Gerard Manley Hopkins was a Jesuit priest and English poet born July 28,1844. He is considered to be one of the greatest poets of the Victorian era although during his lifetime, his poetry was never published. His approach to poetry was deeply enmeshed with his intimate and mystical spirituality. For Hopkins, who was an avid lover of nature, poetry was a means of accessing the Divine and of discovering God within nature. Join our Book Club....
Jul 11, 2019•11 min•Season 5Ep. 20
CHARLIE PEACOCK is a Nashville-based, 4x Grammy Award-winning, composer, record producer and recording artist. His production credits include Chris Cornell, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Americana successes such as The Lone Bellow, Holly Williams and The Civil Wars. Charlie is considered one of Nashville's most prolific cultural influencers and has dedicated himself to championing the independent music scene which he has served for over 40 years. Alongside of his work in music production and songw...
Jul 03, 2019•28 min•Season 5Ep. 13
James Hampton was an African American visionary and found object artist who built a 180 piece throne in preparation for the second coming of Christ and wrote and accompanying manuscript in untranslatable language. Support The Podcast! See James Hampton’s Work Spiritual American Trash Book...
Jun 26, 2019•12 min•Season 5Ep. 19
Lanecia Rouse Tinsley is an abstract artist based in Houston, TX. Her portfolio also includes a range of work in photography, painting, teaching, writing, and speaking. Lanecia creates out of a desire to make the invisible landscapes within and the human condition known; using texture, form + color to speak to life upon various surfaces in ways words cannot. In addition to her art, Lanecia works with projectCURATE as Co-Spiritual Director and Consultant for the Arts; and is Co-founder/Co-Creativ...
Jun 19, 2019•32 min•Season 5Ep. 12
Lilias Trotter was a British artist, writer and visionary. It has been said that through Lilias’s contact with art critic and social philosopher, John Ruskin, she had the opportunity to become one of England’s greatest and most famous artists of her day. Yet, for her own convictions, Lilias turned away from this opportunity and followed a path that assured her of obscurity and promised no certain success. Lilias lived forty years of her life among the Arabic people of North Africa and built sign...
Jun 12, 2019•12 min•Season 5Ep. 18
Sleeping At Last i s the moniker of Chicago-based singer-songwriter, producer and composer, Ryan O’Neal. Ryan’s music has been featured on popular television shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Criminal Minds and The Vampire Diaries and has appeared in Films such as The Fault In Our Stars and The Twilight Saga. Ryan has collaborated with numerous noteworthy songwriters such as Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins , Jon Foreman of Switchfoot , Sarah Brightman, and many others. In this episode, Stephen talks ...
Jun 05, 2019•26 min•Season 5Ep. 11
Meister Eckhart was a late 13th and early 14th century philosopher, theologian and mystic born in central Germany. In 1326, he was accused of 150 accounts of heresy and went on to be tried before the Catholic Inquisition. Today, however, Meister Eckhart’s writings have influenced artists and spiritual seekers from most every tradition and walk of life. Articles and blogs mentioned in this episode: Every Painter Paints Himself The Eckhart Society John Cage on Eckhart Support The Podcast...
May 29, 2019•10 min•Season 5Ep. 17
Alastair Humphreys has been on expeditions all around the world, traveling through over 80 countries by bicycle, boat and on foot. He was named as one of National Geographic’s Adventurers of the year for 2012. He has walked across southern India, rowed across the Atlantic Ocean, run six marathons through the Sahara desert and participated in an expedition in the Arctic, close to the magnetic North Pole. More recently, Alastair followed in the footsteps of one of his own heroes, an Englishman nam...
May 21, 2019•32 min•Season 5Ep. 10
Earlier this year, I traveled to the beautiful country of England. While I was there, I had the opportunity to meet with singer/songwriter Martin Smith in his hometown of Brighton. We shared a breakfast together and afterwards I asked if he would be willing to answer a few questions I could share with our listeners. Martin was gracious and obliged, so I quickly pulled out my cell phone and captured our conversation. **Disclaimer: Because the conversation was recorded on my iPhone, the production...
