The Scripture Study Podcast
The Scripture Study is a space for anyone who loves the Word and wants more—more understanding, more clarity, more depth. This podcast is for aspiring scriptorians, passionate learners, and those seeking to strengthen their scripture study habits. Together, we explore the text deeply, unpack meaning, and develop the tools needed to study scripture with intention and insight. Come curious, come hungry, and come ready to grow.
The Scripture Study Podcast
Practical Ways to Cultivate Beauty and Creativity in Your Faith
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode of The Scripture Study Podcast, Susan Petersen and Cindy Madsen are joined by Cindy’s daughter, Caroline Hagedorn, as they explore Mount Sinai, the Ten Commandments, and the deeper meaning of God’s covenant with Israel. They discuss how the Torah reveals God’s vision for holiness, justice, and righteousness, examining how covenant faithfulness transforms His people into a treasured possession and a holy nation.
Drawing on biblical scholarship and Jewish perspectives, Susan, Cindy, and Caroline reflect on how God’s commandments shape both spiritual devotion and everyday life. They explore the connection between Old and New Testament teachings, emphasizing that the law is a gift that reveals God’s character, guides His people, and points toward a deeper relationship with Him.
00:00 Introduction
06:50 Worshiping the Lord in Beauty
10:51 Hans Urs von Balthasar
14:40 Beauty as Cosmos Out of Chaos
20:57 Incarnation and the Limits of Scientism
24:59 Beauty Demands Contemplation
30:14 The Marian Dimension of the Church
37:46 Beauty Leads to Truth and Goodness
44:45 Finding Hope and Beauty Amidst Chaos
51:19 Creativity as a Path Through Victimhood
57:09 Beauty in Business and Homemaking
01:00 Beauty in Worship
01:08:03 Creating Beauty on a Budget
01:14:17 The Beauty of Holy Lives
Join Us
The Scripture Study Podcast is your midweek Bible boost—designed to help you grow in understanding, confidence, and love for God’s word.
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend!
Resources
Instagram (Susan Petersen)
https://www.instagram.com/susan.m.petersen/
Tools, Websites, and Links
Come Follow Me
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/come-follow-me
Smithsonian Open Access
https://www.si.edu/openaccess
Books
The Glory of the Lord by Hans Urs von Balthasar
https://www.ignatius.com/The-Glory-of-the-Lord-Set-P2219.aspx
Walking on Water by Madeleine L'Engle
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/walking-on-water-madeleine-lengle
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250153272/awrinkleintime
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
https://www.tolkien.co.uk/products/the-lord-of-the-rings-boxed-set/
The Messy Middle by Scott Belsky
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/565077/the-messy-middle-by-scott-belsky/
Art + Faith by Makoto Fujimura
Join Us
The Scripture Study Podcast is your midweek Bible boost—designed to help you grow in understanding, confidence, and love for God’s word.
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend!
Welcome to the Scripture Study Podcast. I'm Susan Peterson. And I'm Cindy Mathson. We're so glad you're here with us. The Scripture Study Podcast is designed to be your midweek Bible boost. Let's dig in.
SPEAKER_01Welcome back to the Scripture Study Podcast. I'm Susan Peterson. And I'm Cindy Manson. And today we have a special guest. Hi. This is Caroline. What's your last name? Hagadorn. Hagadorn. This is my daughter, my daughter Caroline. Uh-huh. And we are so happy that you're visiting your mom this week from out of town.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01And we get to have you on the podcast, which we're so excited about.
SPEAKER_00So happy to be here. I'm a big fan. Oh, big fan.
SPEAKER_01We are just going to take care of a few housekeeping items. Last week we talked about how we are going to switch up how the curriculum of the podcast. And so this week we have a follow-up to our episode from last week about beauty and creativity. And then we are going to jump into Leviticus. Yeah. And if you are in Come Follow Me, which is amazing, this is just an extra little, like we said at the beginning, it's your Bible boost.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_01And so we are going to spend June talking about Leviticus and possibly into August talking about Leviticus. And we will be taking July off.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because Leviticus is foundational for understanding the Old Testament, especially that part, the Torah, the part where Moses comes in. If you want to understand what's going on in the Old Testament, you need to understand the sacrificial system. Yes. It undergirds everything. It'll help you understand. Well, why is it that the Lord gets upset with the children of Israel? Or why is it that they're doing certain things? Leviticus is what helps you, the sacrificial system.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And their feasts and their prayers and their songs and everything is based around their temple. This system.
SPEAKER_02This temple, this form of tabernacle slash temple worship.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And we also want to bring it to life so that as you go to the temple, you're going to see how and why we do things and how it's the same.
SPEAKER_02You will find every covenant that we make in the temple, it's all in Leviticus. It's all there. And we'll talk about that. It's what you get to look forward to. I know that most people, when they hear that you love Leviticus, it is a great way to put an end to dinner time conversation. If you want the conversation to shut down, just say, Well, I study Leviticus. And yeah, but honestly, I love the book of Leviticus. And I really think you will love it too when we get to the end of this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we are going to bring it to life. Like I said, we take in July off. And then at the end of Leviticus. So in August, we will talk again about schedule, but probably for the last half of the year or last four months of the year, we will just pick a few of our highlights and study a few stories. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Deep dive into a few things.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And then we will be going to New Testament next year, as of right now. And that will look a little different. We have decided that we are not going to follow the Come Follow Me schedule.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, what we'll do is we'll do a deep dive into one gospel, probably the book of Matthew, which will encompass a lot of the first part of Come Follow Me. And then we will definitely do a deep dive into the book of Revelation. And if we have time, we'll pick one of Paul's letters. Those are the big things in the New Testament. The Gospels, the letters, and Revelation, I would say are your three biggest parts in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01And we also reserve the right to change that at any point in time. Yeah. So as of right now, that's our plan. And we're excited to get going on that. So anyway, yes, and let's finish our discussion on beauty. Let's do it.
SPEAKER_02So normally Susan kind of is the one, the moderator, asking questions, but this time I'm going to give a little introduction and then I'm going to be the moderator and let Caroline and Susan comment. And I'll jump in. Obviously, you guys know I cannot help myself, but I think that's how we're going to work it. We're going to switch it up just a little bit here.
SPEAKER_01Cindy, we forgot to introduce Caroline. Right at the end of the day. We forgot to introduce Caroline. Let's do that.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Caroline is my youngest child. She's beautiful inside and out. For information for our audience here, I had three children. It was no problems. And then I had a lot of problems. And so after several years, we were able to finally have, I was able to finally have Caroline. And she's six and a half years younger than my youngest son, her next sibling. And in her baby book, the kids wrote things like, We prayed for you, we fasted for you. And so she was just this little welcome bundle of joy. So we're super grateful to get her. And she has been just a light in the life of our whole family. She loves beauty. She's a beautiful musician, but she also is just a great appreciator of art. And this idea, this theology and beauty, or the arts and the gospel, is a passion of hers. And she'll talk a little bit about that. It's a passion that we both share. It's a really lovely point of conversation for both of us. So, anyway, she lives right now with her husband and her two kids. Her husband's doing a residency in Maine. And so they live at the farthest point that you can live in the continental United States from Utah. And so that's always a little hard for me. But, you know, you raised your kids to leave you and to go off and do their work for the Lord. So she is. She's doing her work for the Lord right now. What do you want to say about yourself, Caroline?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't have too much to add. I think this topic, like my mom said, is really important to me. I think about my testimony or my belief in God. It's usually synonymous with beauty and the arts. That's how I've experienced God in my life. And so when I talk about one, I feel like I'm talking about the other. And like my mom said, it's been a point of commonality for both of us that we enjoy talking about. So I'm excited to talk about it today with all of you guys.
