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The Try Tank Podcast is about innovation and the church
Father Lorenzo Labrija discusses the discipline of inspiration on TryTank podcast
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: From Try Tank Experimental Laboratory. This is the Try Tank podcast where we talk about all things related to innovation in the church. I'm, um, Father Lorenz Labrija. Thank you for joining us. Hello everyone. It's Father Lorenzo here. Welcome to the Try Tank podcast. Our episode, episode today is 024-episode-24 on the discipline of inspiration, which I, we don't. I don't think I've done this yet, but this is actually a conversation with an author about their book. But I normally would not be bringing you a book unless I thought it was actually important and how it ties together to the, the possible future of the church. And we will get to that. In this conversation we talk about how to create a strong creative habit, the ingredients of art. We talked certainly obviously about inspiration. Let me think about it. What is inspiration to you? There's a lot of religious language that goes into it and why this is important. We are also reframing, uh, our own ministry as an art form. And if you do that, how does that look? What does that look like? Why is it different? It's actually a good conversation. There are some great things to talk about here and I just think that it's a great conversation. Um, the author joining me is Carrie Wallace. She happens to also be someone that I know. She's the author of several other books including Stories of the Saints. If you haven't seen that book, get it. It's actually, even the stories are so well done and the art is amazing. The Blind Contessa's New Machine. The Ghost in the Glass House. Choose. And another book that came out recently, Psalms of Wonder, about the psalms itself. She up in Michigan now lives in the Chicago area with her new husband and she is the author of this book. So let's get right into it.
Cary Wallace writes about the discipline of inspiration on the Try Tank podcast
Here we are, episode 24 of the Try Tank podcast on the discipline of inspiration. I hope you enjoy it. Gary Wallace, welcome to the Tri Tech podcast.
>> Cary: Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here and get a chance to talk with you today.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And I've got to tell people I've had the opportunity of knowing you for a few years now. We work together. You were part of the Trinity Fellows program. And I've just been so impressed by your work from the get go that, ah. And actually you were already sort of really working hard on this book when we met a few years back. And I was so excited the whole time through. I'm like, can't that book just come out? Can that book just come out? So when you finally, you know, when it finally came out, I was just super happy to get it. And I read it in, in two sittings. I have two mornings. I sat there after my break and I read it. And it's just because it's also written sort of in a prose. I mean, you, you certainly are a pro at what you do because it reads so smoothly that before, you know, it's like, oh my God, I sat here and I've. I've already read like half the book. Oh, this is amazing. And you, you just get so engaged in it. So enough praise about you. Tell listeners, for those who. Who may not have yet the privilege of knowing you, tell us about your book, the Discipline of Inspiration, the mysterious encounter with God at the heart of creativity.
The Discipline of Inspiration aims to help artists develop strong creat habits
>> Cary: Sure. So. Well, first of all, thank you for all that, um, that enthusiasm. And thank you most of all for spending your time with the book. I always think it's amazing when people choose to read something instead of do something else with their time. And I'm grateful you spent your time with my book. Um, the Discipline of Inspiration I've been working on for over 10 years. And it was an idea that first came to me as I was creating a program, um, to help artists create strong creat habits in the course of their daily lives. And this felt like it was something that was important to me because I had had, um, a strong creative habit and seen how that allowed me to write a full novel instead of just think about being a writer. And I also, um, saw that there were a lot of people who couldn't take advantages of the way that arts funding is given out most of the time these days, which is largely for performance or publication events. To the extent that it's given to anybody who's going to make something, it usually takes them out of their daily life and puts them out in some retreat center with a basket of fresh eggs every morning, you know, and uh, a situation that's very different from actual life, which is where if the vast majority of people are going to create, they actually need to learn how to create. So, um, so I was trying to build something that would do that and actually wound up doing that. But in the early days, thought that I needed a curriculum and wanted that curriculum to be full of the speech of working artists on art. So a lot of the, um, sort of textbooks on any given art form or just art overall that you can get are not done by sort of the top practitioners of the craft itself. So, uh, you know, which is something that I actually think about in putting this book out as, like, I hope I don't eventually fall into that category myself. But, um. But, uh, you know, I was like, I want to know what Rembrandt said about this. I want to know what, you know, like Barry Gordy said about how to make music. I want to know. And so I went through all of these, um, you know, places where you could find that direct speech by people who had not sat down and written a tome about their process because they were, in fact, like, um, making wonderful things instead. And, um. So I read things in Rolling Stone and the Paris Review. I read books on songwriting by songwriters and speech by dancers on dance. And I was interested in the whole history of art across all genres. And I was interested in a really large number of things. I was interested in, um, the artist's character. Do you have to be a jerk? The artist's life. Do you have to be unhappy? You know? Right, right. But these are real questions, you know, and there. There have been. People historically have been like, well, sorry, baby, this is just what it's like to be an artist, you know? And, um. Which is a position that has happened throughout history in which I've always been skeptical. Like, any. Any century. I see that in. I'm skeptical. But I wanted to hear what artists themselves had to say.