May 17, 2019•9 min
Jeremy Begbie is Thomas A. Langford Distinguished Professor in Theology at Duke Divinity School. He is also Senior Member at Wolfson College, Cambridge, and an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge. He is Founding Director of Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts, one of the main aims of which is to foster theological-artistic links between Duke and Cambridge. In this episode, Stephen joins Dr. Begbie at Duke Divinity School to talk with him about music, ...
May 08, 2019•40 min•Season 5Ep. 9
This artist profile episode is about the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral and how writer Victor Hugo’s novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame inspired a generation to restore this historical landmark. The human heart longs for restoration and it is the artist who embodies this longing through artistic works and creative acts. We long to preserve and sustain beauty because in beauty’s longevity is tied our own hope that there is something more enduring than the ephemeral passing of our own bodies and phys...
May 01, 2019•9 min•Season 5Ep. 16
Amy Orazio is a poet, teacher and writer from the Pacific Northwest. She received her MFA in Creative Writing at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles California. Her work has appeared in publications such as Bitterzoet, Gap Tooth, Pidgeonholes, Synasesthesia, and The Curator magazine. Amy’s latest collection of poems, titled Quench , is a meditation on exile and coming home. In this episode, Stephen talks with Amy about sitting with mystery and overcoming the need for resolve in her poe...
Apr 24, 2019•32 min•Season 5Ep. 8
Austin Kleon is the New York Times bestselling author of Steal Like an Artist , Show Your Work!, and The Steal Like an Artist Journal: A Notebook for Creative Kleptomaniacs . His work has been translated into over twenty languages and featured on NPR’s Morning Edition , PBS NewsHour , and in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal . The New Yorker said his poems “resurrect the newspaper when everybody else is declaring it dead.” He speaks about creativity in the digital age for organizati...
Apr 10, 2019•32 min•Season 5Ep. 7
Sister Corita Kent was an artist, printmaker, educator and an advocate for social justice. She broke through religious norms in the art world of her day by incorporating popular song lyrics, advertising images and slogans into her work. Her pop-art style is reminiscent of the works of graphic artist, Andy Warhol. When Corita viewed Andy’s artwork in the Los Angeles Ferus Gallery, in 1962 she soon began producing her own pop-culture inspired prints. Connect with Corita’s work Join The Makers and ...
Apr 05, 2019•9 min•Season 5Ep. 15
Kelly Archer is the founder and artistic director of the Chadash Contemporary Dance Movement. The vision and mission of Chadash is to cultivate renewal, reparation, and restoration in a broken world. Combining dance with film, poetry, multi-media, visual art and spoken word performances, Chadash Dance tells stories in an effort to honestly acknowledge the world as it is, but then seeks to engage in the conversation about what the world can be. In this episode, Stephen talks with Kelly about the ...
Mar 29, 2019•26 min•Season 5Ep. 6
Rainer Maria Rilke was a Prague-born poet and novelist. His verses embody the human heart’s yearning to commune with God in an age of disbelief. His transcendent themes are deeply existential and contemplative in nature. Research by Morgan Chin Yee Music By Aaron Strumpel Support The Podcast
Mar 20, 2019•13 min•Season 5Ep. 14
Graham Cooke is an internationally recognized author, public speaker and strategist. He is known for a radical faith and friendship with God. Graham's books have helped organizations and individuals overcome negative, limited thinking and transition toward a higher level of corporate and spiritual life. An integral part of Graham's work involves producing resources for helping the poor and for eradicating human trafficking through supporting the organization, NOT FOR SALE. In this episode, Steph...
Mar 13, 2019•26 min•Season 5Ep. 5
Teilhard de Chardin was a French Catholic priest, philosopher, paleontologist, geologist and World War I veteran who earned the Legion of Honor citation. He wrote extensively on science, on his scientific discoveries, and on his most intimate thoughts of Christ as the consummate culmination of spiritual and material realities. Marie Teilhard This episode features music by: Aaron Strumpel...
Mar 06, 2019•13 min•Season 5Ep. 13
Lonnie Holley is an African American artist who has devoted his life to the practice of improvisational creativity. His art and music, born out of struggle, hardship, but perhaps more importantly, out of furious curiosity and biological necessity, manifests itself in drawing, painting, narrative sculpture, photography, performance, and sound. Holley’s sculptures are constructed from found materials in the oldest tradition of African American sculpture. Objects, already imbued with cultural and a...