SPEAKER_01I really thought amazing.
SPEAKER_02And I should say too, the other reason we're gonna, I'm gonna kind of turn it over to Caroline and Susan. Susan is definitely a maker and a creator. And so I thought it would just really be interesting to highlight her passion for creating. And so she's creating right now. She's creating right now.
SPEAKER_00So it's needle point Caroline. Oh, it's needle point. It's all right. See, I don't even know.
SPEAKER_01No, no, it's all right. We'll get you on it. Um, it's my ADHD. I have to be doing two things at once always. It helps me to listen better.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I knit always while I'm watching TV. If even if I go to the movies, I will take knitting with me. So I think there's something really important about that tactile act of creation because I think that is how we image God. And we'll talk about that. So I'm gonna just review just a little bit what we talked about last time, and then we'll jump into this. So in Exodus 37, we talked about this. We're told that Bezalel, the craftsman, made the Ark of the Covenant of acacia wood, and he covered it with pure gold. And he made the mercy seat of pure gold. He sculpted two cherubim for each end of the ark. They faced each other and they had their wings spread upward, overshadowing the mercy seat, and they were made of pure gold. There was a table made, and it was overlaid with pure gold. And all of the plates and the dishes and the bowls and the pitchers for the pouring out of the drink offerings, they were of pure gold. There was a golden lampstand with cups shaped like almond flowers, and a golden altar for burning fragrant incense, and there was perfumed and sacred anointing oil. Can you picture this? This is an opulent artistic feast for the eyes, but there is also a pleasing aroma of perfume and incense and exquisite dishes to prepare an offering to the Lord. This is a sensory experience. And David is going to take all of this art into the city of Jerusalem. In 1 Chronicles 15 and 16, it describes this celebratory parade as the ark enters the city. And David spake to the chief of the Levites to appoint their brethren to be the singers with instruments of music, psalteries and harps and cymbals sounding by lifting up the voice with joy. And David was clothed with a robe of fine linen, and all the Levites that bear the ark and the singers. Thus all Israel brought up the ark of the covenant of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the cornet, and with trumpets and with cymbals, making a noise with psalteries and harps. And David danced before the ark. David gave to everyone of Israel a loaf of bread and a good piece of meat and a flagon of wine. And then David delivered a psalm, a poetic song to the Lord. Give thanks unto the Lord, sing unto him, sing psalms unto him, seek his face continually, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. This was worshiping the Lord in music, dance, art, poetry, and even good food. This was worshiping the Lord in the beauty of holiness. And so for the next little while, while we're together on this podcast, we want to talk to you a little bit about worshiping the Lord with beauty, beauty that is holy, art that is wholly beautiful. Jacob Milgram writes, that which humanity is not, nor ever can be, but that which humanity is commanded to emulate and approximate is what the Hebrew Bible calls kadosh or holy. Holiness means imitating God, imitatio dei, the life of godliness. And God is a creator of beauty. So with that introduction, I want to just introduce another theologian. I've talked to you guys a lot about different theologians. This man's name is Hans Erst von Balthazar, and he was a Swiss theologian and a Catholic priest. And he's considered one of the most important Catholic theologians of the 20th century. He developed one of the most influential modern Christian theologies of beauty, especially in it's a massive work, and it's called The Glory of the Lord. And I've read parts of it. It's a really long one to get through. It's one of those ones that I'll read just a little bit of it and really have to think on what he's saying. But his central claim is that beauty is not optional or decorative in Christianity. It is essential to how God reveals truth and goodness. So this morning, what I thought we would do is we'll use some of his core concepts as an outline for our conversation. And I'll just kind of outline what he says, and then I'm going to open it up to Caroline and to Susan to kind of talk about how they image this in a physical way in their life. So Hans Erst von Balthazar, he says Christ is the form of divine beauty. A key concept for Balthazar is this idea of form. And he calls it Gestalt. And he says that beauty is encountered through a form that reveals inner meaning. And Jesus is the ultimate form of God's beauty because in Christ, the invisible God becomes visible. And so beauty is not merely aesthetic prettiness. The beauty of Christ includes humility and suffering, obedience and sacrificial love, and even the cross. So divine beauty can appear paradoxical because the crucified Christ is simultaneously glorifying and glorious. Now we talked about Plato and his divine forms. And we talked about how Thomas Aquinas and the medieval thinkers take a lot of Plato's own concepts and they Christianize them. And so von Balthazar is working with these medieval Christian ideas of the divine form. C.S. Lewis does the same thing. So unlike Plato, for Balthazar, divine beauty is not an escape from the visible world into abstract perfection. Divine beauty is encountered in a face, in a life, in a body, in a story, and ultimately in the cross. And so this is profoundly anti-Platonic in certain respects because the crucified Christ does not fit those classical Greek ideals of harmony and perfection, right? This is disharmony. Death is chaos. So perhaps the biggest difference from Plato is this. For Plato, beauty typically ascends from sensible beauty toward transcendent perfection. But for Balthasar, beauty descends. God reveals his divine glory through weakness, humility, incarnation, and crucifixion. So the cross becomes the ultimate form of beauty because it reveals absolute love. And this is why Balthazar often says that modern aesthetics cannot fully understand Christian beauty. Divine beauty is inseparable from self-giving love and sacrifice. So that's an introduction into what Balthazar says about Christ as this form of divine beauty. And it's not merely aesthetic prettiness. So I'm going to turn it over now to Caroline and Susan and get some thoughts on that.
SPEAKER_00So good. Amazing. I think we heard so many wonderful definitions of beauty in that. And there's one that I want to add that I think helps me to think about this concept of what is beauty when we're talking about this today. First of all, I think it's capital B beauty. Like you were saying, it's not just aesthetic prettiness. I think of capital B beauty, it's synonymous with truth. It's conveying something more than what it is. So that's, you know, like we'll talk about Christ, of course, as the ultimate form, but that can be sunset's bird song, Handel's Messiah, the Sistine Chapel, that kind of capital B beauty that's pointing to something beyond itself. And one quote that I love is from Leonard Bernstein, and he talks about this with music, but I think it applies to all art forms in L-BD, where he says music is cosmos out of chaos. And I think, of course, Christ is the ultimate form of that, right? Like he is cosmos out of chaos. Not only does he create cosmos, as Latter-day Saints, we believe he helps create the earth. So he is literally creating cosmos out of chaos, but he was also an artist and a creator in different ways. And one aspect that I am interested in is that he was a storyteller. And there's a book by Madeline Longell that I love. It's called Walking on Water, and it's her reflections on being a Christian artist. She wrote A Wrinkle in Time, if any of you have read that, but she wrote a lot of other books, but that's one of her most famous. And she says, Jesus was not a theologian, he was God who told stories. And, you know, in Matthew, it says that Christ spake many things to them in parables, and without a parable spake he not unto them. So she says, going off of this, that stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become named. And naming is one of the impulses behind all art, to give a name to the cosmos. We see despite all the chaos. God asked Adam to name all the animals. I think this is so interesting, too, that this is like one of the first things God asks Adam to do is to name. And she says, she goes on, which was asking Adam to help in the creation of their wholeness. When we name each other, we are sharing in the joy and privilege of incarnation and all great works of our icons of naming, which I think is just there's so many things we could dig into there. But I think when we apply this to Christ as someone who names, as someone who tells stories, and that this was such a huge way that he imparted truth. And why I think that's important is because so often with truth now in our modern age, we want it to be very scientific, very reasoned. And sometimes in doing that, we reject this part of God, which is not reasonable, which is not perfectly logical. He is bigger than that. And when you acknowledge that beauty, then you acknowledge just this wider expanse of what is available to us and to our spirituality. And so those are so 100%. What do you think?
