As the first chapters of Genesis demonstrate, a life of flourishing for human beings involves both creativity and community. Whether the creative output is a seasonal garden or stirring music, working together to create beauty is both a metaphor and a method for seeking reconciliation in the church and the broader world.

David Bailey and Mia Chung-Yee are talented creators, working with others on varied projects spanning music, community-building, education, and much else. Together, they will help us to think deeply and work faithfully towards creativity, reconciliation, and human flourishing in whatever communities we are part of.

We held an Online Conversation with David Bailey and Mia Chung-Yee on June 28 to explore the connections between imagination and community.

Thank you to our co-host, Octet Collaborative, for their support of this event!

Online Conversation | David Bailey + Mia Chung-Yee | June 29, 2024

Cherie Harder: Welcome to all of you joining us today for today’s Online Conversation with David Bailey and Mia Chung-Yee on “Creativity, Reconciliation, and Flourishing.” We’re delighted that so many of you are with us today. I’d like to especially welcome our first-time registrants—if you are joining us for the very first time, we’re so glad you’re here—and also to give a shout-out to our many international registrants as well, joining us from around a dozen or so countries. So thank you for tuning in across the miles and time zones. And if you haven’t done so already, let us know in the chat box where you’re joining us from. It’s always fun to see just the range of locales that people are tuning in from.

If you are one of those first-time guests or otherwise new to the work of 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, and ultimately to come to better know the Author of the answers. And we hope today’s Online Conversation will be a small taste of that for you today.

Over the last four years since we first started this Online Conversation series, we’ve hosted quite a few discussions that have explored various aspects of the growth of division, political polarization, loneliness, anxiety, social media addiction, as well as their consequences, both for us as persons and for us as a people. And in turn, we’ve heard from many of you about the struggle in trying to make a difference, or the discouragement that often attends trying to resist or push back against the cultural riptide that tends towards fracture and fragmentation.

But as the first chapters of Genesis illustrate, we are created for community and for co-creation, and a life of flourishing necessarily involves both. So today, we’re delighted to welcome two guests who, in very different ways, work towards building wonderfully imaginative and countercultural communities and have argued in their respective spheres that creating beauty together offers new insights and possibilities, both for civic and personal flourishing, and for better knowing, loving, and living with our neighbors.

So I’m delighted to welcome both David Bailey and Mia Chung-Yee. David is a public theologian, culture maker, and catalyst focused on building reconciling communities, as well as the founder of Arrabon, a spiritual formation ministry that equips the Church to creatively pursue racial healing in their communities. He’s also the executive producer of the Urban Doxology Project, the author of Arrabon: Learning Reconciliation Through Community and Worship Music, and the coauthor of the study series A People, a Place, and a Just Society.

Joining David is Mia Chung-Yee. Mia is an internationally renowned pianist, concerto soloist, and chamber musician, whose music you just heard in the introduction to our Online Conversation. She’s also the founder and executive director of the Octet Collaborative, a community of students, faculty, and staff at MIT dedicated to human flourishing, formed by the historic Christian faith. She previously served as a professor of music at Gordon College and on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and writes and speaks on the transformative impact of music on cognition, learning, and health.

David and Mia, welcome. Great to see you both.

Mia Chung-Yee: Thank you, Cherie.

David Bailey: Good to be here.

Cherie Harder: You bet. So you both have started very different countercultural Christian communities in different spaces and places. And so as we start out, I’d love to hear you both talk a little bit about those communities, about Arrabon and Octet, and what led you to instigate and catalyze that kind of community. And, David, maybe we can start with you.

David Bailey: Yeah. So early on in my life, I started playing the piano really young. I was about eight. And I grew up in a Pentecostal church, and I became the church piano player around 11. You kind of hang around the piano until the Holy Spirit jumps on you and you start playing the piano. And so that kind of happened, and my parents encouraged entrepreneurship. And so when I was about 14, I really got good enough to play gigs around the city. And so that opened me up to a whole different world. My church was an urban inner city [church] and like housing projects. I lived in the suburbs. But then when I started to play gigs around the city, it opened me up to country clubs and gated communities and a whole different socio-economic space.

And so over the years, being a musician, by the time I go to college for music, you know, I’m playing gigs on the weekend at country clubs and inner city and jazz clubs and Presbyterian services and Pentecostal services and Episcopal services. And I basically kind of become a cultural anthropologist. And so, shortly after college, being a professional musician was part of my vocational call at the time. And I would spend a lot of time reading and reading about culture, but realizing that as a music producer, music director, you basically become a cultural anthropologist.

