Episode 1 - Creativity

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here's my question for you guys what's a more creative chord here's a chord it's a g chord is that a more creative chord is this a more creative chord

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welcome to the liturgist podcast i'm michael gunger i'm science mike and i'm lisa pano

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all right all right all right christian podcast ever just like profanity-laden obscene vulgar sex talk jesus it's gonna have to be bleeped out though okay i think it'd be funnier that would be kind of funny like it's just bleeped out and you're just like wait a minute is there just a lot of obscene cursing and there has been [Laughter] all right are we ready to get rolling here this is our first ever podcast this is the liturgist podcast it's the place where science faith and art can collide and we see what happens from the chaos enjoy the ride music time

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that's not fair i don't have an instrument so i just have to sit like in mute silence while you noodle that's all right mike that's right science mike you can all us with your science and mikeness liz is already bored we've been recording for a minute and a half and this is already bored so maybe we should tell why this is in the conversation i just i love this banter back and forth it's just nice it's got a nice little chemistry going here's what we did we did a first run podcast about an hour and a half ago and it uh it was 82 minutes exactly actually and it was uh it really devolved into philosophical deconstruction of the questions that were being asked to us before we could even answer the questions and we're like you know what we need somebody else in the room to keep us from doing this for 82 minutes so lisapano was our call also to dumb it down so melissa welcome to the welcome to the chaos thank you i'm excited to try to sift through all this magic that it's gonna happen i'm you're like the referee is really what it is like when we get out of bounds blow the whistle that's that's that's the that's there will be lots of whistleblowers okay so the idea the idea of the show melissa and listener is we have a theme and we kind of take a look at that theme through the lens of science faith and art and uh and let the things collide as i said just minutes ago um [Laughter] so creativity is our first our first week's theme and and listen i believe we sent you the twitter feed some of the questions that were sent to us and and then when we're getting off track you can just bring us back to center and you can ask us a question from the audience or whatever but we would like to at some point as well address these the idea of the theme through the lens of creativity science art faith not through the lens of creativity through the lens of our faith yes we'll look at creativity through the lenses of science art and faith thank you mike so sad why don't we just start with science though because because that's your part of your name that's yeah it was really weird like you know june 28 1978 in fort lauderdale is the first time they've written the word science on a birth certificate it was really uncomfortable 70s baby so so what's the deal with you mike before we get into this it's nice that you liked it though i hear you're like a you're a christian turned atheist turn like a christian guy again that believes in evolution so what's wrong with you uh well what's wrong with me is i'm a christian who believes in evolution that pretty much sums it up um i i'm one of those people that loves science and because i love science i lost my faith but then i found my faith again and now i do podcasts for a living [Laughter] so creativity mike uh how does how does how do we look at creativity through the lens of science what's going on what's going on is your brain is freaking out um i read an article in the atlantic recently that blew the top off my skull because i've always thought about creativity and how it happens and why some people feel more or less creative and why creativity seems to run in families and why sometimes it even seems to be associated with mental illness and lately scientists have gotten really good at looking in people's brains using physics there's a machine called a functional mri scanner that lets you look at the motion of certain types of molecules and brains in real time so what we'll do with an fmri machine is they'll look at like for example blood flow or the flow of oxygen into people's brains and by doing that you can see what regions of the brain are more or less active with different activities and so as they kind of looked at historical understandings of creativity being you know correlated with iq or um associated with a certain type of rigorous training um they really just want to see what happened in people's brains who were identified as creatives people who were good at coming up with novel work that made an impact and what they found was that when doing normal activities that aren't necessarily creative whether that's sort of free association thinking or doing word puzzles or even reading the brains of very creative people had a lot of activity in their association cortices now these are the parts of the brain that route signals between uh all the different sorts of lobes in your brain so for example when you read a lot of things have to happen your vision has to see these lines and spaces on the page that has to get translated into a different part of the brain that handles your verbal lexicon and association center is what makes it happen and so what they're realizing neurologically speaking