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's great. I mean, I have so many thoughts as you guys are talking. This morning, as I was studying, it's text, T-E-K-S, and it is the Proto-Indo-European. So it's like words before they start to be written down, but it means to create. And then it also means to weave, and it means to cut away with an axe. Which when I'm thinking of here we go back to Genesis 1, 2, and 3 again, which is everything. Um the first thing God does is he separates and then he allows what's left to become what it's supposed to be. He names it and he says it's good. And I think sometimes for me, I want to move forward, but I want to hold on to how I got to where I am, or even to the things that I don't want to let go. And so many times when I need to move forward, he has put me in situations where I have to let go, or he asks me to let go of things. And this word just encapsulated that whole thing for me, which is like he's brooding over the water. Then he separates the light from the darkness. And in that separating, the creation starts, the creative starts. And he's the weaver and he's weaving together all these things, but he's also cutting. The cutting is such an important part of it. I love the goddess Athena in the Greek mythology. She's a goddess of weaving, craftsmanship, and war. And we need both. And so you have to cut away, you have to separate, you have to do all of these things. And it is a hard process. And it create requires patience and all of these things. Yes, Cindy.
SPEAKER_02My husband Barney calls it carving up your baby. Yes. And it's really hard. I have a really hard time when I'm writing cutting things out. And yeah.
SPEAKER_01But you have to in order to let all the other stuff become.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01For it to be a good piece of work. And even for us to become more like, God, we have to give up so much. Yes. Yes. So beauty requires cutting.
SPEAKER_00Yes. There's this intrinsic act of faith with it, right? Yes. Putting stuff out there. You're, yeah, like you said, cutting things away. And that's such a big part of faith. I think there's this trust that it will become something. And Madeline Longell says this too: that every artist really is participating in incarnation, right? You're like bringing something to life. And that takes a lot of trust, right? To just like believe it will become something. Every writer knows that when you stare at that blank page, or you know, every artist when you're staring at that blank canvas, like, what will this become? And you kind of have to give yourself up to that process. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I think it's one of the unique things about Christianity too, is that our God becomes incarnate. You know, when Jesus comes down, he is embodied. And I think that that also is important because art is this physical representation. It's a tangible representation or it's an embodying of truth. And I think that in our culture right now, we have this religion of scientism, which is that, like Caroline touched on, that in order for something to be true, it must be this rational scientific explanation. And yet, that is not the only way to achieve truth or to arrive at truth. We all know that there are things that are beyond a scientific explanation. So, for example, the love that you have for your child when that child is born. You can't quantify Quantitatively describe that or put that down. It is something that it emotes, incarnates out of you for this child. And it cannot be reduced to a quantifiable equation or statement, but it is truth. And so I think that with the advent of, and we talked about this in the last podcast on where we talked about beauty, but with the technological revolution that we have, the industrial revolution, and then moving into this technological society, we have jettisoned the medieval way of looking at a lot of life. And we talked about how that is a form of what we call disenchantment. And that we need to be re-enchanted. We need to come under the spell, I think, of God again. And so we have jettisoned. Obviously, there are some things that are not true and that are harmful and that are good to jettison. But the idea of only being able to learn truth in a scientific way, and that there's no other way of knowing truth. When we jettisoned that, we really jettisoned a whole way of learning about ourselves and about the world, and then ultimately about God.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Because I think one really important part of beauty is that it is mysterious, right? Like it's not rational, it's not part of that realm. It is, there is kind of this mystery to it of why do we have it? Why is it here? It's not some super rational thing, but we all respond to beauty. You know, we all feel this resonance with it, whatever that may be. So I think if we, like you said, jettison that, then we're cutting off this huge part of our spiritual life that is responding to the mystery of creation, of life, of God, you know, that is really important. Yeah. And the medieval were really good at that.
SPEAKER_02The medieval mystery was very good at acknowledging the mystery.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And that that wasn't threatening to them. That was actually like really essential. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And affirming. And affirming, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01With certainty, we're losing a lot of that. And I think I love AI. I love it. It gives me, especially like when we're trying to figure out technological problems at the business, like, how is this working and what how can we fix it? But the immediate answers are stripping away the pondering. And I love to ponder. I love to sit with words specifically and turn them over in my head and take them places with me and put them in my pocket and take them out later and shine them up. And I hope that my need for immediate answers doesn't take the place of that, if that makes sense. Yeah. And I feel like we're going to lose beauty in that. And you can already kind of see things becoming flat.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02In fact, I will say Hans Erst von Balthazar, one of the things that he said is that beauty demands contemplation. Balthazar, he thought that modern people often try to control or analyze reality instead of receiving it contemplatively. Beauty interrupts us and compels wonder. So to perceive divine beauty requires attentiveness, receptivity, contemplation, and spiritual transformation. Beauty, he says, is something that must be encountered before it is explained.
SPEAKER_01And I feel that way a lot. Like I don't have the words to explain you brought up birth. So I mean, just the way that you sit at this apex of a love for your child and then a love for your mother and all the women that came before you in that instant. Like you think so many things in your life, you think this is going to change me. This is going to change me. And then you really are just the same jerk you were yesterday, except now you're picking up like your driver's license, for example. I thought I was going to be a different person. I was just now running to the store for eggs for my mom. But like you go into the hospital, one person, you come out another person. And it, my oldest is turning 20 this year. And it is taking me 20 years to even come to some words that I think encapsulate that. And I want to continue to sit with that for another 20 and another 20 after that. And I don't think I'll ever really understand that beauty until I sit knee to knee with, you know, Heavenly Mother and Eve, and they can tell me why I felt that way. I love that because I ponder on it again and again and I'm able to experience it again and again. And I think that's the beauty of it. Yeah. That's beauty.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. And so essential. Because it, like you're saying, it goes beyond language.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Like I love music, majored in music, love it. So I think for me, that's where that resonates really naturally. Like if I listen to Olive Handel's Messiah and I'm Oh, gosh bless you. I have taken a nap if I listened to all of this. But yeah, but for you, it's like making something, like doing the needle point, like seeing, like if you saw like a tapestry of needlepoint, like, oh my gosh, like you, you kind of understand on this different level of like effort that goes into that. You gotta so, but I think, yeah, that thing where it goes beyond language and it and it teaches you something, you know, and being the one to even create that, like I read that handle when he wrote the messiah really quickly. I think it was in like a few months. And when he finished it, he came out and said, like, I have seen the face of God. And like I think there's something that is transcendent. And when we participate that, when we receive that, when we can receive that, then we are receiving this part of God that we can't really explain.