Rabbit was researching how religious experiences interact with artistic practice
Um, I was interested in the definition of art, the purpose of art. Um, religious experiences that artists had had and how that, you know, interacted with their practice as creators. And, um, what I found was just like a wide difference in opinion, um, on basically every single one of these subjects. So you get things like, um, T.S. eliot saying that, um, the only way to be an artist is to be very intelligent. And then you have Borges himself, you.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Know, if he says of himself.
>> Cary: Exactly. Um, but Borges, one of my favorite writers, the giant of Argentine letters, says, um, you know, intelligence doesn't have much to do with creation. And Whistler, the painter, you know, of Whistler's mother's fame, um, says the vastest intelligence cannot bring art about. Right? So. And in this, like, set of disagreements, none of us are qualified to be the referee. Right? Like, if. If Tolstoy and Toni Morrison disagree about something, which of us can tell them who is right in that argument? You know? So, um, I was very interested when I discovered that there was, in fact, in this melee of opinions, one place where the speech kind of coalesced and started to sou. Um, it had. It wasn't uniform, but it had a unity to it. And it was around the experience of inspiration. And I need to do a little bit of a shorthand here when. When I talk about inspiration. You know, inspiration has got this vast, um, set of uses in modern life. Um, I'm using it very specific way. I think in art there are three main ingredients. Um, the first is. Is just raw talent. It's like, how easy is it for this kid to sing in tune? How easy is it for this kid to draw a human face? Um, and then there's technique, which is the time we spend in training, sort of developing our talent into a skill that is. Is, um, that has some strength to it. And, um. But both of those things, even in large measure, without this third element of inspiration, mean very little. It's what tells the singer how to sing. It's what tells the songwriter what to write. All of the talent and technique in the world, if you don't have that spark of inspiration, will not add up to much. And when artists talk about the experience of inspiration, they universally describe it as something that feels like it comes from beyond them, that is foreign to at least their conscious will. Um, that wants them to do things that they didn't plan to do and that maybe they really deeply don't want to do. Um, and that has energy beyond them. It's like offering them a gift if they want to participate in it. And if they don't do it, it might go to someone else, right? So, um, you get quotes like, Hoagie Carmichael, who wrote Georgia, uh, on My Mind, says that great melodies are not written, they're discovered. You know, it's something that pre. Exists somewhere else that we find. And, um, uh, Lucille Clifton, the great poet, says that something in her knows how to write poetry better than she does. So you've got that idea of, it's not, it's me and it's not quite me. It comes from inside, but it comes from beyond. And, um. And one of my favorite, ah, stories along this line is Michael Jackson, as he was preparing for his final tour, um, right before he died, actually was recording feverishly and telling his entourage, you know, my higher power is giving me these songs. And his entourage was like, michael, you are exhausting yourself. Can you ask your higher power to give you these songs after the tour? And he was like, I can't. Then he might give them to Prince.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Oh, there we go. Nothing like a little competition too. You know, I was. It was impressive to read. Even as I was reading it, I was like, how on earth does she discover all these things from all these. That alone must have taken Your time, the research of what did this artist say about this? And then going sort of, if you will, any of us who have ever done research, right. You go sort of down that rabbit hole. And sometimes you can come up with a wonderful quote that tells you, oh, this is where they got their inspiration. And I'm guessing that you also probably went down some rabbit holes where it's like, I can't anything about what inspired this person. And it is fascinating though, to see that so many of them found their. Their inspiration to be something that's. That's beyond themselves. Right. Which.