creativity is nothing more than the ability to make unexpected connections so what defines a person who's creative most is their ability to take this story and this story and this fact and derive new information and make connections that other people don't see there's so much knowledge there just i feel like i need a simmer in it [Laughter] so all of us do this though yeah like are there any humans that don't have any of that process going on you can't be human unless your association cortex is active but what they did find was there was a significant measurable difference between control groups namely people that don't self-identify as creative nor have any notable creative accomplishments in their lives and people who do people who create art people who do science people are architects those people's brains function differently the question is is that endemic we obviously all have different genetic propensity some people are born faster runners than others but through training a slow runner can get faster and in fact a slow runner who runs a lot will run faster than a genetically fast runner who never runs and so there's this idea and this this finding in research that you can actually make yourself more creative over time by practicing creativity so anyone can be creative but we have to acknowledge some people are born mozart i mean i would certainly agree that some people seem more easily to just take something pre-existing and turn it into something that nobody ever expected some that that happens um but i also feel on the other end of that spectrum that some people so quickly write off creativity as something other than their own nature that they don't they don't practice it because they don't feel they're good at it or whatever but to put together a sentence takes some of that association ability of the brain that's the ability to use language everybody has some creative ability right i mean that's uh and so i feel like some people are a little too quick to push that off as well i'm not the creative person um you are you're a human being um you have the ability to order something towards your imagination and something towards your intention and i think we we see that in kids all the time you see just any any group of toddlers playing together and they are creating entire worlds and words and sounds and dances and songs and um they might not be incredibly sophisticated in in what they're creating but it's it's creating it's creating something that hasn't it's taking the bits of pieces that they've experienced in reality and imagined and combining them into something that fits the moment in a way that uh benefits them and to me that's children playing is something um that to me is a person that creates for my job that that really when i'm in the most creative zone it really takes me back almost to childhood that's what it really feels like to me is just um putting together different ideas for whatever uh whatever the purpose of the moment is and enjoying that process i think so so i have a question if if you're saying that you know michael here he's creative every day he's in that realm of being creative he's been creative pretty much his whole life because of all the things that he makes and does and that's what his life is so how do you look at someone that's not like that and say how do they practice it to be yeah absolutely so you can imagine somebody like michael was probably he has some genetic predisposition towards advanced creativity i would imagine and then that got reinforced um with the mental illness [Laughter] his environment when michael began to do creative works they got validated at some point now i'm sure they've he's also experienced craver yet rejection but he got enough creative validation that he never decided no i'm not creative so what happens to many people is as children and as teenagers they produce works of creativity they take a part of their identity and they cast it out into the world and it gets rejected and so when you see people's creativity repeatedly get rejected when when a child takes the crayon drawing and the parent says oh okay that's great instead of oh wow i love your picture or even you know that doesn't really look like a cow that has an incredibly shriveling effect on a human being's creative potential and creative self-identity and we understand through science that the language we use to describe ourself affects the way that we function really critically so to say the word i'm not very creative is actually going to make you less creative now in terms of what someone who wants to do uh creative things approaches to becoming more creative there's some tried and true scientifically validated results one is to learn how to kill your editor there's a wonderful practice called morning pages where the first thing you do when you wake up is you handwrite three pages like before you brush teeth before like leave the notebook on the bed stand and write warning pages and that teaches you to push through your tendency to say what i'm making isn't good you sort of wake up before your editor another thing that science has shown really boosts creativity is to be a polymath have an interest in multiple subjects and deep interest especially unrelated things when you look at people who have accomplished great creative works and done great things they having really really really diverse interests think about steve jobs not only did he like computers and programming and all those sorts of things but he really loved calligraphy he loved design he loved topography and out of that synthesis was born you know mac computers and iphones right so having a diverse interest is critical to fostering creativity and also curiosity people who are very creative tend to be auto didacts they are people who on their own take initiative to learn new things and master new subjects and what science has shown doing that allows any brain to increase the amount of activity in the association cortices and make these connections we associate with creativity boom nailed it let's take a quick break we'll be right

