Makers & Mystics

Amanda Held Opelt is an author, speaker, and songwriter. She writes about faith, grief, and creativity, and believes in the power of community, ritual, shared worship, and storytelling to heal even o…

As we prepare for The Breath & The Clay creative arts gathering, I’m going to be highlighting several of the speakers and performers who’ll be joining us at the event. 

For today’s episode I reached …

Relationships form the heartbeat of community life. The way we interact, the way we understand one another and hold space for the differences between us determines the quality and depth of our societ…

Kaleb Moten is a singer, songwriter, composer, music producer, and musician, dedicated to revealing beauty and meaning, and liberating other artists to do the same.

Kaleb has released four studio albu…

This cultural moment may be one of history’s most interesting times to find home among a community of likeminded people with whom we identify. On the one hand we are more connected than we ever have …

Community is a vital component to our mental, emotional and spiritual health as well as a formative influence on our creative work.

Throughout history, artists have gathered together with other artist…

In this season finale episode, podcast host, Stephen Roach shares how desire informs our sense of self and how the practice of detachment can help us navigate the journey from a false self to embraci…

One of the core markers of a person’s identity are the beliefs they hold to be true. A person’s faith becomes a fixed point from which they view and understand the world. But what happens when those …

Ours is a fast-paced digital world where technology has become such a personalized part of our daily lives, it’s hard to imagine who we are without it.

Social media, augmented reality, and AI-driven …

How we show up in the world often takes on a wide variety of expressions. Our public and private lives reflect the many roles we play in society and the varying facets of personality traits we form t…

This Artist’s roundtable discussion was recorded live at Loom creative arts event in Spruce Pines, NC. The conversation centers on the importance of building creative community, the embodiment of the…

This year I’ve had the opportunity to participate in several creative arts gatherings including Loom, Hope Words writer’s conference and here recently, the Guild in Raleigh NC.

The talk I gave at the…

At one time, religious identity and the Christian narrative formed the social imaginary of our western world.

To be a part of a local church or to identify with some aspect of the values of traditi…

Hugo Ball was a German sound poet, theatrical performer and mystic. He and his partner Emmy Hennings were the original catalysts of the infamous Dadaist art movement which they started in Zurich, Swi…

What do we make of the world we have been given? How do we bring order from chaos, beauty from ashes and flourishing from what is formless and void? Echoing the words first spoken by the Great Artis…

Tasha Jun is a Korean American melancholy dreamer, wife, and mom, who grew up in a multicultural and biracial home. She’s spent her life navigating the space between worlds: American and Korean, fait…

After accidentally fixing a broken guitar pedal in 2007, Joshua Heath Scott’s natural curiosity pulled him into the rabbit hole of electrical engineering and circuit design-- from this experience, hi…

Qais Essar is a contemporary Afghan composer, instrumentalist, and producer who channels his melodic designs through the rabab, a 2,500 year old instrument from Afghanistan. He has toured extensively…

In today’s episode we’re going to hear from a young adult fiction writer whose creative work is fueled by the inspiration of family and who gains tremendous creative energy both from his children and…

Today on the podcast, we are continuing our discussion of art and identity by taking a look at the vital role of our relationship to our bodies.

Why is it important that we honor and understand our b…