Winner will receive a $500 honorarium, read the winning poem on an episode of the Makers & Mystics podcast and have the poem featured in an issue of Ekstasis Magazine.
Second and third prize winners will be featured on Makers & Mystics and Ekstasis Instagram stories and newsletter.
Michael Hayes is the founder and director of Umoja Health, Wellness, and Justice Collective. He is a visionary agent of change who has found powerful ways to infuse the art of storytelling and the science of resilience into opportunities for healing and recovery.
He is the author of the HOPE module (Healing Our Past/Personal Experiences,) a Certified Peer Support Specialist, a Wellness Recovery Action Plan facilitator and a Reconnect for Resilience Skills Educator.
Michael is also the founder of the Urban Arts Institute and continues to provide opportunities for healing and growth in the arts.
In this episode Michael and I discuss resiliency and the role of the arts in healing from past traumas as well as our collaborative work with the Institution of Regenerative Design and Innovation’s Seed Project.
Malcolm Guite is an English poet, academic and priest in the Church of England. He is a fellow of Girton College in the University of Cambridge and has published widely in the field of theology and literature.
His research interests include the intersection of religion and the arts and the examination of the works of J.R.R. Tolkein, C.S. Lewis and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
In this episode Malcolm and I discuss what I’ve termed as the poetics of restoration and how poetry and literature hold keys to understanding and even bridging the gaps between tradition and originality.
Patrons of the podcast can enjoy three additional interview segments with Malcolm, one on the moral imagination (which members of our creative collective will recall from discussions in our last book club.) also Malcolm’s thoughts on imagination as empathy, and practices to can we establish to achieve longevity for the artist and writer.
Rachel Marie Kang is a New York native, born and raised just outside New York City. She is an author, poet and founder of The Fallow House online creative community. Her writing has been featured in Christianity Today, Proverbs 31 Ministries, and (in)courage.
A mixed woman of African American, Native American (Ramapough Lenape Nation), Irish, and Dutch descent, she is a graduate of Alliance College with a Bachelor of Arts in English with Creative Writing and a minor in Bible.
In this episode, Rachel and I discuss her book, Let There Be Art: The Pleasure and Purpose of Unleashing the Creativity Within You.
In keeping our season ten theme of Restoration for the heart of the artist, Rachel and I discuss what it is like to create in the space between life and death, joy and grief and how creativity can serve as a bridge between the two poles.
Strahan is a writer, award-winning folk musician and spiritual director from Aotearoa, New Zealand. He founded Commoners Communion in 2017 to explore what it means to become a deeply prayerful people in our times. Since then, he has written three prayer books offering poetic prayers, contemplations and reflections to help readers deepen their communion with God.
Today, Strahan runs spiritual retreats, Online Prayer Schools and is currently working on his first non-fiction book titled, 'Beholding: Deepening Our Experience in God' which invites the reader to give up consumer Christianity for a more beautiful life of seeing and being seen by God. (‘Beholding’ releases early 2023 with David C Cook publishing.)
In this episode, Stephen talks with Strahan about contemplative practice, abiding in the space between and finding opportunities for beauty throughout prolonged seasons of suffering.
*Patrons of the podcast can enjoy an additional conversation with Strahan on the relationship between the contemplative and the charismatic.
Jess Ray is a singer-songwriter-and music producer from Raleigh, North Carolina. Her particular musical brand, has been affectionately dubbed “friendly folk,” and is an enchanting blend of indie pop vibes and lyric-driven sensibility.
Jess’ decade-long musical journey has weaved in and out of Christian spaces, mainstream circles, from house concerts to historic venues like the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN and from solo shows to sharing the stage with her heroes.
Her music, much like herself, occupies two worlds effortlessly. Intensely spiritual yet deeply real, her songs soar with joy and hope without ignoring the reality of our human struggle.
In this episode I talk with Jess about her new album born again and the creative process behind the songs.
In keeping with season ten’s theme of restoration for the heart of the artist, Jess and I discuss also how her experience with deconstruction and the prospect of reconstruction impacted her songwriting and how she found “a place to land” even amidst the tensions of unresolve.
Lore Ferguson Wilbert is a writer, thinker, learner, and author of the book, A Curious Faith. She writes for She Reads Truth, Christianity Today, and more, as well as her own site, Sayable.net. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @lorewilbert. She lives in New York and has a husband named Nate, a puppy named Harper Nelle, and too many books to read in one lifetime.
In this episode, I talk with Lore about the importance of asking the hard questions and the necessity of cultivating a curious heart in both the creative space and in the spiritual.