SPEAKER_01True art is empathy, receiving it. I can't appreciate Handel's Messiah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because I have not studied music. Yeah, but you understand that to do something like that in a few months is so miraculous and insane that you can appreciate it on a level that I can't. And I think all of us have it's empathy. Yeah. And that is where the beauty comes in. And we're able to experience life as we experience things, we gain this empathy and we can experience it deeper, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. And I think God really speaks to us in our own language. So, like for me, yeah, maybe music is my natural language for you. It's making.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And he can speak to us there in a way that's really, really personal in a different way than like the sciences or something that maybe feel a little more impersonal, more logical. I think that's what's also really important about beauty is it kind of is this bridge. It it reaches into different parts of ourselves that we couldn't access normally.
SPEAKER_02I think, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And I think that the sciences can be beautiful if you are. So I don't mean to diss the science. No, no, no. I was just gonna say there's a big if here if you are willing to acknowledge the hand of the creator in it, and then you can marvel at it. Yeah, I think the problem comes when we reduce it to a mechanistic science, and I think that there is a big tendency to do that in our culture. Yeah, but you listen to a mechanical culture, right?
SPEAKER_01Yes, and you've listened to scientists who have studied physics and they also have seen that the hand of God. I my favorite girl on TikTok is this girl who talks about all these crazy animals that should not exist. And the way she describes them, I'm like, this is really fascinating. I'm not appreciating it, but like the work, the time, the energy she's put into it, yes, they understand it at a different level. And so our everything becomes beauty. Sorry to cut you off, Cindy. There.
SPEAKER_02No, no, I think that, and I think just wanted to make us to just say, even though this goes back to what Caroline was saying about handle, I would say that with you, Susan, even though you may not completely be able to appreciate the music to the depth that Caroline does, you can still recognize in it beauty and genius, right? Yes. I think that's the true nature of beauty, is that anybody can look at it. And it doesn't take education to recognize this is beauty. Whether it's the beauty of the night sky and looking at the stars, the beauty of just a flower petal and the intricacy that you see there, the beauty in a piece of music, the beauty of art. And I think that that idea that Balthazar says that to really appreciate beauty, we have to be able to slow down and contemplate. Yeah. That is a problem we have in our modern society. Yeah. We are always plugged in. And because of that, we do not have time to get bored, which boredom is a necessity of creation. And we also don't have time to just sit and contemplate a piece of art, whether it's music or the time to observe a flower or paint a flower or whatever it is that you're doing, that you have time to absorb that, to really look at that. And one thing that is, although just bring up again, Susan talked about talking to Heavenly Mother and to Eve. Well, one thing that Balthazar talks about, he has this idea, and it's called the Marian dimension of the church. So Marian being Mary, and he is Catholic, and so that Marian idea is very big in Catholicism, but he's really interesting. It's one of his most distinctive ideas. It's that the church is fundamentally Marian before it is institutional. And so for him, Mary represents the perfect response to God because she represents receptivity, she's receptive, obedience, surrender, and love. And so he says the church is beautiful when it receives God in this Marian way, not merely when it governs efficiently or argues persuasively. And this is really important because Balthazar thought that modern Christianity often overemphasized administration, activism, and rational control. But for him, Mary symbolizes contemplative openness to divine beauty. And I really agree with this. I think it is a problem that our Western culture can fall into, the cultural church often. I'm not saying this critically, I'm just saying this to maybe open us up to looking at the fact that because of the culture we exist in, often we place efficiency and administration and this idea of effectiveness or usefulness over beauty. And we think that rational argument will win the day. And I think that usually, I'm not discounting rational argument because a part of our whole being, like we worship God with our mind, but we worship Him also with our heart. And so I think that we often have a tendency to discard the heart. And we only have the mind. And so I think that there is something really we can be aware of and learn from.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think kind of to what you're talking about, going back to the Handels Messiah, where you can recognize that it's beautiful. And I think this goes back to like beauty is truth. Like no one's gonna go into the Sistine Chapel and look up and be like, that's ugly. You know, like you can try, Mike. Yeah, good try. Meh, you know, like you know that that is beautiful, even if it doesn't like, I don't know, speak to you know yourself is beautiful. Yeah, exactly. And there's this poem that I really love that kind of talks about this. It's by Cheslaw Milotes. I hope I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, but he wrote this poem one more day. And I'm gonna read the whole thing, but we can definitely don't have to like include the whole thing, but I think it just really speaks to this point. He says, Comprehension of good and evil is given in the running of the blood. And a child's nestling close to its mother, she is security and warmth, in night fears when we are small, in dread of the beast's fangs, and in the terror of dark rooms, in useful infatuations where childhood delight find completion. And should we discredit the idea for its modest origins? Or should we say plainly that good is on the side of the living, and evil on the side of a doom that lurks to devour us? Yes, good is an ally of being, and the mirror of evil is nothing. Good is brightness, evil darkness, good high, evil low, according to the nature of our bodies, of our language. The same could be said of beauty. It should not exist. There is not only no reason for it, but an argument against, yet undoubtedly it is and is different from ugliness. The voices of birds outside the window when they greet the morning, descent stripes of light blazing on the floor, or the horizon with a wavy line where the peach-colored sky and the dark blue mountain meet, or the architecture of a tree, the slimness of a column crowned with green. All that hasn't it been invoked for centuries as mystery, which in one instant will be suddenly revealed? And the old artist thinks that all his life he has only trained his hand. One more day, and he will enter the core as one enters a flower. And though the good is weak, beauty is very strong. Non-being sprawls, everywhere it turns into ash, whole expanses of being, it masquerades in shapes and colors that imitate existence. And no one would know it if they did not know that it was ugly. And when people cease to believe that there is good and evil, only beauty will call to them and save them so that they will still know how to say, this is true and that is false. And I have just learned so much from that poem, especially that last part where sometimes in our day and age it's really hard to know what is good and what is evil. But it is sometimes easier to say that is ugly and that is beautiful. Like it's sometimes just easier to understand what is beautiful because it uses a different language. Again, it's not using the rational, and that's important, like we've said, but we just cannot discount this part because it teaches us something different and it will call to us, like it says.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Back to Mary for just one second. My favorite thing about Mary is how, well, this is me assuming, but still, she didn't care about what other people. Well, she might have, however, we don't hear about her caring what other people thought of her, nor did she try to change their minds about it. It doesn't seem like she went around talking about her experience. And then I think of the woman caught in adultery with Christ and how personal that must have felt to him with his mom being pregnant when she got married. And I'm assuming having to keep it quiet. We know from other people that when you have this miraculous experience, the Lord kind of says, This between you and me, you know? And Joseph was shown in a dream. And if that would have been noised abroad, he probably would have heard it like that. So I think sometimes I have to remember that other people's perception of me is ugly. And God's is what I care about. If his perception of me and my perception of him is beautiful, that can sustain me for a lot longer than other people's perception of me. That does not seem to be part of like the confidence that came from what she experienced, I'm sure carried her through. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Even though it probably was hard.