>> Cary: Yeah, it's.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: It's in. In, you know, when you look, for example, like gratitude, uh, when people become, um. Even if they're not spiritual or they say they're not spiritual by sort of definition, when someone is. Is grateful, you have to be grateful to something else. Right? You're grateful generally to. To something bigger than you, to. To life itself. But what. It's. Which is sort of the beginning of spirituality, even if someone's like, no, I'm not spiritual. I'm an atheist or whatever.
You describe a moment when inspiration hits and if it is a moment from God
But I love some of the things in this book that are just like, you know, when you talk about creation sort of being. When inspiration, uh, you know, hits you and that's sort of God, you know, uh, giving you some. Some actually. What. How would you describe that moment when inspiration hits and if it is a moment from God? Let's talk about that for a second.
>> Cary: Yeah. Well, the thing that struck me about all this language was that universally, regardless of whether people had a religious background or not or wanted to have any engagement with religious ideas, they were reaching for religious language to describe it. Even if a number of them attribute inspiration directly to God and, um, or. Or describe it as a divine gift. And, um. And then there are a number who have to use religious language, if only to deny that it could possibly be a religious experience, because it feels like one. Right. Um. So. So what I'm essentially doing in this book is saying, um, well, let's take them at their word. If we take them at their word. And where do we get. If we believe that inspiration is a divine gift, if we believe that, um, that it's not an echo of God's, you know, of the image of God in us, but it is the actual presence of God with us when we create. It's the actual presence of God invoked by art objects that are also a record of somebody else's encounter with God. Right. So, um, that's essentially what I'm doing in this book.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And because you also said we can't command inspiration, which I take that to be. Yeah, I was like, oh, that's actually pretty true. You can't sit there and say, like, well, right now I'm going to be totally creative. I'm going to get the best idea for the best song.
>> Cary: Right, right, right. And, in fact, a lot of people find it that it comes at very inconvenient times. Right. Um, for me, it's a shame generally. Well, you're not alone. There's a lot of people, you know, and one of the things I wanted to do, part of why the book is called the Discipline of Inspiration, is that we have a lot of rigorous thought on, like, how to identify talent. I don't know that we're that good at it, actually. Um, and then we have a lot of thought and practice around developing technique. But when we talk about inspiration, which I think is actually even more important, there's very little rigorous thought on this. Right. And, um, so part of what I was trying to say is we can think rigorously about this. And, um, we can take the. What we know about how to get inspiration kind of out of the shadows. Um, where art teachers are, like, you know, not even during class would be like, oh, if you're stuck, just go take a shower, take a nap, take a walk around the block. A lot of it are forms of rest and manual labor are the things that people, like, find it in most immediately. But my contention is that all of the spiritual disciplines are.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Are.
>> Cary: Can be sort of tools or doors by which we welcome more inspiration into our lives.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And you do go. The third part of your book, the Incarnation part, sort of talks about the actual. You go through a whole litany of the spiritual disciplines and how everything for that that are listed there and how they can. How they can be used for that.
>> Cary: Yeah. Yep.
You say that all art comes from God, but how do we get more inspiration
Um, so one of the questions that I. There's a number of questions that are raised by this idea, um, that all art comes from God. And, um, one of them is, uh, how do we get more of it? Right. And the fundamental gesture. If the deepest spark of art is coming from something beyond us, then the fundamental thing we need to do is surrender to it, to welcome it. And we have very little in modern life that teaches us how to do that. Modern life is all about clenching and controlling and thinking harder and the grind and all this stuff and work is important. I'm not saying that showing up to do your job is not important. Um, but, uh, that fundamental gesture of, like, letting go and letting a Spirit that's bigger than yourself, come in. I got very curious about like, well, how do we, you know, if we. If we're greedy for this experience, we get more of it. And um, and I started thinking, I really don't want to hold myself up as like, ah, any kind of like, exemplary practitioner of any spiritual discipline because my, um, my steps in those directions have been faltering at best. But when I asked that question, what I realized was that in my life as a believer, I, um, had the spiritual disciplines that I had kind of stumblingly engaged with. Um, were the things that had also fitted me to welcome a spirit beyond myself in my creative practice. And what I came to believe when I started thinking about it is that I think there's some. You, uh, know, a large part of the sum total of human wisdom and how to surrender to a spirit beyond ourselves is contained in those spiritual disciplines that you see across world religions, right? The fasting, silence, community, poverty. Like, they are something that we sort of universally recognize as useful for that. And I think that they, um, can also be really powerful in our creative practice. And I think they can be, um, very powerful in things that we don't think of as our spiritual lives, but as just our lives.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And you even mentioned that, you know, just because something is difficult, I believe the exact word is difficulty, doesn't threaten inspiration. Just because something is hard doesn't necessarily mean that it's a threat to what God may be doing in you. Which is what I love, by the way, about this whole. This whole premise, if you will, is that it is God sort of working through us. Uh, yeah. In fact, you say the first requirement of this is to just show up. If you're just open and show up and surrender to it. Which it is. You're right. It's absolutely countercultural these days. But it, uh, reminds me a little bit, if you will, of Brother Lawrence and the practice of the presence of God, uh, where he was just like, hey, if I wash dishes, God is there with me too, and doing that work. You're just saying, you're sort of taking that. That same sort of line of theology and saying. And God can also do things with that energy, with that. That connection that we have to God if we surrender to. To the divine in, in. In our art itself.