I had a love for the Church and really was part of a church-planting team. And we were crossing classes as well as crossing socioeconomic, education, and racial and ethnic differences. And there just wasn’t a lot of resources in that area. And we had to create the thing. So as a producer, I was like, if something doesn’t exist, let’s try to create something. And so I created something. And that’s how I started asking the question, what does formation look like for people of diverse education levels, learning styles, socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds? And so that became my sociological experiment. And, you know, I did that work for about ten years, very concentrated in a local church context, in a pastoral type of role.

Cherie Harder: That’s great. And Mia. What about you?

Mia Chung-Yee: Thanks, Cherie, and thanks for this opportunity to be here in this conversation, and also to all the listeners who’ve joined us today. So there are sort of two ways in which I would respond to this. I love how David set a great precedent for me by sharing his formation through music. For me, it was through the Western classical tradition, since I was very young, maybe about seven years old, is when I started lessons. And for a pianist, for a concert pianist, so much is about the formation of technique, through the doing. And playing music, it’s always this sort of output-focused activity. And once I got to college, and continued studying music, the school that I was at was not necessarily performance-oriented, but very much about studying the score and listening and understanding the language more deeply. I kind of had a minor undergraduate existential crisis, if you will, because a mentor of mine said, “Mia, you can play anything, but, you know, the question is, do you really understand what you’re playing?” And it was really at that moment I realized that what I needed to cultivate was a deeper discipline and life of listening and receiving versus producing and getting ready to meet the next concert expectation or competition expectation.

And so that continued through my studies. And where I found this the most productive is actually in the context of chamber music. I had a professor, Jacob Lateiner, who’s no longer here, but was a wonderful teacher at Juilliard, and he used to say, “Mia, all of music is chamber music.” It’s right hand, left hand. Like, there are two musicians working together, you know, in support of one another in flex. Give and take all the time. And that is very true. But where you really see this come to bear is when you play with other musicians and you’re placed in this position of constantly listening to where they’re going with the line, what they’re going to do, and how can you support them so that they sound the best that they can sound. And then, you know, in turn, vice versa. But it’s always a conversation where you are basically serving each other toward a more flourishing and beautiful end, which is the composite of all the voices. So that’s one strand that I want to share.

The second strand, I think, in my formation came in 2017, in a very profound way. While teaching at the Curtis Institute of Music, my husband was recruited back to the Boston area, and so we decided to move to Boston, which meant then, of course, that I was commuting between Boston and Philadelphia. During that first year of the transition in 2017 to 18, I had a lot of time, when I wasn’t in Philly, to just sit and pray. And I really felt God was calling me into this space of quietude, like I needed sort of a mental, emotional cleansing, to sort of download all the thoughts and the tasks and the to-do’s and, you know, things that I wanted to accomplish. I needed to sort of clear the deck and the desk, the mental desk, the spiritual desk, and just listen. It wasn’t easy for me because I’m an extrovert and I’m a doer. So, you know, we have to contend with our basic wiring and natures. But it was in that time that the idea of getting involved in the Christian Study Center germinated and grew. I never, ever anticipated being involved in that work. And had I not had that season of just listening and praying and meditating, I’m not sure that I would have ended up doing this work with the Octet Collaborative.

Cherie Harder: Well that’s fascinating. So, David, you talked before about being a cultural anthropologist, and in many ways you applied that skill towards your work at Arrabon, which is a reconciliation ministry and community. And one of the things that has sort of struck me—and part of the genesis of this whole conversation with the two of you—is the way that the arts and music have played a role in your respective ministries. But you have talked a lot about the importance of co-creation in reconciliation. Why is creating things together, whether it is music or other artistic or creative artifacts so important to reconciliation as well as the growth of a robust community?

David Bailey: Yeah. I mean, some of it’s the line that—I can’t remember who I can attribute this to—but he said that culture eats strategy for lunch. It was this significant managerial thinker. And a lot of, like—. A lot of times the question I ask is, when you look at who has more influence in culture, [is it the] pastor or artist? Every time I do the survey, folks always say artists, right? But the reason why is because the things that we make have influence, because we use these things, we consume these things. Like, it shapes our imagination. And there is no transformation without imagination. Like, everything starts with imagination.

So when we start to work together around this thing that we are imagining or having to lean or to— and I love how Mia talked about listening, how that’s so key. Because it’s teaching you how to pay attention to something other than yourself. At the same time, when you are paying attention to yourself, it’s in service to others. And there’s a formation, a discipline that’s happening. And so, so much gets accomplished. I mean, I think that was very intuitive for me as a music producer and music director, that I realized in the church world, a lot of pastors did not understand how to create culture. They didn’t really realize they were creating culture. Or they thought they were creating culture. They thought they were making it from the pulpit, which is one aspect of it. That’s about casting vision. But the actual co-laboring, coworking together is the way to actually make significant changes, not just from here on only, but it’s also this action of doing that’s so important.