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because in our day and age, a pregnant, unmarried teenager is something to be talked about. And I cannot imagine in that day and age it was very much something to be talked about.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. We could go into that, but yes, that's a whole nother part. We maybe will later. Maybe next year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So kind of circling back to what Caroline was just talking about, Balthazar, he talks about how beauty leads to truth and goodness. Right. He saw beauty as the doorway into the Christian life because people are first captivated by beauty before they commit intellectually or morally. And so roughly his sequence would be beauty captivates, truth illuminates, and goodness transforms action. So without beauty, truth becomes cold and goodness becomes oppressive. I do. I love that. I think that this idea of beauty being the doorway to truth, to goodness, is really what you were talking about.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because I think beauty can help us to see clearly. And there's this quote by Martin Schlesky. I'm gonna don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. But he says, the events within and around us long for interpretation. But how can we learn to interpret if we do not learn to truly listen and truly see? Kind of again circling back to the beauty requires contemplation. We have to truly learn to see, truly. Just a few examples. If we look at Van Gogh's haystacks, or if we look at like the David, the statue of David, or music, if we listen to like St. Matthew's Passion, or these things that have been around for so long, too. They've lasted because there's an element of truth in them and that is pointing to something beyond, right? And they're helping us to truly see the world around us. I think we have to be careful too when we're talking about beauty that it's not all making it shiny or all roses. I think that beauty also can illuminate suffering, you know, like it doesn't have to just be like this nice piece of art or nice piece. Like there's this piece by Van Gogh called At Eternity's Gate. And it's this man, you know, holding his head in his hands as he's kind of contemplating death. And I think these are the kind of things too that help us to see the world. So it doesn't have to be this nice image. It also illuminates suffering in a true sense, more than like words can even comprehend. Like I know you read Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem last time.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And that is a poem that isn't logical, like it's not logical sentences, but we understand it because it's pointing to something that is true about the nature of the world, which is it's charged with the grandeur of God, it's bleared, smeared with human toil. Like those are things that resonate with us, right? Like that's true, and it's helping us to see it in this different way.
SPEAKER_02So I feel like I just said the same thing over and over again, but I think you're no, no, and I think it's an important thing to say because right now we're living in this time of chaos. Yeah, there are very scary things that are going on in the world right now. And I think that sometimes there is this tendency to think that in dancing or music making or creating, we are diminishing and not acknowledging the sorrow and the brutality of the world. But I think it's just the opposite. In a novel by, again, Caroline and I, we love to do these in Eastern names, but in a novel by Eugene Vadiloskin, there's the protagonist, Gleb Yanofsky. He's a 14-year-old guitar prodigy. He drops out of music school because he sees this girl drown, this young girl drown. And so his father, Feodor, when he hears that Gleb has left music in view of death and the fact that death awaits each one of us. And that is so depressing to him. He said that the distinguishing trait of a musician was not the dexterity of his fingers, but the constant thought of death, which should instill us with optimism, not horror. It is meant to mobilize, not paralyze. In other words, he says, true creativity must balance between life and death. It has to see a little beyond the horizon. And I love that because a lot of times great masterpieces are born out of deep suffering and the wrestle of the artist to move toward hope. And we can learn from their wrestle because there are terrible things that happen in the world, but there are wonderful things too. And I also brought a poem. It's called A Brief for the Defense, and it's by Jack Gilbert. He's talking about just in India and just what you can see there as far as the sorrow and the suffering. You think about Mother Teresa and how she just saw so much suffering around her in India. And this is a poem, a brief for the defense. Sorrow everywhere, slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else with flies in their nostrils. But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants. Otherwise, the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women at the fountain are laughing together between the suffering they have known and the awfulness in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody in the village is very sick. There is laughter every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta, and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay. If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation. We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight, not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the devil. If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude. We must admit there will be music despite everything. We stand at the prow again of a small ship anchored late at night in the tiny port looking out over the sleeping island. The waterfront is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning. To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth all the years of sorrow that are to come.
SPEAKER_00So good.
SPEAKER_02Isn't that beautiful?
SPEAKER_00So good. It's so beautiful.
SPEAKER_02Because beauty is this stubborn resistance against the darkness, right? Like Isaiah says, it is beauty from ashes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I was listening to my friend's podcast this morning, Julie Taylor. It's called Get Ready with God. It's just little daily devotionals. And she said, the state of the world right now is that if you don't feel hopeless and you're not mad, then you don't care. And she said, I don't operate well from a place of hopelessness and I don't operate well from a place of anger. Am I doing stuff to address things? Yeah, but I'm not going to put out more hopelessness and more anger. And I think that it's true. There is this social pressure right now to feel hopeless and to be mad. And like if you don't feel hopeless and you're not mad, then you must not understand what's going on in the state of the world. And I think that actually finding beauty in your everyday, in your relationships, in your neighborhood, in your children, in the things that are going well in your life, is recognizing the hand of God in your life. Because the truth is, like, even when we see all these Nephites get destroyed when Christ comes to America's right, they can't even light fire. Like the darkness is so thick. For three days, all they're doing is crying and wailing. And then Christ comes and immediately they see the beauty, they see the good. And Christ is beauty, Christ is good. And so I trust in He will wipe away all the tears, he will make everything right. And that doesn't mean that I'm like turning a blind eye to what's going on. But instead of seeing it and feeling hopeless, I see it and I feel hope in Christ.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I love that. And again, Madeline Longell says that God doesn't answer suffering with argument, he answers suffering with himself. And as I've thought about that and what we're talking about, beauty's response to suffering. I don't think, you know, we're not going to solve the problem of pain here.
unknownNo, no.
SPEAKER_00Many books and many thousands of years have been much smarter. But I will say I think that beauty is a compelling answer to suffering because, like we've talked about, it exists. So when we hold suffering and we see it, I think it is only fair to hold beauty because that also they both exist at the same time. And two truths can exist at the same time, right? Like there can be suffering that we acknowledge and we can feel sad about that and we can feel angry about it. Like you're saying, but then beauty also exists. So if we're going to acknowledge one, we have to acknowledge the other that that is real, that there is just actual tactile beauty that is a part of our world. And when Christ entered that world and participated in that suffering, he also brought beauty. And like what you're talking about, we can see the cross as something that is beautiful. It is the ultimate suffering in a sense, but it is also the ultimate form of beauty of overcoming that suffering. So anyway, I think that beauty can be really healing when it comes to suffering because it doesn't ignore it or negate it, but it does meet it with a response, you know.
SPEAKER_02I know that you had to endure some great suffering. So, how Caroline has beauty helped you to process through and work through the suffering that you've had to endure.