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back we should just not take a break and just have that um alyssa how about a question all right this one is from blake i'm just going to butcher his last name it's cat aldo and he says how do you keep your creative think tank full for me taking it out of the realm of science and moving towards art it's it really is kind of tending the ground that you're creating from and that ground is is your yourself your your mind your your soul even call it your spirit whatever you whatever you find is like the kind of seat of your being i think it's out of that that you make your value judgments so when you're creating it's decision after decision it's it's is it this chord or is it this chord is it this word or is it this word and those are all decisions that you really when you're in the creative process you can't really get stuck too much like mike was talking about before letting the editor totally analyze every situation because a lot of times there's no answer there's no answer to know whether this word or that chord is better it just simply comes down to a gut feeling and what makes you feel the way that you intend this piece to make you feel or this book is whatever it is and so to to have to be doing that over and over you're just relying on something that's beneath just your conscious mind i think i think you're you're relying on uh you can feel it in your body almost when you're making these decisions and so tending that place having your soul in a healthy enough zone where you don't feel like creating is like scratching your fingernails at the bottom of the barrel but that it's actually almost like an overflow of who you are and what keeps you awake at night what's making you what gives you passion you know um what makes your heart race and so having enough input is important for that so like if i'm only putting work out it's kind of like breathing out if i'm never inhaling i i start losing the raw materials that you need to create things from so whatever it is that makes me feel like i'm inhaling good air you know good film good music good books good conversations um community spirituality practice and and how how do i have healthy rhythms and practice that make me feel that my soul is in a place to overflow something good into the world because i feel like if you if you're coming from a place of greed and selfishness and angst and and whatever darkness that's going to be reflected in the work and unless that's what you're wanting to make if you're wanting to make something that's beautiful and good i think you need to to be really aware of what you know what's happening in underneath the surface of the consciousness and what's happening uh in the deepest places of your psyche and in your soul and is that tending that when i'm when i'm healthy like that i can't not create i can't not imagine and have fun and play with the things that around i also think it's really interesting there's this idea of feeding and that's uh scientifically validated that you have to be consuming information consuming media in order to synthesize new ideas but also how often researchers have found that after you have that period of synthesis and you have people practicing a craft over and over whether that's playing an instrument painting sculpting writing even coming up with scientific theories through math all these things the most powerful insights are frequently associated with a period of rest following these intense portions of study so you know having a rhythm to your life i i've found that a lot of times the best ideas i have for a piece i want to write or or something when i communicate happen during a walk or they happen during some down time and i have to grab something nearby to capture the idea but it's almost like you have to like mix the ideas in your brain and then give them time to sort of bake or rise before they fully come to fruition and i think a lot of people i certainly have been guilty in the past of chasing creativity too hard as opposed to just doing the work and then waiting for the inspiration to come okay um what do you think it means to be creative being creative is basically setting your mindset at goals being creative means to me just opening up letting your life future out and just being creative whatever your goals are whatever your life is yeah awesome where do you think creativity comes from creativity comes from your heart in your mind and in your soul okay you guys are liars i'm ready okay what does it mean to be creative oh i think for me it means being open to like letting myself feel what i'm feeling and create from that place i don't know yeah making things from from where i am great answer where do you think creativity comes from these are hard questions you lied um i don't know i think i guess it comes from like your truest self that's that's what i think i think that's good all right and i have another question to go into this is from ozzie um he says what are some myths about creativity you converse for us i've got one that creativity is associated with intelligence people have always thought that smart people were more creative but research has actually shown that above a certain point about iq 120 which is just a bit above average additional iq doesn't make you any more creative that