Cherie Harder: Along those lines, Mia, you’ve spoken at different events about something along the same lines, which is the power that music has to sort of reconcile and build community. And I think you’ve talked how singing together will literally synchronize not only your breath, but even your heartbeat. And much of the study center and the Octet Collaborative and community at MIT is aimed both at reconciliation, community building, but also reintegration. And so I’d love to hear you talk a little bit about why you see music, or perhaps other artistic endeavors as well, so important to building up a community as well as to the full integration of a person.

Mia Chung-Yee: Thanks so much, Cherie. That’s a such a great question. And please stop me if I go on and on. I totally welcome that. So what I would say, first of all, is that at a school like MIT, where Octet Collaborative is based, there’s a heavy emphasis on science and metrics, understanding through analysis and experimentation and data. And what happens is there’s this cultivation of left-brain importance and dominance, you know, sort of a high indexing of the capabilities of the rational, logical mind towards intellectual progress. And that’s all wonderful. And it’s benefited our society tremendously in so many numerous ways. But I think what we can be aware of at the same time is that in the process of highly indexing that, we can sometimes short-change and underdo the power and the resource of our right hemisphere of the brain.

So here I am sort of integrating neuroscience just because of the context I’m in. But I think it does perhaps paint a pretty effective picture in helping us understand that the right hemisphere of the brain has this beautiful way of creating coherence, enabling us to understand the big picture. So those little details and parcels of scientific information in the context of larger questions, larger understandings of the world and of those around us. And so to the extent that the arts can actually cultivate that practice of incorporating the right hemisphere and in communication with the left—it’s always together, you know, they’re complementary—I think we can benefit each other in terms of community formation, but even benefit our own intellectual lives and the amount of joy we experience living in this world.

And so for Octet, which, you know, you can see the name references the number eight. It’s a reference to the concept of the new creation. Through the New Testament we see, through the death and then the resurrection of Christ, that we have a new opportunity to cast the world anew through what we’ve learned, through his example, and through his sacrifice. And what we see is that in the world of chemistry, where Octet is a prevailing concept, this balance of eight electrons in an atom, that atoms seek that out, that balance, or octet in music making, which is a very complex weave of eight voices, probably one of the most complex. Or in digital technology, the term octet is also relevant. It seems that we have this opportunity to cultivate a kind of mental integration, a holism, the incorporation of heart, soul, mind, and strength as we find in the Shema in Deuteronomy 6 or in the verses of Mark 12:30. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” There’s an opportunity to bring our whole selves into this understanding of the world and towards our own flourishing.

Cherie Harder: So one of the things I think we kind of—well, I’ll just speak for myself—many of us kind of struggle with is, we’re at a time where we don’t have that much musical talent or artistic talent. Can’t draw. Can’t carry a tune in the bucket. And so for many of us, we become consumers of music rather than producers of it. And some of that, we could say, it’s even out of a concern for our community. No one wants to listen to me sing. But, David, you’ve also pointed out that when we become consumers rather than producers, that’s formative in a way. It forms us as people. And so I’d love to hear you both comment on this, but maybe we can start with you. How does essentially a habituation towards consuming the arts or creative efforts rather than producing them, making, interaction— how does that change us or form us both as individuals and as a community?

David Bailey: Yeah. I mean, I’ll start off a little bit with— I appreciate Albert Einstein. His quote says, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant.” We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. And that is something that is really important for us to understand, that depending on your role in the community depends on your level of excellence, that you need to be able to perform, whatever creative endeavor that is. I think about the Exodus narrative, where after folks have been enslaved for hundreds of years, God delivers them in the Passover night. They’re in the middle of the desert, and then the next instruction is let’s build a place of worship, but also a beautiful place of worship. And the first indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the human body is with two artists that have the skill-set of not only how to create beauty and art and artisan[ship], but also to lead the community to do the work of the people, the liturgy, the actually coming together to create this beautiful tabernacle that requires sewing skills and tapestry skills and carving and woodworking and metal-working and things of that nature. And everybody got a chance to contribute. Some people’s contribution was the offertory to help get in the hands of skilled people, other people with maybe some of the labor, and some of them were actually the folks that spent a significant part of their life learning how to be excellent in this.

And I think that is what the body of Christ ought to be. It’s not just about the music. It’s not just about the performative aspect of it, but it’s really how do we be the work of the people? How do we co-create? How do we manage that invitation that God’s inviting us all to work in where that’s something that we co-own together, co-steward together with God in this space?