SPEAKER_00Oh, thank that's a great question. One of my favorite writers, her name is Sarah Clarkson, she has this story where she was really struggling with her faith and she couldn't read the Bible. It just like was painful to her. So instead, she read The Lord of the Rings. And she said that as she kind of moved through that phase and looks back on that, she could hear God laughing because she's like, it's the same story. Yes. Right? Like it's the same story. So I think for me in my life, when I've endured great suffering and maybe church things have felt really painful. Yeah, or like in a symbolic way, I can't read the Bible like her, you know. I think God has used that language to speak to me in ways that are personal. So for a time when I really couldn't read scripture, like it was so painful to me, I read poetry and it's the same thing, right? Like it's like the same truth that God would speak to me through. When like general conference was really painful to me for a while, I was like, well, I could listen to choral music that was really transcendent and is like the same thing, you know. So I think sometimes when we go through suffering and maybe some of the normal modes of spirituality that we would have used in the past, and they don't work for a little bit because for whatever reason they're associated with things that are difficult for us. When we open the door a little bit to what is true and beautiful, which is everywhere, like there's so much everywhere available to us that can speak. And so for a while, like during COVID, I started this like little newsletter. And it was mostly just for me, just to kind of like find what was beautiful in the world when stuff was hard. And I called it milk and honey because I was thinking about that scripture where God meets the children in the wilderness and he says, like the land is flowing with milk and honey. What's the you probably know the reference much better than me, mom? I'm not good at references. Your father is really good at that. I'm talking about, yeah. The land is flowing milk and honey. And they're in the wilderness, there's like nothing there.
SPEAKER_01It's right before they start receiving manna, right? Yes, yes, and so which is not milk and honey, by the way.
SPEAKER_02And he's gonna lead them to this land. He's gonna give them to a land of milk and honey. And it's not a land that they have created right now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's not a land they've created, but it's given to them. And there's this like givenness in things. Anyway, and it was just interesting to me as I kind of focused on it's mostly me just like curating things that I found, whether it was like a beautiful poem, beautiful piece of music, podcast, or whatever, where I could still see, like, oh, our land is still flowing with milk and honey. Like there's still all these things that God is giving to us in abundance. And again, that doesn't negate the suffering, that doesn't negate how hard things can be, but that is given. There is a givenness in that that if we can receive it, it will nourish us. And so, like sometimes I go through these cycles of maybe just giving into the darkness a little bit, like where it feels so oppressive and so dark. And I'll kind of go into this, like, I don't know, what do we call them on? Like the cloud, like the dark cloud. The dark cloud, like the dark cloud. There's the gray cloud. And it takes a little bit to get out from under it. And like, really, the things that get me out from under that are the things that are beautiful.
SPEAKER_02Like you have to have some sunlight that'll pierce the cloud, right? And it's the beautiful, yeah. Yeah, that ability.
SPEAKER_00And what about you, Susan? What when has beauty or things beautiful kind of showed you or helped you?
SPEAKER_01So while you were saying, like I had a time that was very I could not go to church. It was really hard. At first, all I could do was like go and take the sacrament, then I had to leave right after. Yeah, then I could stay for sacrament. And eventually I worked up to it. But the thing that got me through that was actually rest, going home and just resting, not being on my phone, and how rest is such an important part of transitioning through that and how much beauty there is in rest. And then I experienced this crazy thing last year where everything in my world turned upside down. And it was so painful and so hard and so beautiful. I felt so looked after at the same time. And it's the Sunday school answers, it's the things that we know work, and it's diligently seeking after things. So I went to the temple, I asked for blessings, I took the sacrament, I tried to serve. And then I was just at a loss because the way that I've always gone through stuff is to become a victim. And then same, same. Yes, and then that actually what I learned through all of this is prolonged victimhood robs you of your agency, which then robs you of your creativity. And so the answer was for this was start creating. And I thought, I've been in a creative slump forever. I don't know how I'm gonna start creating. So I just started doing stuff in my house, like painting a wall and then framing art. And it was like I had a fire hose in my hands, like I could not stop. And the Lord led me to this beautiful place where now I'm starting a new business based on creativity. Yeah. But it was all through this hard thing. Yeah. And so I think like if you're in that moment right now that feels hard, that feels hopeless, that feels like, why? Why am I here? What did I do? Nothing. You didn't do anything. It's time to transition, probably to a new phase of your life. And the Christian world has this great phrase or name for God, which is He's an on-time God, which I love. I really do think, like manna from heaven, you get what you need when you need it. And if you receive it, you will receive more.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And he has never given me things for tomorrow today. He gives me the things for today that I need today. He says, Don't worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow has enough worries of its own. Tomorrow will take care of tomorrow. And so it is just being patient and having discipline and waiting on the Lord and asking friends to pray for me and going to the temple and reading my scriptures and doing all of the things and just okay with not being okay for a little bit.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That's so powerful.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I think one of the interesting things that you said is in many ways, you can't think yourself out of something.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But what you talked about is that you, God said, start doing. And so again, it's that incarnational doing of things. And that when we do that, we are participating in what would be called the new creation, right? Yes. God is not going to just restore us back to Eden. We're participating in a new creation, the new kingdom that's going to come. It's already in breaking in. That's what happened when Jesus came. He said, you know, the kingdom has come, right? It's breaking in. It's the new creation.
SPEAKER_01But that book you sent me, who's it by?
SPEAKER_02Art plus faith. Art and faith. And it's by Makoto Fujimura. And he talks about that in his book, which is probably why you're doing because I think it is so interesting. He talks about the fact that a lot of times we think about Jesus as somebody who's going to come and he's going to fix things. He's a fixer. And that is true. He says, I am not saying that the fixing message is to be avoided, but he says he thinks that it is incomplete. He says, God does not just mend, repair, and restore. God renews and generates, transcending our expectations of even what we desire, beyond what we dare to ask or imagine. He quotes N. T. Wright, who is a theologian that I've talked about before, that I really like. He's a great New Testament scholar. But he says this what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to roll over a cliff. You are not restoring a great painting that is shortly going to be thrown on the fire. You are not planting roses in a garden that's about to be dug up for a building site. You are, strange though it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resurrection itself, accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God's new world. Close quote. So it's this idea that there is a new creation. That's what we are doing. We're not just fixing the old pipes. We are creating a new creation. And so all art, all music, all poetry invokes this idea of the new, the new creation. And he's an artist, Makoto Fujimura, and talks a lot as a Christian artist and talks a lot about this idea. He calls it the theology of making. And it really made me think a lot of you, Susan, because I know that that's something that you do is you create. And right now you're physically creating a needlepoint, but you also create businesses. And so obviously, for Caroline and me, we're more the art music worlds, but there are other forms of creation. We've talked a little about science and music. I mean, science, and then now we've got this idea of like you can create a business.