it's not necessarily just something for the the geniuses among us to be creative but merely for those of us that take the time to um appreciate the connection of ideas and i think that idea of the connection of ideas that we've been talking about this whole time does burst the myth for a lot of people that creativity is kind of this this magic out of nothing ex nihilo practice where you just you know suddenly think of something that no one has ever thought of certainly the eureka can happen and and seems like something comes out of the blue but really every human innovation and creation ever has been a synthesis of taking guitar playing for example i might feel like i'm wrote a song that's really fresh and original and maybe maybe it is maybe there's nothing maybe there's never been a song like that on a certain level but on a thousand other levels there's a million songs exactly like it it's using western you know diatonic modal systems primarily as a music theory it's using a tempered 12-note scale um that can that and every one of those it's using a guitar that these are all things that have been handed to me music theory chords it's all nobody and you know you invent one tiny thing and when you invent it it's just like you you've taken a couple pieces of things that have already been invented and you just find a slight way of making it new so creativity is is far more accessible i think when thinking of it like that is you nobody's coming up with something entirely new out of nothing you know i look at my guitar and it's made of trees wow that was some deep music theory there i got i got a little afraid and intimidated the western diatonic 12-note weighted scale that was a perspective tempered i had not considered previously there are other ways of tempering scales they're they're they've spent there's western and there's bollywood but yeah just i mean the the amount of time that it took for western music to evolve what a c to a c sounds like the amount of work and amount of people that went into that and the amount of science like it's that's a big deal like it's it's not just totally mathematically perfect actually it's tempered meaning everything's a little off to make and that's what's most pleasing for us i almost chased a rabbit like big time i i got frustrated once because uh i tried to do the math based on the numeric frequency values because i'm more of a physics guy and it didn't match and i got i was like what music is stupid the art is where it moves to art it is because art yeah it moves away from

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from perfect and rational and analyzable is that a word um to emotional and subjective and um aesthetic so you how we started when i when i played those chords at the beginning i actually did want to come back to that eventually i wasn't just being random how can you say that i mean that's a more normal chord that you hear more often and it doesn't seem creative it's one three five

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it's like you know simple but this is a little bit more dissonant i mean the notes are rubbing against each other but is it more creative per se it creates different things i mean most people that would hear this it would create a different feeling it's kind of melancholy sad but part of the essential idea of creativity is being novel isn't the less used chord automatically doesn't it give you a slightly higher starting point to make a creative work not to say the g can't be creative but maybe you have to work harder to make the g novel it might be more difficult to make the more common stand out as fresh and creative and feel new and novel but i think some of the questions that i saw on twitter kept revolving around like what's the most creative thing that you've seen in blah blah blah what what's more create like and i i think that as a value judgment more or less creative i have a hard time with that because um it's all creative it is all a creative decision and you know i when i went to jazz school i went to north texas and and i definitely went through the phase of like looking down at the jazzers we would all look down on like pop music all the time like it's like three chords and i'm playing a million chords um in this song and and it was kind of but if you really get down to it none of us could have produced a good pop song because it pop is all about subtlety and the subtlety of timing and tone and beat and groove and lyric and so whatever like it's it's not as complex as a jazz piece would be but it's as far as music theory goes but there's to make the sound is not easy none of it like it's it's a complexity of a different kind so that's why i think what is more creative is not something that for me in my viewpoint and artistically is something that you can say but you can say you can be more specific you know if you ask what is what is happier that or this reasonably say most people would say the first chord is the g major feels lighter happier so if i'm going to create a piece and maybe there's subtlety in my i'm creating a happy moment but maybe i have this like ironic uh take on on happiness and in the context of that it's it has this nuance to it that you'd play that other chord and wouldn't do it but that you play just a straight g major chord in the middle of something can be the perfect most creative decision to do um so let's just say even in in in judging art how can you judge one piece more creative than another i think you you need to be more specific and think of what are what are what is this communicating to you what is this eliciting from you emotionally um and is it effective and when you're talking about a lot of