>> Cary: Yeah, yeah. And. And I also think, uh. So I, uh. I think there's a lot of questions about inspiration. If you have had inspiration in your life, it can. It can be terrifying, it can be very sweet. We can like, answer it or not. Who. People who have had good experiences or experiences that they could see the goodness in at least, um, oftentimes are like, the mystery of where that came from. And can you get more of it? It can become a really daunting one. Right. Like, how do I get back to that place that I was before? And I think the idea that it comes from God is a really. And not actually from inside of us is a really useful one because we are so aware, if we're honest with ourselves, of our own limits. Right. And how, you know, I think there's a real tension in every human between, um, what we know we could be capable of and, um, both for good and evil. Actually, I think, um, that's true.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Well, you do say that evil has no power to create in the book.
>> Cary: Right, Right. But I think when we think about, like, we've done these amazing things balanced against that is all of our failures and all the times we've disappointed ourselves and others. Right. Like, and. And all the times we haven't lived up to what we know we could have done when we just didn't do it for some reason, we just, you know, didn't live up to it. And, um. And I think that, uh, to a real extent, we have to respond to inspiration. Right. Like, inspiration can come to us, and we cannot do anything with it. And that, I think, is very sad for both us and for the world. Um, but I also think that. Sorry, uh, I've lost my train of thought.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: No, it's okay.
>> Cary: You know, we can. We can patch around it, probably. Uh, no, in the sense that we.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: We can say no to. To the inspiration. We. We are allowed.
>> Cary: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Ours. Ours is a fluid God who's like, if God gives you inspiration, you can be like, no, that's a little too hard for me right now. God's not going to hate you for. Or smite you for it. God's going to be like, all right, well, you know, there'll be other times. There'll be other inspirations.
Part of humility is to be honest about yourself, to yourself
And part of humility to go to the disciplines that you. That you talk about in your book. Part of it, you know, you do say humility is an act of faith. Uh, T.S. eliot could probably learn a little bit about that. But, you know, but part of that is the humility also just to be on, as you say, to be honest about yourself, to yourself.
>> Cary: Yeah, yeah. And I think so. You landed exactly where I was trying to get. Um, which was, you know, despite the responsibility that we hold for responding to inspiration in, uh, a very Fundamental way, when we understand that it. It doesn't come from us. There's a freedom in that. Right. Because we believe it comes from an inexhaustible source and a source that is good. There's not a question about whether this is, you know, there's been real questions in the history of art about whether this is good stuff or bad stuff, you know, and it's been attributed to both God and the devil. Um, and there's been, you know, there's been strong arguments on both sides. I think this is why I was.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Confident about you when you were talking about evil. Can. Doesn't have power to create. I'm like, okay, into something, you know.
>> Cary: Yes, exactly.
For listeners who are in ministry, tell us about art in our ministry
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So, um, I, uh, was going to ask you. So if for. For the people who listen to this podcast, which are people who are generally in ministry, either directly as someone who's ordained or a lay person, how. How can they be invited to sort of see their ministry? Because I think your definition of art is. It goes beyond just sort of what perhaps I would very, very sort of, uh, in the shallow definition of art that I would have is, like, art is when you paint or art is when you do music. And I can't do either of them out.