SPEAKER_01Well, I've learned most of my life lessons actually through money. I've learned a lot about God through money and through making money and figuring out different ways to approach business and the economics of business. And I don't have a finance degree, and it's not something that I've even studied in school. But I feel like as I partner with God with the ideas that I have around that, that's where I really see the weaving and the axe. That's where I see that tech, that word I brought up at the beginning, the text. And I think I love to use my hands and I love to create that way. But where I really get fired up is when I create a new business model in my mind. And then I'm able to do it. And in that book, that I listened to some of it, I don't read books very well because I can't do my needle point while I read. I gotta, I gotta use my hands for something else. But he talked about the new world, God is inviting us to be co-creators with him. And so if we go back again to Genesis one, two, and three, the first thing he does is he divides, he separates. And so if there is a separation process in your creating, in what he's asking you to do, know that there's a purpose behind it. And so it might feel painful. We don't want to let go of things. But in the new world, us becoming new creatures, the new men, all of that, he's asking us to separate from the profane to come back to Eden, to come back to him. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I think it goes back to that thing I talked about earlier, too, which is the cosmos out of chaos. Like I think about you creating your business. It's that idea, you're creating cosmos out of chaos, you're ordering something, you're creating something. And that's such a big part of God's work, right? He's like always creating cosmos. And touching back to your experience that you shared, I think that's what he was calling you to create something out of nothing. And in that creation, there is meaning, right? Which I think is important for us to talk about too, that beauty creates meaning. And I think now in our age too, we're kind of suffering from this meaninglessness. Yes, like nothing means anything and everything can be kind of whatever you want it to be. And I think beauty's a really important response to that. Like if I look at Van Gogh's Starry Story Night or something, that means something. It's kind of hard for me to explain, but it's like that is a response to the meaninglessness of things. Like you don't create that if nothing means anything. You know what I mean? Like that act or whatever, like that has meaning. So I think that's a really important aspect of beauty, too, that it does respond. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02Yes, it acknowledges that there is meaning in the world.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And Hans Erst von Balthasar, he believed that beauty convinces differently than argument. He said arguments can compel intellectual ascent, but beauty evokes desire, wonder, and love. And he says a genuinely holy life has a kind of self-authenticating luminosity. So he worries that with the Christianity in our modern world has become overly defensive and overly conceptual. It's the concept. And so he says we have apologetics without radiance, ethics without joy, and doctrine without splendor.
SPEAKER_00Oh, wow. Yeah, that's it, right there.
SPEAKER_02There is a beauty in the doctrine. And I think to talk about that, the beauty that we find in the doctrine, he also believed that beauty would reveal God's glory. He believed that modern theology has focused so heavily on truth, right? Doctrine and goodness, which is ethics, and they've neglected beauty. So for him, beauty is the splendor or radiance of truth and goodness. And without beauty, Christianity becomes abstract, moralistic, or lifeless. And he draws on this biblical idea of God's glory, which is the visible radiance of divine being. And he talks about how God's glory appears most fully in Jesus Christ. And I know Caroline had some thoughts on that, and probably Susan does too. One of the things that I thought a lot about as far as this aspect that modern theology is focused heavily on truth, the doctrine and goodness, ethics. With the Reformation, the Protestant Reformation, we jettisoned a lot of the Catholic, just the beauty that was in their worship. We jettisoned the liturgy. A lot of the beautiful statues were destroyed because that was thought to be idol worship, or the icons were destroyed. Walls of churches were just simply whitewashed with nothing. There was no adornment. And you can see that plays out in our early as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If you look, we come from a very Protestant background, a very Calvinist background. Joseph Smith was in upstate New York. There's a lot of that. The Methodist tradition also grew out of that Calvinist background. So we inherit a lot of that. And you can see that in our buildings. They're very utilitarian, pretty much, you know, whitewash, cinder block. And it has only been recently where both the Protestant tradition and I would say our own tradition have been recovering this idea that beauty, without beauty, as Balthazar says, Christianity becomes abstract, moralistic, or lifeless. We crave beauty, not just utility. And I really would love to get your thoughts on that.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Well, one quick this is kind of a tangent, but there's this documentary. Who's it by the one on beauty?
SPEAKER_02The Oh my goodness, it's gonna come to me.
SPEAKER_00I know. Roger Scruton.
SPEAKER_02There it is. It's in my mind. It came to me. I knew it would come to me. Okay, give a clock.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yep.
SPEAKER_02One of you.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00So there's a documentary by Roger Scruton. It's called On Beauty. And he talks about buildings and buildings that are just made for utilitarian use that are like cinder block buildings or whatever, even though they might be more cost effective in the short term, they're not in the long term because they're almost always torn down. But beautiful buildings aren't and they last and they're not taken down. So I feel like this kind of plays into what you're saying that if it's just for utility, it doesn't last. But if it is something that encourages beauty, it does. And I think it's interesting just seeing how our church is starting to adopt some of these things. Like I feel like 20 years ago, Latter-day Saints talking about Advent, like would not have been a thing.
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_00But I feel like now that's just kind of becoming more a part of our vocabulary. Like we talk about these liturgical calendar things that we wouldn't normally have done. And now we're kind of, I think a lot of people are embodying that more of like thinking about Avon, thinking about Lint, you know, like I would say that's true also with the Protestant churches, too.
SPEAKER_02The lower church returned. But I would say there's an understanding that we need that. We need the liturgical.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we need those reminders and these kind of celebrations, which I think is another aspect of beauty, the celebration, the kind of the festival, like celebrating these things. So I think that's really interesting, these kind of returns. And I feel like like mom and I talked about before this, that you can see beauty in the temple, right? Like that's maybe more of where like our physical beauty is manifest in the buildings and things. So that is becoming more, but even the temple can be very utilitarian in its design. So I think as a people, we still have work to do in this area of just like really embracing beauty and physical beauty in our spaces and not being threatened by that, that that's somehow like idolatry or idol worship or whatever like weird thoughts we have about that. What do you think about that, Mom?
SPEAKER_02Do you think that I find it really interesting? I think the early LDS church did a better job at it. I think that they very much produced plays. Like Brigham Young loved to act. They had dances, they had poetry. The first thing that was built in Salt Lake City was the social hall. And it was used as this gathering place, not just for meetings, but for music. Brigham Young had a brass band that went across the plains because he knew the importance of that. They would have dances in the evenings. And I remember when I first started Relief Society, one of the things we had, it was a cultural refinement lesson in Relief Society meeting every on Sundays. It was wonderful. And we rejected a lot of that. I think again, as our world has become so much more mechanized, we sometimes have a tendency to lean more into like the utilitarian. We often describe ourselves as humans in very technological or machine-like words, like we give output and we receive input. Well, that's a computer. That's not a human, you know? And so I think that our culture sometimes has this tendency to do that and to think that, well, the most effective way to spread the gospel is in this very utilitarian way. Now I will say that they still do wonderful productions at the times of temple dedications, often, not always. But I would hope we would do more because this idea of bringing art and music of cultural refinement I think is just as important as the doctrine. And I also find in many ways too, it's a shame that we no longer have homemaking meeting, this idea of creation of a home. Lanier Iverston, she's a writer, she writes a lot of really interesting things, but she says beauty is not just for special occasions. It is most beautiful in the workaday hours of a common life, in the small rites and ceremonies and touches and pauses wherein we acknowledge that our little existence matters in the midst of a whirling cosmos. Making beauty can certainly avow to God that we love him. But perhaps even more it shouts into our timid hearts that God loves us. And I think that we can make beauty within our own home. It doesn't have to be expensive. I know that one thing that Susan does is that she's doing it right now for her business, but she does it in her home. Articles of beauty from things that you thrift or that you make. Do you want to talk to that a little bit about how you create beauty just not in expensive ways, but in thrifted ways in ways that you use your inner creativity.