the questions we're revolving around liturgy and as we get into faith here i think that's just one thing to keep in mind you need to be more specific i think to be to have a meaningful conversation about what the intention of the aesthetic is what the intention and what the result is um then rather than just more or less creative because that that third chord that i played this is creative in in the fact that it's novel in the fact that it's totally unique compared to you're not going to hear that chord in pop music for sure um might even be too much for jazz yeah it is um but it's i wouldn't call it more creative necessarily unless i'm wanting to use that chord for a specific purpose that really works and it was unexpected it was not in the usage of it it elicited the right response um so anyways it might be semantics but i think it i think it's dangerous to call things more or less creative um dangerous is too strong maybe too shallow to call it just more or less creative save our children don't call things more creative what does creativity mean to you creativity is i would say making something that hasn't been before um there's going to be some similarities but it's still authentic to you um it has to come from an authentic place to to make something that just hasn't been before yeah and where do you think creativity comes from i think creating creativity comes from uh your identity and it uh has to be a part of who you are uh for it to be genuinely creative uh and so yeah which is gonna shift throughout your life so it's gonna creativity comes from where you are at that exact moment in time on a personal level okay awesome thank you okay i got another question here this is from justin maderich it is is there a destructive phase to creativity downer is there a destructive phase to creativity what's the mental illness thing talk about what how does the mental illness going that you mentioned that earlier in the podcast there is a strong statistical correlation between schizophrenia bipolar disorder and high levels of creativity so if we unpack that if sort of cognitively speaking and neurologically speaking creativity is the ability to find connections between things that other people don't find as easily then some of those insights are going to be beautiful and encouraging and uplifting and some of those insights are going to be really downers and depressing and they're going to say difficult things about yourself and about humanity and then there's a whole third category for someone who creates connections that other people don't see some of those connections are going to be wrong and so you may come up with an idea that you really value that turns out to be false or you may come out with a creative notion or or something you find beautiful and other people don't they you know uh what you think um and captures the bittersweetness of life they may look at and just see it as dark or depressing and that um tendency to see bad things other people don't and then also to create things that frighten people or that people reject has a psychological cost you know i don't think we've gotten complete to the bottom neurologically of of why schizophrenia looks so much like creativity but they almost seem to be two sides of a single coin at least in very very very highly creative people um that's sort of intimidating to creativity but then there's this other thing where we have these um this cynicism associated with creativity and this is maybe less of science this is me venturing a little into art which is not really my no it's fine we're all here i'm going to collide for a second uh i used to be a lot more cynical about creative works because i had a great sense of creative taste and although on the one hand that kept me from producing things a lot because i would start writing or start playing music and say this isn't good enough it also made me think you know that family movie that was predictable with its ending was worthless and shouldn't have ever been produced and so to me that's a destructive form of creativity we we learn to critique but then our critique we become blind to some forms of value as i've matured as a person as an and as an artist when i watch family movies now with my children i inevitably cry anytime there's the family coming back together after crisis because it's relatable to me on a human level so it doesn't matter that maybe it's not as original or less predictable i understand that making any story into something people can consume is difficult and to do so in a way that speaks to universal themes of the human condition i think is some of the highest forms of creativity possible okay okay this one's from westin cox and his question is uh do you have any killer examples of any kind of historical liturgical creativity it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourselves or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's 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serious do you want this okay we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna call back to this this uh upper room experience which calls back to this festival of passover which calls back again uh to this specific issue and the specific moments of deliverance this story and so with this one act we honor thousands of years of people understanding how god relates to us um we do this in remembrance of him as he did it in remembrance of something else and that's that's so nuanced and so rich and so deep and can be taken so many different directions one of the most powerful moments of eucharist i've ever had was with rob bell and his introduction was quantum physics that was his take on the eucharist and obviously for someone