*3.3. A "Third Way" for Contemporary Culture: Creative Thought*

This leads us back to our final viewpoint: the composer and the poietic processes. The theme of the creative process is one that in recent years, from many different (sometimes opposing) angles is emerging in writings on theology and spirituality. For our purposes, there is a useful notion (in poetic continuity with our theme of "thirds") in the thought of Italian theologian and musician, Pierangelo Sequeri which can shed light, in his writing on what he calls a "third way" (*terza via*), within which "creative thought" is invited to have a leading role. One of the concerns underlying Sequeri's work is the separation and division in the history of Western theology and spirituality between the world of art and that of Religion, and its effect on the spiritual quality of culture [71], from whence he explores the theological potential of music. Interestingly, in an extensive study on the history of western music [72,73], his stance is not that music fills in and substitutes the spiritual in the wake of religion, but rather that music is the art that resists the division most:

"The prophecy of Nietzsche—"Art raises its head where the religions withdraw", has not been very listened to in music" ([73], p. 11)*.*

This, according to Sequeri, is precisely because the history of music in the West has been moved by the very idea that music is able to initiate us into immediate contact with the divine, and the quest to represent or interpret it. However, the basic fact remains—these worlds have separated and that bodes ill for the spiritual quality of both. Sequeri identifies a possible way forward in the role of artists and talent: a "third way" in which creative thought emerges as the "director" of the encounter between the sacred and art. In his words:

Music struggles with the sacred, and the sacred is experienced in art, on the territory of an encounter whose direction is entrusted to *creative thought:* not only destined for prayer, nor necessarily a stranger to religiosity ([72], p. 508)*.*

The point of interest here is the last phrase—a place common to those who profess a religious faith and those who may not. This is precisely the space much of Arvo Pärt's music, including *Spiegel im Spiegel*, inhabits. Sequeri calls for:

a new unprejudiced opening to the universe of artistic creation" in which it is not a time for tightening and defining things, but rather for "the liberation of a more evangelical generosity on the part of believers who are convinced and dotted with talent—*capable even to draw with them the interest of the world around them* ([74], pp. 28–29).

From what we have presented on how Pärt describes what it means to him to compose, I suggest his understanding and response to that creative calling opens precisely the kind of path Sequeri is talking about. Two aspects in particular seem significant:


Finally, coming back to the initial questions we began with about the potential of music to mirror, or transmit religious experience: from a fully theological perspective and without expecting it to be understood in the same terms for those who do not share that faith and world-view—if the space one inhabits and draws inspiration and music from is an experience of the Divine in whom we live, move and have our being, then surely some of that breath of life and love passes through (as with all love experiences), in the most human-divine way possible, to those who listen? Or even further: revelation tells us that God is present, always; faith is the doorway that opens our eyes to discover and experience that presence. Perhaps the space that is opened by this music somehow draws or gathers people into that place inhabited by God's Spirit, with whom, for a time, we amicably, even if unknowingly, make three tents and dwell for a while.

### **Acknowledgments**

Much of what is written here was born of the panel organized by Kutter Callaway, Clive Marsh, Vaughan S. Roberts and the joint session of the Music and Religion Group with the Religion, Film, and Visual Culture Group at the 2013 Annual Conference of the American Academy of Religion, called *Hearing Images: Film, Music, Meaning-Making, and Lived Religion*. Thanks are due to all involved for an exceptional session.