SPEAKER_01Yeah I mean for my house I kind of have two thoughts on it all. I don't love a blank wall. Blank wall and I have never loved each other. However, it doesn't have to be expensive. There's a million ways to just create something that is cheap. I mean there's websites where you can get free art. There's so many unlicensed artists out what how licensing works is after a hundred years, if someone doesn't continue the license, that then becomes available for commercial use, for personal use, and you can take it to the printer. I mean I printed off dozens of pieces of art for my home that are just pieces that I found in the free marketplace. Like the Smithsonian has a really good place. You go in and it's called open source art and you can search anything in there you can find art. Then you take it to your local printer and then you just get an old frame at the thrift store and you can put it up. One of my favorite things President Nilsen ever said and he had some beautiful things to say was the Lord loves effort. When you create something you think wow this is good. And then as you become more creative and you do it again, you look back and you're like, that's a little embarrassing. That was not good. But you loved it. And I feel like the pride you feel in it is a measure of the pride God feels in you every time you create something. And so now if I'm looking for something I check first at the thrift store and I check first something around my house or something that I can create from something that I've seen. And I am not the most creative person. I'm diligent and I'm quick. And those are the things I bring to the table. There are many people who are more creative than me, but I'm also just not afraid to fail.
SPEAKER_02And I think that's one of your greatest qualities that's huge.
SPEAKER_01That is where I succeed is that I am okay with it not being perfect. I'm okay with it not turning out how I want it to be and I think that if you can let go of the fear of failure and not let it say something about you when you do and just move quick through it, then you can become creative.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's one of the greatest gifts that you have given to me Susan because I am such a perfectionist and I struggle with that. But you've really helped me to just be able to move forward and not be afraid of failure. And it's so important.
SPEAKER_01And we have created something beautiful here and just I told your mom when we started I'm like you're going to take it very blase like I'm going to act like I don't care but I just leave a lot of room for the spirit to come in and I try to not get too emotionally attached to anything I'm doing. Yeah. And then if I finish something it doesn't turn out then we just try again and we try again and we keep moving forward. And that is where I find yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know what that reminds me of going back to Mary is the idea of like behold the hand of the Lord. Like that's what you're doing I think when you're creating something like that. It's just like behold the hand of the Lord like I'm going to be open to how you're going to enter in me and like how we're going to do this. Like I don't totally know but I'm here and I'm just going to be open to it and like here we go.
SPEAKER_01And I have to shout out Kit she's here with us recording today but bless her heart she is a type A to my type F. And she will be like okay do you want me to order that for you and get it done. And I'm like let me just sit with it for a second and I know it drives you crazy kit because she just wants to check things off her list. She feels so much that's her creativeness is checking things off her list. She is very creative in that and I will change my mind or I'll move through it and then we will go forward. But she's been so patient with me because she just respects that in me and I respect that in her and yeah it's been a beautiful relationship.
SPEAKER_00But yeah we just compliment each other.
SPEAKER_01But I just always need just a minute. Let me just sit with this yes.
SPEAKER_00You know what I was thinking too when you're talking about your home and I don't know if we really need to include this because this is kind of a tangent but just like you were talking about the beauty in homemaking. And I think again it's not like aesthetic prettiness like I think about the most beautiful homes I've been in. And it's not always that they're like the fashionable and style homes. Like one of my favorite homes is my mom's best friend Marcy like her home is so beautiful to me because I don't know there's just this it's like it's the spirit right like there's the spirit there and her home isn't like fashionable but I don't know she has like beautiful plates and she has like all of her books and beautiful wooden pieces that are like handcrafted. Yeah it's like her you know it's this expression of her and I think about like my mom's home is like one of the most beautiful homes that I've been in. Sweet even though it's not like I know you're going to redo it soon but it's like the feeling of that home. And another way I was thinking about creating beauty in the home is like that doesn't cost a lot of money is a meal. And mom is so good at this at making beautiful meals. And some of the most like sacred experiences of my life are like Sunday dinners. Mom's made this beautiful outpouring of love through a meal like she's made salmon and she's made rice peel off and she's made like homemade rolls and she's made a pie, like all these things that take a lot of effort that are so beautiful for us to enjoy. And those have been like some of the most sacred experiences of my life because someone has put so much love and beauty into something it's just going to be like gone in a little bit but enjoying that together is such an act of beauty that you're really good at mom.
SPEAKER_01So anyway when I design any space I think how are people going to feel yeah in here or what has happened in my life that I want to honor. So like my front room have you been in my house no when I was going through this hard thing it was the first room I started working on last year. And I really connected with the phrase the Lord of the Saboath which is Lord of the angel armies don't you love that I love that. So it's my angel room and all the art in there is angels or something that reminds me of angels and I put disco balls in the window so that it reflects these lights because the Egyptians believe that we become stars when we die. But I want people to come in there and feel like they are protected by the angel armies. And that's as I design anything I think how will people feel here?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I think as you're creating a mill you're thinking how can I nourish people whenever you're selecting anything make sure that it's a reflection of your heart not to be seen on Instagram. Yeah. I think is probably a big difference there. Yes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah capital B beauty.
SPEAKER_02Yes exactly well I think we'll just wrap it up with one little thing which was that Balthasar he believed that the beauty of Christianity is not mainly found in theological arguments, but it's found in holy lives, in the people of the church living a holy life it's found in liturgy, the rituals of the church, in art and in the witness of those saints who have gone on before us. He said Christianity is fundamentally something that is seen before it is systematized. And I loved that because he felt that the Christian faith in its deepest reality is this form of life that would radiate divine beauty and that this beauty would become visible above all in our life in the way that we create not just our life but also our home the art that we create that it becomes this reflection of Jesus Christ and our Father in heaven that through the Holy Spirit it becomes this reflection. And that even in art that is created by people who perhaps are not Christian, the Holy Spirit can still work through them if they open themselves up it can work through them to create beautiful art that will ultimately reflect the perfect form of Jesus Christ. And that it's done individually. So he talked about how for example like Frank Sancis of Assisi might manifest this beautiful joy in poverty or that another saint that he talked about is Therese of Lissot and she would reflect this beauty of hidden simplicity and trust. We've talked a lot about Mary and her reflection of submission. And so I would encourage you in the book of Hebrews they have what's called the hall of faith in Hebrews chapter 11 and it talks about this great cloud of witnesses that has gone on before us. And as we study the scriptures we can see in the lives of these saints and then in the lives of our early pioneer forebears divine beauty because it is reflecting the glory of God. So these are these concrete examples of divine beauty and love in history and that we can find beauty the most beauty I think in many ways in the lives of those people that are surrounding us that are living out gospel truth.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Do you guys have anything else you want to add as we close this up no that's beautiful Cindy.
SPEAKER_00I love the line yeah I think just circling back to that Jesus Christ lived the most beautiful life. So again he is our example of what beauty is and what it should look like and we try to follow him in that yeah.
SPEAKER_02Wonderful. Well thanks for joining us Caroline was so fun. Thanks for letting me be the little host person this time Susan it'll be back to normal next time. And again a shout out to Kit. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for listening to the Scripture Study Podcast, your midweek Bible boost. Everything we mentioned on this podcast, if we said there would be a link to it is in the show notes wherever you find your podcast. Cindy Madsen currently does not believe in or participate in social media. However if you would like to follow along with Susan Peterson she can be found on Instagram at susan.m.peterson have a good week