like me that was a new fresh word that i needed but it was still the same act of this bread and this wine in remembrance of him and so i know that probably uh is going to infuriate the person who asked the question but sometimes taking a new take or a slightly different perspective on the most well understood thing can have the biggest impact on someone with the liturgists we've done some events and we use we do crazy stuff we do big scrims and attached heartbeat monitors to these people and trying to get our heartbeats in sync and like during a church service um you know so like we we're we're all for like experimenting and stuff as well but i think that sometimes when we get frustrated about creativity within the liturgical space it's not it's not a matter of creativity that we're really having an issue with because just because you dress it up you know now we're not using we were doing like the u2 dotted eighth electric thing and now we're like doing like harmoniums and cellos and stuff and now it's like we're more creative no um uh what are you like what is the essence of what you're doing and yeah you can use different aesthetic devices for different purposes and use your creativity to elicit different um responses and emotion within your liturgy but uh to me some of some of the problems that we we blame on the aesthetics really go deeper than that and you know we can make fun of gc e minor d all day long jesus jesus jesus jesus christ [Laughter] but the reality is you know we can scoff at that at those oh every worship song has four chords we need to write songs with more chords but maybe there's a deeper issue at play maybe part of the problem is that the church is afraid of dissonance on a deeper level than musically we're afraid of the other we're afraid of people that are that are actually you know in full out despair and trouble in their lives we like we like to keep things a little plastic and we like to keep things a little safe because that's what you know we have we have theology that that leads itself to that you know how we see people as you know we're all just totally depraved and we just need the grace of god it needs to stay uh we and we cover everything up with this plastic sheet of just making everything feel like it's okay and good um and our music follows that and so the problem is not the music it's not the problem is not it's just we just only want to hear major chords um if we just play more minor chords everything will fix itself and it's like maybe we only want to hear major chords is a is a philosophical and theological issue for us rather than just an aesthetic one that was the most liturgist sentence of the whole podcast that is a philosophical and theological concern and not just an aesthetic one get your thesaurus folks [Laughter] all right we've got let's do this one this is from the mar them i think it's mariva what makes a piece of music suitable for liturgy who decides if it's sacred the author performer or the crowd yes like so so not to be flippant like to some degree there has to be some common ground between the author the performer and the crowd i suppose if you get two out of three that's not bad i i would definitely say if you don't take the crowd along though it's not very sacred um can we define sacred sacred meaning of use within a liturgical setting because to me everything is sacred right i mean like all work on some level is part of the human soul and human creativity which is sacred it's yeah i was even gonna say sacred okay let's say set aside or set apart to glorify god but i think most things glorify god well there's a real there's a real danger of a philosophical discussion right now okay we'll shoot that button no no no no in the question that's go back to the first part of it though i mean i think it's the question is pertaining to the music studio for liturgy if it's if so in this in this context can get it it can be sacred right so but that means as an author and as a a leader you have to think about the audience when you're preparing a liturgical experience or when you're going to lead people you can't think um i'm gonna take this you know well-known secular anthem and retool it for a crowd that is deeply concerned about the role of secular music in society that i mean i guess you could but i think you just run a risk of leaving everyone behind i think it's important to you can't leave people where they don't want to go so kind of having an understanding of where people are ready to take a step and where they aren't to me is part of doing good work there i don't think there are like across-the-board limitations that you could like put in a cookie cutter and say sacred music needs to include prayer or language about god because i've heard of you know there are churches i heard there's a church here in colorado that did an eminem song during one of their liturgies um for the purpose of it communicated something and it wasn't a traditional worship song certainly it wasn't something people sang along with or necessarily something that people agreed with um but it was an expression of an emotion that that emotion was needed to fit the liturgical space something needed to express that emotion so what are you trying to do with your liturgy what what is the thrust of of what you're doing and who are the people that are in your church and are they going to be able to understand and go along with what you're saying um and that's the work that's the task of a good liturgist you know like that's what your job is and i think there's so much room to innovate and create in this space and that's why we started the liturgists i mean to kind of start uh trying to do it ourselves and start a community