And so, unfortunately, in a post-industrialized and kind of highly consumer-oriented space where we don’t have that kind of mentality, instead of being contributors, we become consumers. And when you’re a consumer, you could just not be as invested and you just go to the highest bidder or whatever thing, you know, suits your fancy. And so that’s just a shift. It’s okay that you don’t sing well, but there’s another way of contributing that is so important that you’re a part of it. And we all are a part of this journey of hosting, ultimately hosting God, hosting the Holy Spirit.

Mia Chung-Yee: Yeah. Could I add to that, Cherie? Yeah, I think so well put, David. I think, yeah, I always say if you can’t carry a tune—. And it’s interesting, I’ve heard a lot of folks who are highly articulate say that. But the fact is, is that you are actually using a musical sense when you craft your sentences, Cherie. And you clearly have a very high gifting for that. You know, each sentence has a logic and it transitions naturally to another. But the parallels between language and music are so powerful. I mean, the singing voice emerges because we speak. It’s just a natural extension of speech. But now through pitch. And so, I hope that you can realize that you can put your sort of literary sense or your verbal sense to work with the musical, whether it’s crafting lyrics for a song or something along those lines.

But what I would add is that music-making or artisanship, artistry, all of these things which David rightly indicates was employed at the very beginning—and in such clear detail, like, very specific, about how many people would be involved in these different efforts, what kind of materials and skills were necessary to the building of the temple. God cares, I think, about the attention, the posture of the heart and mind to the activity itself.

And here’s where consumerism comes in. I think right now we are about “what can therapeutically help me?” You know, what can sort of get me out of this rut? Or how can I use this to benefit my current state or circumstance? And what it can shortchange us of is the ability to ask the larger questions of why it is that we long for these things. You know, why did God cast such detail when he was crafting the temple? What does it say about him? Or what does it say about the way that we’re made? And so there are larger existential creative questions about our purpose and the meaning of our existence that I think we can sort of stymie or close off if we do just take the consumer angle to music.

Cherie Harder: You know, one of the things that struck me just in doing a little bit of background research on your respective journeys and your organizations, is that there’s a shared emphasis not only on reconciliation, but also, in some ways, reintegration. And, Mia, I wanted to start with you on that, in that some of the stated purposes of Octet are very explicitly combining those two, the reintegration of the scholar as a person and within community. But then you also aim at the reintegration of all of the different fields of learning, which seems rather bold too, coming from someone at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. So I’m curious how you see the connection between the reconciliation of the individual to the community and the reintegration of the different fields of learning.

Mia Chung-Yee: So great question. I think— so I come at this clearly as a musician who is always thinking somewhat holistically. One of the ways in which we process language as musicians is we don’t think of, necessarily, the literal packets of meaning that each word conveys, but we think of the feel of the entire statement. This gestalt or totality of what’s being conveyed. So we’re always looking at, like, what’s the posture of the person, the facial expression, you know, the whole intent?

And so since that is a natural posture for a musician, when I enter a place like MIT where we’re all wired very differently, but perhaps there are some challenges where we can provide some aid in the formation of community and in promoting curiosity and wonder around certain questions that are not necessarily being engaged, that could be across the arts and sciences.

And so we have three very different strands of engagement. I’ll start with the awe and wonder leg first, which is our third programing wing, which we’ll be rolling out soon. But it’s like, how are the arts and the sciences connected and how do we, as people of faith, encourage that sense of curiosity and mystery and awe and wonder in the context of the academy, when many of us in the academy feel drawn to output, like constantly sort of producing something to demonstrate our merits within a discipline? But in some ways it’s in contradiction to the very thing that brought us into the academy in the first place, which was the love of asking these questions, to realize that there are certain patterns and structures and music that translate in nature and in the sciences, like, who would ever even take on those questions? Because we’re all so used to being within our narrow silos. So we’re breaking down the silos of discipline and the habits of mind that productivity and output have sort of indoctrinated and muscularized in us. So that’s awe and wonder.

Another area is science, tech, and ethics. How is it important— why is it important to engage the larger questions around meaning and what is right, what is true, what is beautiful and goodwill towards others, even as we invent and craft technology? Because so often we want to do what’s good for the world. And we have a course called “A Better Future.” And the reason that course came about is because our lead instructor, Roz Picard, who’s in our artificial intelligence—empathic artificial intelligence—at the Media Lab indicated that we often use that expression without necessarily unpacking what that better world really is and looks like. And perhaps there are some unintended consequences, even in spite of the best of our intentions as we create invention that we couldn’t have anticipated.

So the question is, what does it mean to be human? Right? What does it mean to care for those around us? What does it mean to perhaps factor in those that are not part of this conversation around invention and technology? And so that, again, is also cross-disciplinary.