>> Cary: Right, right.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So, yeah, for our listeners who are in ministry, tell us about art in our ministry. Because one of the things you say is community is the highest form of art.
>> Cary: Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Which, you know. So it's an expansive definition.
>> Cary: Yeah. So one of the conclusions I came to when thinking about this, and this is all in the book, is, um, that if we welcome God or the spirit of inspiration into any human activity, it can become an art form. And that's something that's already embedded in our language. Right. When somebody is good at, like, when somebody's a finance whiz or when they're really good at making barbecue, we're like, oh, she's an artist, he's an artist. Right. So we already recognize that. So the most fundamental thing I would say for somebody in ministry that could come out of this book is the reframing of your ministry as an art form and how that would unlock, um, sort of freedoms and playfulness and creativity and, um, lift off burdens of duty, um, and, um, expectation and limitations that you're dealing with that are very real. Um, there are also expectations and limitations in any art form. Right. You're always bumping up against it, but it's just a very different approach. And I'd seen it be, um, really fruitful. I was actually just talking with A woman yesterday who was saying that she does children's ministry, but she has also been an ice skating coach for two decades. And I was talking with a group about these ideas of how ministry can be reframed by the people who do it as an art form. And she was saying, when I work as a children's minister, I'm always thinking about how do we explain what we're doing to the parents and how do we defend what we're doing to the donors? And how do we. You know, she's just got all this kind of, like, structure and expectations she deals with. And she said, when I teach the ice skating, I'm asking, um, who is this child? What do they naturally love to do? How can we build an art form that, like, releases that or, like, you know, foregrounds that or celebrates that which. And she. And she was thinking, how. How could I bring that energy, how could I bring those questions into the children's ministry? Which I think. I can't imagine that would be anything but a fruitful exercise.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Exactly. I think all of us could spend a little time thinking that way. But it is a mindset, isn't it? It's looking at it from a different way. Uh, yeah.
Trijank is looking at the future of the church and how it will change
And to that point, one of the things that I. Only, because I'm looking at the time and sure. I want to make sure that we talk a little about. So the work of Trijank is all about looking at the future of the church and how the church will be different in the future. You and I have spoken about this. The church will be very different than what we see today. Not so much that you will still be able to find what you see today in a church. You'll still be able to go to a congregation and do that, but there will be different expressions of it. And one of the ones that I have been thinking about, um, Charles Taylor talks about. He's a philosopher. He talks about the fact that we don't need new religion. What we need is new ways of being religious. Right. For. For.
>> Cary: Amen.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: For a very secular world to become again, to enter that enchantment that he calls of it. And art is certainly, I think, has always been, throughout the history of the church. One of those ways, I think part of the reason why we have such good choral music, why we have such cathedrals, is because all of us, at some point, as human beings, we reach a limit where it's like, I have spoken all I can say. I have. I have, you know, all I can do. My words aren't sufficient any Longer for me to tell you about the divine, to tell you about God, to tell you, which is why we build these cathedrals that make us look up and are so majestic and beautiful to try to give us a glimpse or certainly the impact, the emotional impact that music can have, uh, with someone. One for me, I write these little, uh, uh, haikus, uh, uh, as a way of nice reality. And it's just a new way. It's just like a little snapshot of a moment. But that's one way of doing it as well. And I think that this is a way that we could reach out to younger people. Uh, you know, 40% of millennials are telling us, and generation C are telling us that they're spiritual but not religious. So I think if we can meet, meet them. These that are seeking already. They're already seeking so we don't have to like go convince someone like, hey, you want to talk about spirituality? Because there's a lot of them that want to talk about spirituality. So what if we were to meet them where they are to tell them about something? And so I created this thing called Arts Cathedral. And as I was reading your book, I was like, oh my God, I just found, uh, the handbook. I was going to say the Bible to it, but we already have one Bible that's pretty good. Uh, but this could be like the handbook of uh, this community, right? And it's like, how do we get people to do this? And the way that I've been thinking about this is that we would actually begin with like a visual storytelling. We would create like a graphic novel about young people just living their lives and we would just distribute them for free all over town. And then at the back of it there's like a QR code that takes you to an AI bot that would have a lot of information that you can have a conversation with and then do events, do like pop up art events, uh, where you can do, uh, mobile art, uh, meditation, you could do just a whole bunch. There are so many things that you could do and then you can do, you can empower these people to go out and do their own sort of, uh, art events out in the world that way because it distributes it more. Uh, I just think it would be an interesting way of returning to the presence of God, because I really do, I agree with you fully that art can return re. Return us to the presence of God. That, that it is when we are in that moment, when we're in that flow of art. When I'm sitting down there and trying to help come up with my little haiku. It just, uh. It's a moment when I'm fully present to it. I remember I. I actually drew. I wrote an icon one time I went to on a retreat, and I did that. I found that while I was doing the icon, I was truly present to that moment. Of course, this was the image of an angel. So it's like I'm really just focused on that. That.