and a conversation among people that are trying to do the same thing because for hundreds of years church art was like really it was important and it was cultural it was part of like some of the best art that was coming out of the world was done within the church for sacred reasons and to the great composers and stuff and and as music has become as the music industry as we know it has emerged in popular music and selling music and recorded music has kind of taken over church music is largely taken a back seat to the artistic world and the business world i mean it's just it's just kind of an afterthought it seems like the kind of the weird weird kid in the corner um but i think there's so much there are billions of people literally they get together every week for the purpose of trying to encounter the divine together and at most of those gatherings there's music and most of those guys there's gatherings there are some form of art and expression that people are trying to use and to take that space seriously the greatest artists in our society like i wish more of our great artists could kind of take that space seriously because it's um it's certainly not as egocentric as the rest of our stages in our society because it's kind of a a humble place to go and serve the work of the people that they're trying to experience something but i think i just think there's so much room for innovation and creativity in that space to experiment with what couldn't what could a liturgy include artistically and creatively that could move the human heart that could open the human heart to one another to the divine that could help lead us to the eucharist in a in like a unique way um and so that's why we exist that's why the liturgists are here and and i hope that this podcast and what we're going to be doing with events and that we can you know start meeting other people that feel the same and uh there's a lot got a lot of good work to be done all right let's um move on to this uh question here from wake hadley and it is what is the most creative thing either of you have seen in a worship service i'm not afraid of the words most creative so i'm going to answer the question without further qualification um i grew up in the evangelical tradition specifically the southern baptist convention and that has its own liturgy associated with it for sure like we have a welcome and we have a welcome song and then we have announcements and then we have two more songs and you know what i mean like there's this definite formula um and i'm now part of the methodist tradition and they uh use the church calendar um which uh baptists really don't and when i went to my first good friday service um at our church i was really blown away um because the room was dark and we were encouraged to enter silently and we were given black paper and black pencils um and encouraged to write something that was hurting us or holding us back or something our life that we're trying to deal with on this paper um and then they read the passion just straight from scripture absolutely no other message no announcements just a straight reading of the passion but they would take breaks in the scripture to sing very very very very very old uh refrains from hymns that related and we didn't even sing along it was just acapella singing up front with just a couple of people and then when they got to the portion of the scripture where they talked about christ actually being put on the cross uh we had hammers and nails and we took our papers and we walked up and we physically nailed them to the cross now if you've been in the church for any amount of time and gone to any even remotely um creative worship service someone's probably had you nail something to a cross but in the context of this darkened room and i lost i lost the group right there so my whole point is why would this like common cliche be for me one of the most creative things i've ever seen in the context of the overall presentation the embrace of darkness the embrace of blackness and even to make friday completely about lament with no discussion of sunday and resurrection to me was a profound and deep experience one of the most powerful worship experiences that i've ever had i think the most creative thing that i can remember is during a church service i saw science mike was there and he uh he just popped that top off and he had all these uh equations written all over his chest and he began a praise dance around the sanctuary um demonstrating like the mathematical beauty of the created order i just found that super creative beautiful sure surely there was a modesty clock waiting at the end of this listen david dance naked and i'm just following his example that's all

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so thanks everybody for coming to the liturgist podcast

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i guess you don't come to a podcast put it on you're joining us for joining us which is a metaphor really because it's like they're here but they they're on putting buds in their ears or putting on their stereo or whatever this is colorado they're putting buds elsewhere

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it's a drug joke guys hello we talk about drug sex science faith guitar chords that's what we do on this show and and thank you for joining if we don't edit it it'd be kind of awesome we do have to figure out that you'd have like a twitter war um i think mike maybe should sing the doxology for us acapella and the full low register as low as i can go [Laughter] well thanks everybody it's been a good time we'll see you next time michael gunger science mike lisapeno signing off grace and peace be with you