And then our first programing wing is to promote intellectual hospitality through Dialogos, roundtable discussions that improve civil discourse. But one of our practices is not just to bring in interlocutors or speakers, it’s to include roundtable discussion. But before we do any of that, we have music performed to basically prime the empathic channels of our brains to open up the receptivity to an opposing view. And it’s amazing how powerful music is, especially music of the voice. And interestingly enough, what really gets to the heart and opens up the emotions are songs that have a lot of melismatic treatment. In other words, a lot of pitches per syllable. Syllabic music is less effective because it sort of foregrounds text. But when you have a lot of pitch and it’s very melodious, there’s something that happens in us emotionally that fundamentally changes the ground game.

Cherie Harder: That’s fascinating. There are so many more questions I would love to ask both of you. We’re going to get to questions from our viewers in just a second. But before that, I really wanted to ask you both, we are at a time where it seems like the forces of division and disintegration are strong and in a whole variety of ways. We increasingly have our own information streams, our own entertainment choices, pushed on us by algorithms. David, the work of reconciliation, whether it’s racial reconciliation or other forms, it is fraught. It is a challenging time. And so I’d love to hear both of you sort of wrestle with out loud and speak to—David, maybe we can start with you—how do you think about the next year ahead, just knowing some of the challenges that are there? But also, and related to it, what are the formational liturgies, the embodied practices, that help orient us towards reconciliation and spiritual reintegration that you both practice and put at the heart of your ministry?

David Bailey: Yeah. You know, we are living in a time where there tends to be more political discipleship going on than there is even biblical discipleship. And it’s happening on a digital level. It’s happening, discipleship, through our screens and even at an area that’s not even that conscious. I just want to show a visual that I oftentimes— when we approach any particular topic, whatever the topic is, usually within 2 to 3 minutes, we could hear where the person’s source is coming from. And so the imagination is subconsciously being shaped by oftentimes a secular imagination from the left or from the right.

And I think that one of the key aspects of formation that’s significantly important over this next year is fasting, is to actually spend time getting off of the consumption of political ideology. And even it’s like, well, what if I’m not informed? What if I’m not informed? I mean, you know, what voting day is. I mean, you know, like— and literally like you—. But then if you actually fast, it actually would then kind of help you to be in touch with some of these kind of raw desires and kind of wrongly ordered things and helps to kind of expose our addictions, I think, in ways that’s not even about the thing that’s going on out there in our political space. 

But then it would also give you new— like, if you have to come back from fasting, your taste buds and your senses are more intense. And I think that I would also encourage you to listen with fresh ears, to listen. And not just listen with a desire to win an argument or to be right, but to listen with a desire to love your neighbor and to love God, to have ears to hear in a very different way. But highly recommend to do that and then to say like, hey, Lord, how do I engage in a way that moves people to more love of God and love of neighbor in my response than whatever it is that the billions of dollars that are being pumped to get us fearful and angry enough to get out to vote for the person that they want us to vote for? And I think that we can allow room for the Holy Spirit to be at work in our midst so that we can show up differently this year as the people of God than the way we just are following the same rank-and-file of whatever person, whatever side we roll politically, of people who don’t follow Jesus.

And so I think if we show up different as followers of Jesus, then I think that that is a way to engage in that. But if we just kind of do whatever’s on our screen, we’re going to just be like the way everybody is and we’re going to have a Pavlov’s-dogs type of response, without the discipline of fasting and listening and silence and solitude.

Cherie Harder: That’s great.

Mia Chung-Yee: Yeah, I would agree with that. I think that what you’re speaking to, David, is our love of ideas and thoughts and information. So we can consume that as well. And our love of that is often primed in order so that we could go out and speak and spout that same information to somebody else, right, to share it and say, “I’m informed. This is what I know, and I know this stuff, and I’m going to win the argument.” Right? So what it does is, technology in particular, because it’s often the channel through which we get information—. And so I challenge sort of the means by which we are informed, like, let’s be informed by being with each other. Let’s sit down with somebody who thinks very differently, and say, “Please unpack for me what you think, and the life experiences you’ve had that have led you to this place,” cultivating a mindset of understanding in the embodied presence of another. I think that’s really important because post-Covid, so many of our typical habits of convening and communing and being with each other were destroyed. And now we’ve habituated the ability to connect online.

So I think one of the insights that came about—if you would afford me this opportunity to sort of share something I learned in one of the classes we were offering—we have a class called “Disagreeing Well” through Octet, and it happens in the January term, month, of MIT. It’s just four sessions. And in these sessions we teach student-staff and faculty how to listen empathically. And at the closing conversation on Gaza—so you imagine, in January, we were at the height of the controversies on campus, and this was post the congressional hearings in December with the three presidents from the universities. So it was a very charged time. What came out was the sense that, hmm, is there something that we’re not addressing in each other that keeps ratcheting up the conflict and the dialogue in an unproductive way? Are we not recognizing something in our shared humanity? Is there a lost opportunity here?