I think there's an enormous opportunity for the church in thinking of art
So I'm curious, what do you think, uh, as something like utilizing art towards young people in. In your travels? When you go out there, you're talking about art, you're talking about this. How do young people respond when you talk about art or. Or when you talk about the. That art is an encounter with God.
>> Cary: Yeah. So I love where you're going with this. And I see, uh, an enormous opportunity for the church in thinking of art in this way. And, um, and I think the opportunity. Think of artists in the way that, um, people outside the church have thought about it for a long time. So I think that people actually, both within and without the church, have been aware that they're having transcendent experiences in the presence of art. And that the most powerful, uh, worship experiences of the past year maybe didn't happen within churches. Maybe happened at, um, Beyonce and Taylor Swift concerts. And I think that you're also seeing, um, as people fall out of traditional forms of religion, they are recognizing the places where they have those transcendent experiences with art as holy ground. And I think that that is why you are getting people who are getting married in galleries, who are getting married in libraries. I don't think it's just, you know, here's another pretty building. I think that they do understand some kind of sanctification of that ground by the presence of this transcendent experience. And I think that they are not. Not wrong. I think they actually are finding God there. And I think that that is an almost miraculous door to welcome people through. And a world where, as you're saying, I mean, more than in many other generations, our speech forms do not work for us. Right. They are so compromised. So on all sides, we don't believe our journalists, we don't believe our politicians, we don't believe our advertising. We don't believe each other on social media. We don't believe what's coming from our pulpits. You know, but I think that art, including art that happens in the form of language, is perhaps the last language in which we can speak sincerely about things that really matter to us and have conversations that couldn't happen in any other context. And I think if the church can recognize that and welcome people into that, I think it could be a very powerful way, um, to welcome in people who have no faith background or who have been very badly burned by whatever their experience of religion up to this point has been.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Amen to that. So I'm going to let that be the last word because it's a great way of. I think it's an opportunity and I think, uh, the church should not pass it up.
Father Lorenzo Labrija welcomes Kerry Wallace to Tri Tank podcast
I certainly see a Tri Tank experiment coming up. So the title of the book, the Discipline of Inspiration, the Mysterious Encounter with God at the Heart of. Of. Of. At the Heart of Kerry Wallace at the Heart of Creativity, written by Kerry Wallace. Uh, it is available now wherever you get your books. Uh, and it is, it's just, it's. It's a, uh, it's an easy read. But that's the thing, right? Easy doesn't mean simple, right? Because now I've got to take what I've learned from this and be this. By the way, it was after this, because I was reading it a while, while my friend was here, that I started doing haiku coupe. It was like, oh, I love it. The haiku is a simple thing. I could do that. And then I discovered the variations of haikus and all that. I went down that rabbit hole.
>> Cary: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And I'm enjoying it. It's really, really fun. So, uh, thank you, Carrie, so much for being with us today. I really appreciate you joining us and sharing this conversation and sharing this with the world. I hope that it is. It becomes a bestseller. And a lot, a lot of people are able to discover their way to having a relationship with God through art as well. Thank you.
>> Cary: And it's always so great to talk with you.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Thanks for listening. Please subscribe and be sure to leave a review. To Learn more about Try Tank, visit Tritank.org Be sure to sign up for our monthly newsletter where you can keep up with all of our. Our experiments. The Tri Tank Podcast is a production of Try Tank in association with Resonate Media. Tri Tank is a joint venture between Virginia Theological Seminary and General Theological Seminary. Again, thanks for joining us. I'm, um, Father Lorenzo Labrija. Until next time, May God bless.