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During Week Two, “Uncommon Ground: Communities Working Toward Solutions,” CLSC Young Readers will take time to understand the complexities of identity and discrimination.

Reading the book Wishtree, by Katherine Applegate, young readers will be working with coordinators of the Abrahamic Program for Young Adults to discuss ideas of community and identity, as well as differences in religions and race at 12:30 p.m. today at the Jessica Trapasso Pavilion  at Children’s School.

The theme of Week Two coincides with the book’s message: communities working toward solutions. In the book, a tree named Red grows in a neighborhood and is known as “the wishtree.” People from all over come to hang something off Red’s branches and make a wish for something greater in life.

A Muslim family moves to the neighborhood with their daughter, Samar, who wishes for a friend. This wish is not easily granted, however, as one day a lanky boy discriminatingly carves “leave” into Red’s trunk, as a message to Samar and her family. As police show up to investigate, Francesca, the woman who owns the land where Red lives with a community of animals, decides Red should be cut down.

In that time, Red and her animals make a plan to get Samar a friend — her neighbor, Stephen. Samar’s and Stephen’s parents never end up talking to one another, but the children become friends regardless. Stephen ultimately gets the entire school to write “stay” on notecards to hang from Red, in a new message to Semar and her family.

This lesson of acceptance is a large portion of the reason Karen Schiavone, manager of community education, partnered with APYA for this week’s lesson.

“After reading Wishtree, I knew it was perfect for this week,” Schiavone said. “It’s beautifully written and captures the very essence of a community — albeit one made up of a tree and various animals — working together to affect change. … I think Wishtree serves as a reminder that community comes in all shapes and sizes and types. It is not limited to the area in which we live, but can come from friendship and love and, in this case, the desire to achieve a common good.”

One of the APYA Muslim coordinators, Safwan Shaikh, echoed Schiavone’s thoughts and said APYA is excited for the opportunity to present such a discussion to a younger audience.

To preface the discussion, Shaikh said coordinators will explain their own stories of religious and racial backgrounds to bring the book conversation into reality for some of the readers. Shaikh broke it down even further than race and religion, citing growing up and accepting small differences as themes in Wishtree.

“When you’re that young, you don’t want to feel like an outsider,” Shaikh said. “That’s something you don’t want to feel — like you don’t belong, especially when you do want to belong. … So that’s something I think many people who are minorities in faith and minorities in color, or minorities in whatever identity, could probably relate to in a lot of ways.”

The Rev. Jeffrey Brown has said he learned some of his most important life lessons, not in the “hallowed halls of a seminary,” but from drug dealers, prostitutes and gang members.

Continuing Week Two’s theme, “Uncommon Ground: Communities Working Toward Solutions,” Brown, a pastor and co-founder of Boston TenPoint Coalition, will speak at 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, July 2 in the Amphitheater.

Brown’s work, along with others, led to what The New York Times coined the “Boston Miracle,” a 79% decline in violent crimes involving youths from 1990 to 1999, and a 29-month streak of zero youth homicides.

He now serves as president of RECAP — Rebuilding Every Community Around Peace — working with faith groups and city officials to end gang violence. Additionally, Brown is the co-founder of My City at Peace, where he collaborates with housing authorities to rebuild distressed communities.     

For his efforts, Brown was named the 2016-17 Brandeis University Richman Distinguished Fellow in Public Life, citing his “model of social responsibility” which “(ensures) the right of every young person to live in an urban community without violence.”

“As we approached the broader theme of communities working across difference toward solutions to our most-pressing problems, we felt it important to highlight notable case studies, providing those gathered in the Amphitheater with lessons that meaningful change through community building is possible,” said Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education. “Brown has not only done so through his efforts in the ‘Boston Miracle’ but also in his working with communities through the U.S. on building partnerships between neighborhoods and police departments to end violence and strengthen communities.”

In his 2015 TED Talk, which garnered over 1 million views, Brown said the catalyst for his community work was the murder of Jesse McKie, a 21-year-old student who was attacked by six young men blocks from Brown’s parish.

“There were young people who were killing each other for reasons that I thought were very trivial, like bumping into someone in a high school hallway, and then after school, shooting the person,” he said in his TED Talk. “It got to the point where it started to change the character of the city.”

From there, Brown volunteered at a high school, but quickly realized he wasn’t targeting at-risk youths. Instead, he and a group of clergymen began walking through notoriously dangerous neighborhoods at night, interacting with drug dealers and gang members.

“One of the biggest myths was that these kids were cold and heartless and uncharacteristically bold in their violence,” he said. “What we found out was the exact opposite: Most of the young people who were out there on the streets are just trying to make it on the streets. We stopped looking at them as the problem to be solved, and we started looking at them as partners, as assets, as co-laborers in the struggle to reduce violence in the community.”

The “Boston Miracle” approach has since been replicated in cities across the world, including Louisville, Kentucky; Milwaukee; Rio de Janeiro; Belfast, Northern Ireland; and Johannesburg.