And what came about in one of the comments of the students was, like, there is no place to share emotion in the academy in a way that can be respected. You see, everybody hides around extremely sophisticated language, academic language, you know, ideology and thought and tries to use supportive historical evidence, whatever, but without recognizing that the vitriol comes from a place potentially of fear, of great loss and longing and sadness. And how can we as a community recognize those aspects of who we are as embodied creatures, as human beings? First, we all share that, whether you’re on, you know, whatever side you’re on. Can we just respect that and appreciate that in each other, that we share this as human beings? That is a beginning point. And then let’s cultivate the language and the habits that build upon that across difference in order to make progress.

So in terms of habits for the future, my emphasis right now is to encourage listening beneath the spoken word. You know, take the word, but hear the tone and ask, what drives that interest? What drives the strength of that statement? What is the fear, the longing, or the yearning of that person which speaks to their embodiment? Their imago dei? They are whole humans, heart, soul, mind, and strength. And there’s some aspect of their human being that is not being addressed or heard or supported or loved that needs to be.

Cherie Harder: Well, there are so many good questions that have come in. And so, just a reminder to those of you who are joining us, you can not only ask a question, but you can also like a question. That gives us a sense of what some of the more popular questions are. And since I know we’re not going to be able to get to all of these, I’m actually going to combine two of them. So Madonna Hamel asks, “Growing up, we used to have sing-alongs in our home. My mom was a singer and the church choir director and sing-alongs were her form of radical hospitality. Sadly, since the rise of quote ‘Got Talent’-type shows, so many friends won’t sing along, even around campfires, because they are not ‘singers.’ How do we bring sing-alongs back?” And I’m actually going to ladle on top of that one other question from an anonymous attendee who asked, “What place do you think silence has in your formation?” So sing-alongs and silence. David, I want to toss that to you.

David Bailey: Yeah. You know, actually, I’ll give two examples. I think, one, in a multi-class church congregation, it is very difficult to bring— to just have practices of equality. You know, even when we eat a meal together, let’s just say anybody who would come on the Trinity Forum, most likely we, whatever meal that’s offered, we have choices about meals. We can go to restaurants. You know, we have more economic flexibility. And then we are with folks who have a lot of food insecurity. They would, like, kind of come to the meal and it would be a little bit more of a desperation that would be there. It’s just hard. As hard as you work to just kind of have and be at a place of mutuality around that space because we’re like, oh, do I like this on the menu or not? Or do I kind of, you know, like those choices— we live in a certain kind of way. It was really fascinating, the choir, the gospel choir, it was an opportunity to kind of flip some of the power dynamics that are just kind of inherited in the ways that we’re engaging. Some of the folks who might have been, in our particular case, might have been a little bit poorer, had more experience in the gospel choir genre. Some of the kind of like, in our particular case, a lot of the white folks were also folks who were college-educated and/or have some socio-economic stability. And it just kind of flipped the dynamics, and it was about working and singing together.

I think there’s something powerful within this space, because even you could be a bad singer or a good singer, and you can have your strengths and weaknesses, but it’s all about being one voice that you’re working together on in the space. And I think that we need to have more opportunities for things of that nature. People are longing for community. I think doing community choirs, I think, is actually a great thing to bring back because people are thirsty for relationships and being a part of something bigger than themselves.

And then I think the role of silence, I mean, it’s interesting. I mean, my tradition I grew up in was a Pentecostal, I’m ordained Pentecostal minister. And it’s interesting that I ended up as I still am Pentecostal, and it was a very loud space. A lot of energy, which is not my normal orientation. I really love the life of the mind. I like to think my feelings versus feel my feelings. And I’ve had to grow and mature into all of that. 

But then where I really landed, I think, in a space is really in a space of— I’ve become more of a contemplative. You know, I’ve really spent a lot of time and just learning about the Church and the first 1,500 years of the Church and the contemplative tradition. And so there’s a lot that happens really through listening and silence in ways that is so key to be able to be open-handed for what God is at work. And so I think there’s, again, the unity in diversity I think is so key. And so creating space to be silent and listen to both know God, but then also to get a chance to know what Mia talked about was to like, listen—I forgot how you said it, Mia—but it was like, listen beyond the words. Listen at a deeper level of listening. And really, what I hear you saying is like, listen at a place of desire. And when we’re not silent, we actually can’t even get in touch with our own desires at a root level, God’s desires, or even desires of our brothers and sisters, because there’s a level of noise. A deep silencing and active listening that has to happen to listen at that level.