Support The Podcast (We can’t do this without you!) Join our creative collective and gain access to tons of extra content and other inspiring curiosities.
Cathy Loerzel is the Co-Founder of The Allender Center at The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology and co-author of Redeeming Heartache: How Past Suffering Reveals Your True Calling with Dan Allender. She has spent the last 15 years developing a popular new coaching and therapeutic approach called Story Work that moves people through their past stories of heartache to heal and discover healthier ways of being in the world.
In this season opening episode, Stephen talks with Cathy about what it means to listen to your story and how artists and creatives can move toward a much healthier mode of living and creating in the world.
Hello Makers and Mystics! I am thrilled to get started with our new season on the podcast! This next batch of interviews, artist profiles and round-table discussions will center on “Restoring The Heart of The Artist.”
I have three distinct threads I am going to chase regarding this subject. The first is our invitation to become wounded healers. Rather than speaking and creating from a place of open wounds, the devoted artist can learn to spin gold from the shadows and tranfigure our most painful events into a source of creativity and healing for others.
The second thread is the space between polarities, or what happens in the splice. We may live in a divided culture, but who said duality is the only option? And what is the role of the artist who abides in the space between? We are the bridge builders, truth revealers, architects of hope for our fractured world. In this season of the podcast, I want to discuss the vital role art-making plays in bringing wholeness to the world we live in.
The third thread I want to braid into our subject of restoration is re-storying the narratives we have believed. The stories we tell about ourselves, about the world and about our own art configure the reality we live in. But are these narratives rooted in truth? Much of restoration is doing the work of re-storying our inner landscape.
Stay tuned and get ready to take the journey. It is time to leave the past behind and lean into the soon discovered!
Ryan Diaz is a poet and writer from Queens, NY. He holds a BA in History from St. Johns University and is currently completing a MA in Biblical Studies. His work has been featured in publications like Ekstasis, Premier Christianity, Dappled Things, and Busted Halo.
In this bonus episode, Ryan and I talk about the relationship between poetry and prayer, cynicism and the sacramental imagination. Patrons of the podcast can enjoy additional conversation segments featuring four book recommendations for poets as well as a recitation of Ryan’s poem For Those Wandering Along The Way.
Portrait Artist, Hannah Rose Thomas has pioneered an incredible means of combining humanitarian work with paintings of refugee women she has encountered.
Through her art, Hannah gives voice to the voiceless, lionizes the isolated and prescribes dignity to the persecuted and forcibly displaced.
In this episode, Hannah and Stephen discuss her process of portrait painting and advocacy as well as the impact her paintings have upon Western viewers and the women who have undergone intense trauma.
In this season finale episode, Stephen Roach shares on how the past two years have impacted artists personally, socially and creatively. Drawing from his own journey of faith and art, Stephen tells how spiritual practice, community and imagination have played a significant role in re-integrating fragmented parts of himself into a deeper, lasting wholeness.
Laura Valentine is the Artistic Director and Choreographer for Numinous Flux Dance Company in Nashville, TN. The work she curates is sensory and riddled with humanity, telling stories thru the human form and searching for a shared inner movement between herself, those embodying the work, and those making sense of it. She has crafted and produced multiple full length productions over the past decade, exploring birth, loss and everything plot-worthy in between. A Numinous piece can take years to unveil and unravel, and the time invested with the human’s involved is a big part of the Numinous process. The relationships move the work where they will.
In this episode, Stephen talks with Laura about what it means to be a contemplative dance company, the deeper motivations behind her creative work and what it means for a dancer to have conversations with space.
Pete Scazzero’s book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality has had a tremendous influence on our modern understanding of how emotional health intersects with contemplative spirituality.
In this episode, our friend Luke Humbrecht talks with Pete about how the artist can live a more healthy emotional and spiritual life.
Chris White is an award-winning filmmaker who has spent over a decade writing, directing, and producing a variety of feature length and short films. His most recent project is the music-centric, coming of age comedy Electric Jesus, which explores the world of a fictional 1980's Christian hair metal band called 316.
The film follows the band's journey from playing Bible camp talent shows to larger rock venues and gives an amusing look at youth culture during the time when heavy metal music was bathed in controversy.
The film stars Brian Baumgartner (better known as Kevin from The Office), also Judd Nelson (from The Breakfast Club), and newcomers Shannon Hutchinson (Assassinaut) and Andrew Eakle (Creepshow, The Glorias).
In addition to writing and directing Electric Jesus, Chris White also co-wrote original songs for the film, collaborating with composer/indie rock legend Daniel Smith of the Danielson Family.
