and art that it was born in you or do you feel that and seeking and chasing beauty is something that you or we have to cultivate and work for this manifestation i think it's both you know um i think cooking well is is being creative and it took i was not a natural cook i had to work hard at it i had to learn i had to listen look i saw my great-great-grandmother that made my great-grandmother create phenomenal meals artistic meals for you know beautiful meals great tasting meals um with almost nothing so i think it's both jackie i think it's both i mean for me i've always felt as an artist from what i can first remember and i think that has a lot to do with my parents but i also think it has a lot to do with blood running warm in my vein that god in his sovereignty allowed me to have this beautiful beautiful legacy that is birthed on this land and ugliness but only he can transform and take beauty and make beauty out of ashes and so for me it's it's both and i think for some people it might be one or the other but i i believe it's both it's in cultivating but then also there are artists that just have it that just have known it and have chased after it from the beginning so a question comes from kevin young and kevin asked what are practical ways that i as a white man can practically make justice a reality for all people especially black americans or people who are still suffering years of racism in the u.s i think to really see them to really know them to sit at the feet of the culture and history of the people um particularly you know i've been talking a lot about the art and creativity of african americans so to do that i think to um still also know that you're made in the image of god so not to feel shame and not to back away from who god made you to be in his likeness um to study and to listen to listen to listen and to to really study i had a friend who wanted drapes new drapes in her house and for six months she could send me swatches she went to france to paris to get the swatches and everything it was really important that the drapes reflected her identity her loves her passions her art and then she came to me and she said i really need to spend some time learning about the history of african-american and what justice looks like for them and what it has and has not been send me six book titles and i'll order them and i'll read them i said no use the same six months of you research and send me 20 books and i'll pick six out you spend the time singing and not the cliff notes of studying so i would say studying and then also listening um and then acting there are acts of justice that you can do as an ally that you can do as accomplishment and it all centered around imago today i know that seems like the theme of the day but it really is of treating your brother and sister as you want to be treating of loving of realizing of sacrificing and of sharing and of giving back in a way that where you see injustices it's not just enough to speak the truth about it but to act towards it so for me my years decades of working in hiv and aids working with trans people working with the community trans community working with the young house working with homeless working in in prisons and bringing helping to bring about reform so it's one thing as my father said i want you you're an artist i want you not only to to what you do behind a piano and behind a mic i want to know what you're doing outside of that not that the art can't speak and and challenge but for him he said i want you to actively in the community to be doing the same thing you're doing behind the microphone and they showed me so those are a few things and two you know begin to share with friends and family of the injustice you see but to listen to see with new eyes to respect to study to love and to act in ways that you can repay in ways that you can fill that gap where justice hasn't filled it there's small tiny ways we can do it in a profound way so our next question comes from tally valentine and tally's asked this she says i'm reminded of willie james jennings talking about quote readjusting the sidelines for the future of our church culture and nation and shelling shelley calling poets the quote acknowledged legislators of the world how do you see artists doing this work of reimagination and legislation what do artists uniquely possess for seeing anew what is previously unseen hmm i i mean begins with truth telling and you can tell the truth in many ways you can speak you know where you whisper truth maybe shout it um when you're able to uh be creative extremists we have a whole history of those that were creative extremists in the public eye and fighting for justice particularly legislation so we all know what's going on with the voting act we all know the history of the vote for women of people of color and so there's ways of being creative extremists you know during world war one and world war two artists were active in if you will creating illusions so that the war would be won um and that's powerful um and to speak to power and create ways and think of new ways that we can do that and um you know creativity in the sense of of action of um being involved i do believe you have to spend time um knowing that you're called to do this because there's been many mistakes missteps and many actions that have proven detrimental when a person was trying to help so i think in some ways you ask the question am i called to do this in which ways am i called to do this and how can i do that and in jesus his life on earth 33 it's it's just a remarkable how he was able to do that in silence and confronting and storytelling and speaking and action and community and gathering people together starting small and doing