Cherie Harder: That’s great. Mia, I’m going to toss to you our next question, which is from Laurie Tishler. And Laurie says, “When Saul was experiencing demonic fits, it was David’s music that calmed him. I’ve experienced the spiritual power of music in my own life. You’ve articulated well the left-right brain collaboration, breathing, and social benefits of singing together, etc. Can you comment on the sheer fact of the spiritual world connection in the arts?”

Mia Chung-Yee: Yeah, absolutely. You know, it probably isn’t time to get into the frequency dynamics, the physics of sound, but like, certain chords actually elicit a sense of distress in us, which is the source of tension. And then there’s certain chords and harmonies like a major triad, for example, that give us a sense of resolution or repose. And it’s the interaction of tension and resolution in music that creates interest in a composition. Right? You build on these larger principles in order to write music that takes us on a kind of journey. And life is all about this constant interaction between tension and resolution at various different stages of our lives. We are either heading towards tension or in tension or heading towards resolution or in resolution. And so music has this powerful way of capturing that.

So, I think, what I would say is that because of the physical nature of sound—we’re connected to these natural forces of frequency dynamics—it’s a reflection of our natural universe, our world order, the way in which God created things. And also it says something about us and our longing for that connection to the natural universe and the way it was created. And so I think that music is one of the most beautiful ways in which this integrated sort of coming together of the natural created order and God’s design of us and our world, our deepest emotional longings, and the powerful structure and reason that goes into writing great music, all of this comes together in the most beautiful weave. And we can actually experience it.

I’m such a champion of sacred music and the Missa Solemnis, which is Beethoven’s Solemn Mass, was what he considered to be his greatest piece of music. But the amazing thing is, he wrote that in a world of complete silence, you know, between 1819, 1823, he was sort of studying and working on it on and off, completely silent. But somehow there was this sense, you know, the rightness of that musical endeavor, a deep, profound spiritual sense of that connection for him. So I hope I’ve addressed the question.

Cherie Harder: Yes, absolutely. So our next question comes from Melanie Henderson. And Melanie asks, “How do we enter into genuine co-creativity and artistic collaboration for the sake of reconciliation, when we aren’t all speaking the same language and/or are artistic syntaxes are so different?” David, I’ll toss that one to you.

David Bailey: Yeah. I mean, so that’s actually the gift. I mean, like, it’s really about— I mean, I see—. So, a presupposition in which I’m operating under is that the practice of reconciliation is spiritual formation. And so there is an aspect, like, God doesn’t care about, like, is David right, or is Mia right? Or, you know, is Cherie right? He doesn’t care about those things. It’s really more so about how are we trying to honor God? How are we trying to honor one another? How are we working in our—? It’s about the process, you know, it’s the process of sanctification.

So when we think about collaboration, in a way— you know, I’m not as much of a professional musician as I used to be. I just don’t do it on a daily basis. But when I did, I played by ear. I mean, I can read music enough, but I’m just not—. That’s not my natural native tongue. Me, being a classical musician would be in a space. And so, like, yeah, we can collaborate, but we just couldn’t jump in. We just can’t jump in and just do something. And that’s okay. It’s okay because it’s going to require for us to just start off and just listen. We both technically play the piano, but we don’t play the piano in the same way. And so we got to find these points of bridges that we can then figure out. And then to not be about the win or loss. It’s not about necessarily the concert or the performance, but it’s about the process of learning about each other, getting to know one another, learning about her world, she learning about my world, and then us discovering in mutuality what produces out of this space.

And I think the thing is, is that I’m open handed because I think when we’re in control, like when we try to control the outcomes of the thing, I think that’s where we get wrong. God’s the one that knows what the outcome is supposed to be. We need to be concerned about how we show up and being a part of the process, and just be faithful to the process and leave the outcomes up to the Lord in that space. And so that’s how I would really encourage that dealing. And be curious about the language. And what do you mean? Because even in music, when you go from classical to jazz or blues or gospel, even some of the usage of certain kinds of— I mean, like the tritone. The tritone is oftentimes considered an uglier tone in a classical tradition, certain areas of the classical tradition. And in the Blues and the gospel tradition, it’s called the Blue Note. It’s the most used thing that kind of makes it such a lovely space. But in a lot of various areas of classical tradition, that tritone interval was something to be avoided or to be resolved as soon as possible. And so, you know, we could sit around and argue about that, or we can understand, how do you use it? We could be curious about it. And out of that curiosity, maybe that could lead to some innovation or something that could come out of it.

