Creativity, Reconciliation, and Flourishing

Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters, focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’ll focus on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Guided by theologian and musician David Bailey and concert pianist and chamber musician Mia Chung, this episode explores the concept that music involves mutual support, balance, and give and take among musicians to create a cohesive experience.

And we reflect on how Christian communities can apply these principles of collaboration and harmony to create faith communities that are transformative:

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, complimentary. 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. - Mia Chung

If this work resonates with you, please consider joining the Trinity Forum community as a society member.

This podcast is an edited version of our Online Conversation recorded in June, 2024. You can access the full conversation with transcript here.

Learn more about Mia Chung and David Bailey.

Episode Outline

00:00 Introduction to Trinity Forum Conversations

00:34 Exploring Music and Christian Community

01:36 Cherie Harder on Cultural Challenges

02:55 Welcoming David Bailey and Mia Chung

04:41 David Bailey's Musical Journey

06:56 Mia Chung's Musical Formation

10:44 The Role of Arts in Reconciliation

13:19 The Power of Music in Community Building

23:17 Reintegration and Reconciliation at MIT

28:52 Challenges and Practices for Reconciliation

30:10 Digital Discipleship and Secular Influence

30:44 The Importance of Fasting and Listening

32:33 Engaging Differently as Followers of Jesus

33:28 The Role of Technology in Information Consumption

34:18 Post-COVID Convening and Empathetic Listening

37:25 The Power of Music and Emotional Expression

40:04 Silence and Contemplative Practices

44:43 Artistic Collaboration and Reconciliation

51:19 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Arrabon: Learning Reconciliation Through Community & Worship Music, by David Bailey

Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Hannah and Nathan, by Wendell Berry
Painting as a Pastime, by Winston Churchill
The Four Quartets, by TS Eliot
Letters from Vincent Van Gogh
Spirit and Imagination, selections from Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Why Work?, by Dorothy Sayers
The Loss of the University, featuring the works of Wendell Berry and Jacques Maritain

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society.