those those kinds of things i think it's really profound frederick douglass speaks to that he has a profound quote he talks about all that's gone on he says something like slavery has la has has you know carried on an act of blood even now and it's so prophetic because it's 20 21 and that's still true has has left the testament of blood and he lists all these things about the shedding of blood and then he says and the church has been silent sheree and tali you know the church hasn't been so silent now the words that are coming out are they the truth are they reflected of jesus christ who loved the marginal lies who fought for them who died for them are the words that the church the divided church speaking does its center on the unadulterated gospel of jesus christ in its fullness so i want to combine two questions that are somewhat related and we can always break them out elizabeth hamlet asked what comfort and practical advice can you offer to a religious community that has been afraid of art and creativity and somewhat similarly eva asked how can we encourage the church to support more and varied creative forms and to better recognize their generative power yeah history tells us that you know there was a time when you wanted to experience great art where did you go to the church um that is probably the last place people are looking for when they're looking for great art i think it's really powerful that if we took seriously artists we took seriously their met their bodies of work particularly those that are prophetic and that we supported them the world would see jesus in a new and powerful way so what i'm saying is is that um if the world could see us loving each other loving our enemies and seeking for justice what micah 6 6 8 talks about putting out and presenting beautiful powerful art in a healing way in a profound way in a way that's organic in a way that is transformational we wouldn't need to say how can we get people to church how can we get them here they would be flooding our church i say this all the time in 9 11 there was something that the churches particularly in new york had to offer that so many thousands of new yorkers came they somehow thought we had the answer and you know as you very well know two and three services were added and it was the music that was played and it was the artistry of of creating and speaking a sermon if we would put that first and foremost and really show the world that we believe in the first and greatest artists and we're made in this image and we carry that gift the world will be transformed america will be transformed our states our city our communities will be transformed and just as those mothers that came to see where their sons were slain my mother by putting a bouquet of flowers that grief was transformed in a small way but in a powerful way we're going to have time for one more question and this one comes from claire leichert and claire asked you discuss knowing you are called to the work and persevering because of that calling how do you discern that call to creativity and beauty for each person i think it goes back to the silence i think if you sense or you have a desire to know that you want to create on a in a deeper way um i think it's in that silence um for me it was a community much like marion anderson i went to attended the same church he did not at the same time but um as a young girl and as that came true christian and church community surrounded her and and pushed her and supported her they did the same to me so how i knew was an elder church came to me and said ruth that's nice you sing a solo every now and then on the celestial choir but you have a voice that's different you have a voice that should be heard you need to to walk in that and so i think it's powerful when a community comes around and does that but speak to those that love you that know you and seek the lord and ask you are creative but if you're longing and wanting and asking the question of can i be an artist in a way that is lived and breathed daily sit in silence reflection consult your community those that you love and then take the leap and act and create ruth would love to have the last word from you sure i'm gonna read a quote from my brother and friend who is an artist and um the composer and then just end with a few sentences of my own thoughts joshua stamper states no one thing we create is the definite statement of our aesthetic vision each work is a thread all threads are woven together to create the larger tapestry of our vision and language each thread represents a moment that is unique a thread spun tomorrow looks and feels different than the threads spun today or yesterday or next week that is part of the beauty of the tapestry and is as it's being woven moment by moment when it's finished all moments will be taken in at once in the meantime don't ask one thread to do the job with a full tapestry while we spin each thread our only responsibility is to make sure it is sound strong and has integrity for me art is essential to human life and its spirit um in a world of uncertainty to create is an act of artistic disruption creativity is a vehicle for truth and can address the themes of justice through the lens of beauty creativity is essential to human life and in the spirit and it speaks profoundly to the human condition in our time we need redemptive beauty to serve as an interruption to the flow of injustice and as a form of resistance thank you ruth that was beautiful thank you to all of you for joining us have a great weekend

Channel: The Trinity Forum

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Id: t8HxEdRlKCc

Length: 52min 26sec (3146 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 24 2021