Mia Chung-Yee: Yeah. That’s so good. Could I just piggyback on that, Cherie? Yeah. That’s such a great musical analog, David. Thank you for bringing that up. You’re so right. And it has so much to do with the way we, kind of the esthetics that we yearn for. So in one classical tradition, resolving the tension is the goal or perhaps delaying the resolution for as long as possible, then finally resolving it for great emotional impact, in a sense of, ah, catharsis when the resolution happens. But understanding that in the Blues tradition, for example, it was born of sorrow, right? There’s a lament, a powerful yearning and kind of a groan that it’s meant to represent, that is born of hardship and saying, “Ah, that resonates with me. I understand that. I can see why it’s led to this particular expression or esthetic.” So that is so great. So thanks for sharing that.

I think one of the ways of creating as much immediacy as possible for me as a person of faith has been—and whether you’re a person of faith or not, this can be done—is to say, you know, what are your greatest fears and longings? And how can I, in an enduring way, walk with you as you navigate that reality? So even if you’re not a Christian, you can do that to your neighbor and say, “How are you doing? And what are the things that you’re struggling with? And what are things that give you joy? And how can I walk with you in that journey as a friend?” But in prayer, where it’s become powerful, is when we’re suddenly in this space of not only turning to a sovereign God and saying, help us—that’s sort of the verticality of of prayer—but mutually affirming one another and saying, “I’m here with you, and I will be with you in an enduring manner no matter what, because that’s my commitment to you as an expression of God’s love for me.”

I think that that—it sounds so simple—but if we could just do that, just walk together. Sometimes maybe no words are even spoken, but somehow just being together, there’s all sorts of communication of trust that’s happening and the release of oxytocin if I can go back to all this neuroscience stuff. Like when you play music or you’re just sitting next to— there’s a release of oxytocin, which is actually a hormone that builds trust. But you kind of have to be together. This embodied presence thing is really, really important because the body is just like a huge sensor, right? We’re taking in information and learning and building across difference through that embodied presence. So yeah, that’s what I would advocate for.

Cherie Harder: Thank you Mia. And thank you, David. That was fascinating. And in just a moment I’m going to give you both the last word. I also just want to add my thanks to our viewers. It’s been a great group of questions. We regret we can’t get through them all, but just really appreciate the perceptiveness of them. Immediately after we conclude we’re going to be sending around an online feedback form. We really welcome and encourage you to fill that out. We read every one of these. We try to integrate your suggestions to make these Online Conversations ever more valuable. And as a small token of appreciation for doing that, we will send you a code for a free Trinity Forum Reading download of your choice. There’s quite a few Trinity Forum Readings that we think add depth and nuance to the discussion that we’ve just had, and a few that we’ll just recommend to you include “Hannah and Nathan” by Wendell Berry, “Painting as a Pastime” by Winston Churchill, “The Four Quartets” by T.S. Eliot, “Letters from Vincent van Gogh,” “Spirit and Imagination,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Why Work?” by Dorothy Sayers, as well as “The Loss of the University” [by Wendell Berry].

In addition, tomorrow, right around noon or so, we’ll be sending around a follow-up email with a video link to today’s Online Conversation, as well as a list of other readings and resources to go further into the topic. So be on the lookout for that. And we just really encourage you to share this conversation with others, neighbors in your church or your community as well, to to start a conversation about ways to reintegrate and reconcile your own community.

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In addition, if you would like to sponsor a future Online Conversation, we would love to hear from you and just let us know in the feedback form and we will be reaching out. Speaking of future Online Conversations, I think one of our guests had talked about the importance of desire. On July 19th, we’re going to be hosting Luke Burgess on the topic of why we want what we want. And then on july 26th, we’ll be hosting Shirley Mullen to discuss her new book The Courageous Middle. You can sign up now in the link provided in the chat feature, and we would love to see you there.

Finally, as promised, David and Mia, the last word is yours. So, David, maybe we can start with you.

David Bailey: I just want to encourage folks that there is no transformation without imagination. And so really cultivate your imagination for the kingdom of God.

Mia Chung-Yee: You know, I’m actually shifting a little bit, even though I had sort of prepared thoughts. But I love what David said. And I as a musician, when I look at a score, I’m looking at notes. And notes are the sounds that I need to produce, to actualize. But actually, where there’s true life in the music-making is in the space. It’s in the white space on the page. It’s in the gaps, it’s in the silence, it’s in the breathing. So cultivating a complement to good speech and talking, the most powerful compliment is the silence. And the listening. And so to that end, in community, what I would encourage is this verse from Isaiah 55:2-3, “Listen, listen to me.” This is what God says, “and eat what is good. And your soul will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me. Hear me that your soul may live.” So let’s cultivate a life of listening to God and a life of listening to each other as we move forward.

Cherie Harder: Mia and David, thank you. This has been a real delight. Thank you to all of you for joining us. Have a great weekend.