Feb 28, 2019•36 min•Season 5Ep. 4
Guest host Marie Teilhard of Kilns College explores the spiritual and artistic views of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Marie Teilhard Download Our Free E-Book: Five Creativity Killers Music By: Aaron Strumpel
Feb 20, 2019•12 min•Season 5Ep. 12
Harris “The Third” is an award-winning illusionist and communicator. In recent years his career has grown to become one of America’s most sought-out speakers, storytellers, creative consultants and event curators. In 2015, Harris founded the Istoria Collective , a production company that creates meaningful and transformative experiences for people and brands through events, films, and digital media. In this episode, Stephen talks with Harris about his work as an Illusionist and what it means to ...
Feb 13, 2019•29 min•Season 5Ep. 3
Jonathan Pageau is a professional artist, writer and public speaker. He delivers several lectures every year in Universities, conferences and other venues around North America. He speaks on art, but mostly on the symbolic structures that underlie our experience of the world. Through his YouTube channel and podcast, The Symbolic World, he also furthers the conversation on symbolism, meaning and patterns in everything from movies, to icons, to social trends. As an artist, Jonathan is one of the on...
Jan 29, 2019•30 min•Season 5Ep. 2
Natalie Shaw is a Chicago native who holds a studio fine art degree and is a graduate of Yale University, Virginia Commonwealth University and Shasta College. In 2016, she was selected for the Barbara Jane Carr Scholarship for excellence in the visual arts. Natalie has recently joined the artistic community in Austin, TX and has been selected for the Open 30 Juried Exhibit at the Martha Fenstermaker Gallery. Natalie’s work is informed by a sense of air and space, and how we as humans move throug...
Jan 15, 2019•30 min•Season 5Ep. 1
This episode is an Official Highjack!! StoryBrand Guide Luke Humbrecht turns the mic around and interviews our host, Stephen Roach . In this season finale episode Luke and Stephen discuss why the conversation of faith and art is important for our cultural moment and how you can be involved in the discussions. Stephen shares from history and personal stories on what compels him to host these conversations. Music for this episode provided by: Songs of Water Fyr Fytr Join the Makers & Mystics C...
Dec 13, 2018•25 min•Season 4Ep. 15
John Scotus Eriugena was an Irish theologian, philosopher, and poet. This artist profile is guest hosted by spiritual director, Sarah DeShields . GET TICKETS to The Breath & the Clay Join The Makers & Mystics creative collective
Dec 05, 2018•10 min•Season 4Ep. 11
Pianist and composer Chad Lawson is a Classical musician whose career has visited byways of various musical genres, including Jazz, Latin, Film scores and Experimental music. Chad’s compositions have been featured in countless films and television shows such as The Walking Dead, Vampire Diaries and the Award-winning podcast, Lore. In this episode, Stephen talks with Chad about his background as a musician, what motivates his work and how his journey has led him to the poetic and meditative feel ...
Nov 28, 2018•38 min•Season 4Ep. 14
Madame Jeanne Guyon was a controversial French mystic who wrote poems and spiritual writings on experiential forms of prayer. Support the Podcast
Nov 21, 2018•10 min•Season 4Ep. 10
Sarah Toth is a performer and writer who uses singing, spoken word, and improvisation within opera to courageously tell stories of truth, vision, and possibility. Through collaborations in music-based theater, Sarah seeks to bring healing, inspire dreams, and empower people to walk boldly forward in their own personal story. In this episode Stephen talks with Sarah about her opera The Nero Monologues and her involvement in creating new and experimental music-based theater. Visit Sarah Toth Suppo...
Nov 15, 2018•29 min•Season 4Ep. 13
The Broadway musical Hamilton is a popular musical written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and is inspired by the life of the American founding father, Alexander Hamilton. Since its debut in February of 2015, the show has been widely received as a groundbreaking work of art. Its cultural and creative impact has continued to grow and inspire its audiences from London to New York and cities across America. One audience member on whom the show left a lasting mark is author and pastor Kevin Cloud from Kansas ...
Nov 01, 2018•23 min•Season 4Ep. 12
Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky is considered by many to be the father of abstract art. In this episode Stephen takes a look into the life and art of Wassily Kandinsky, particularly his interest in the relationship between sound and color. Support The Podcast
Oct 25, 2018•7 min•Season 4Ep. 9