In this episode, I talk with Chris about the making of the film, the art of satire and why thinking about humor as a spiritual practice is not funny.
Patrons of the podcast can enjoy additional segments of this conversation at: http://www.patreon.com/makersandmystics
In this bonus episode, I speak with one of today’s favorite mental health advocates, Dani Parks. Dani is a public speaker, author, minister and mentor of young adult girls.
In our conversation, she shares her story about her struggles with depression, suicide attempts, and the mental suffering she endured for over ten years due to the incorrect treatment of her bipolar disorder.
In this episode, I talk with Author and Professor ,Mary McCampbell about her book, Imagining Our Neighbors As Ourselves: How Art Shapes Empathy. In our conversation, we discuss how narrative art serves as an invitation to awaken and expand our capacity for empathy.
Sho Baraka is a globally recognized recording artist, performer, culture curator, activist, and writer. His work combines his artistic platform with his academic history to contribute a unique perspective, elevating the contemporary conversation on faith, art, and culture.
In this episode I talk with Sho about his book, He Saw That It Was Good: Reimagining Your Creative Life to Repair a Broken World
We discuss how art and imagination address the issues we face in today’s society in ways other forms of communication cannot.
Patrons of the podcast can enjoy an additional interview segment with Sho Baraka as well as other guests of the podcast
In this Round Table Discussion, I talk with visual artist and performance speaker, Scott Erickson along with trauma therapist, ritual-maker and NYC-based artist, Heather Stringer. In this round table, we talk candidly about disorientation and the process of re-orienting after two years of social and personal upheaval.
Joshua Luke Smith is a British rapper, poet, and producer with a dramatic, socially conscious style rooted in explorations of the Christian faith. He was born in London raised in Pakistan, and holds a degree in philosophy, which informs his music with a unique perspective on the world both from his education and experience.
In this episode, I talk with Joshua about his upbringing, his creative process as well as well as philosophy and overcoming addiction.
You can see the show notes of this episode for links to Joshua’s new book Something You Once Knew and for additional patron only interview segments in our creative collective.
Each week, Stephen will be joined by Square Halo’s Creative Director, Ned Bustard and a variety of biblical scholars, professional artists and creative thought leaders on topics such as inspiration, contemplation and beauty.
This podcast is an accompaniment to the Makers and Mystics Creative Collective Book Club, running June 8th - July 27th, 2022.
William Day is an American painter known for his large-scale compositions of colorful shapes and energetic marks. Day can often be found in his Boulder, Colorado studio working on multiple pieces at the same time. His process leads him to create paintings in series, each focusing on different nuances of the human experience. His works are comprised of textures and complex layers demonstrating his interaction with a canvas. These series of paintings all nod to certain periods of Day’s life that bring years of intensity, joy, spirituality, conflict, and resolution to the canvas.
In this episode, Stephen talks with Will about his latest series titled Breakout which explores themes of reset and rebirth. This discussion includes topics such as: The impact of isolation, How to handle negative critique and living beyond fear.
Patrons of the podcast can enjoy additional interview segments with Will at patreon.com/makersandmystics
James K.A. Smith is professor of philosophy at Calvin University and serves as editor in chief of Image, a quarterly journal devoted to “art, mystery, and faith.” Trained as a philosopher with a focus on contemporary French thought, Smith has expanded on that scholarly platform to become an engaged public intellectual and cultural critic. As an award-winning author and widely-traveled speaker, he has emerged as a thought leader with a unique gift of translation, building bridges between the academy, society, and the church.
In this episode I talk with James about the role of imagination in “re-storying” the narratives we believe about ourselves and society. James shares openly about his own bouts with depression and how poetry played a key role in his recovery.
Patrons of the podcast can enjoy an additional interview segment on the attentiveness as a core tenet of creativity and the counter cultural practice of contemplation.
Son Lux is an experimental, electronic trio whose music strives to question deeply held assumptions about how music is made. The band started in 2008 as a solo project of founder Ryan Lott, then expanded to include creative collaborators Ian Chang and Rafiq Bhatia.
Most recently, the band scored the new Daniels film, Everything Everywhere All At Once, featuring collaborations with Mitski, David Byrne, Randy Newman and Moses Sumney among others.
I had the chance to talk with Ryan about his creative process, collaboration and what it was like composing music for a bizarre film based on the multiverse, one which the New York Times has called “an exuberant swirl of genre anarchy.”
If you’ve been following the podcast this season, you’ll know I’ve been talking with my guests about mental, emotional and spiritual health as it relates to the creative artist. I asked Ryn for his comments on this subject as well which I’ve made available for our patrons at patreon.com/makersandmystics