“I believe that we can end the era of violence in our cities. I believe that it is possible and that people are doing it even now,” Brown said, concluding his TED Talk. “It can’t just come from folks who are burning themselves out in the community. They need support. Because the old adage that comes from Burundi is right: ‘That you do for me, without me, you do to me.’ ”

The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, vice president of religion and senior pastor at Chautauqua, will lead a WorldPride/Stonewall 50th Panel at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 2 in the Hall of Philosophy. The discussion will center around the LGBTQ rights movement before, during and after Stonewall, a series of spontaneous riots that were led by members of the LGBTQ community against a police raid in 1969.

Robinson believes that featured panelists, Judy Shepard, Addison Moore and Sultan Shakir, will give an interesting perspective to the past, present and future efforts and accomplishments of the LGBTQ rights movement.

Shepard is the founder of the Matthew Shepard Foundation and president of its board of directors. In 1998, she lost her son, Matthew Shepard, to a violent murder fueled by anti-gay hate. In the aftermath of his death, Shepard and her husband, Dennis, started the Matthew Shepard Foundation.

Through the foundation’s work, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 was passed — a federal law that designated bias crimes directed at lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people as hate crimes.

“Judy Shepard is just an icon in our movement, and she has for 20 years; she just put herself out there for us,” Robinson said. “Her grief and her pain sobered us all up, and her hard work everyday since — it’s just a model in our community.”

Robinson said that having Shepard at the panel will allow Chautauquans to see the work and effort her foundation has put into the LGBTQ rights movement throughout the last 20 years. He wants to show past and present efforts, while also bringing awareness to current issues in the LGBTQ community.

“I knew that I wanted the panel to look to the future and that transgender people are sort of on the front lines now,” Robinson said. “It’s important that our movement move to protect them, and so that’s what I wanted the forward-looking part of our panel to do.”

Shakir is the executive director of Supporting and Mentoring Youth Advocates and Leaders, where Moore is health and wellness coordinator. SMYAL is an organization in Washington D.C. that works to support lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth.

Shakir won the D.C. Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance Distinguished Service Award, has been honored with the Community Circle Award by Baltimore Black Gay Pride and named Jewel of the Month by the National Black Justice Coalition. Robinson was particularly interested in having SMYAL be part of the panel because of how long it has been working for LGBTQ rights and its advocacy efforts in the transgender community.

“I’ve known about their work since the ’80s so I thought of them right away,” Robinson said. “Because this is on the cutting edge, there are not a lot of people who have been doing this work for very long, except for this organization. SMYAL has been doing this work pretty much longer than anyone else, and at the moment is really on the cutting edge of things because Washington D.C. has a huge African American population and their clients just happen to be teenage and early adult African American trans people.”

During the month of June, New York State is hosting a Pride Celebration to honor the 50th anniversary of the StoneWall uprising and a half-century of LGBTQIA+ liberation. Todays panel is an official part of this celebration.

“I think it’s very exciting,” Robinson said. “Often, in rural areas, people think things are terrible out here. There was a time when in order to have any kind of decent life you needed to move at least to a big city, if not some particular cities where there was a large gay community, but now there are LGBTQ people doing remarkable things in very remote places.”

Robinson said Chautauqua’s involvement in WorldPride is important — it shows there are activities and events happening all over New York, not just within the city. The I Love New York campaign has partnered with remote and rural areas in New York to make sure WorldPride is being celebrated all over the state.

“So I think it’s really important for us to show up in that celebration,” Robinson said. “It’s really great for us to partner with the I Love New York campaign.”

As a child, filmmaker Daniel Karslake spent his summers in Chautauqua, surrounded by storytelling.

“I’ve thought a lot about this in my life — why I have this need to tell stories,” Karslake said. “And I think a lot of it came from Chautauqua.”

His love for storytelling is not just him and his camera. Through his work, Karslake delves into a particularly huge issue that has even affected his life — the conflict between homosexuality and religion.

At 6 p.m. Tuesday, July 2 at the Chautauqua Cinema, Karslake will shed a brighter light on the conflict in his 2019 documentary, “For They Know Not What They Do.” After the film, he will hold a Q-and-A to open lines of conversation about the topic. The film will also screen at 2:30 and 6 p.m. Wednesday, June 3 and 6 p.m. Thursday, June 4 at the Chautauqua Cinema.

In the film, Karslake interviews four religious families and their LGBTQ children. They discuss their experiences, especially after the seemingly huge advances in the LGBTQ Rights movement.

“This movie is a movie about family — that’s it,” Karslake said. “You meet all four sets of parents and you get to know them first, and you watch what their version of loving their kids means.”

This isn’t the first time Karslake has made a film about homosexuality and religion.   

In 2007, Karslake dove head first into the conflict between homosexuality and Christianity by interviewing five religious families and their adult LGBTQ children in his documentary “For the Bible Tells Me So.” It follows the families to see whether they can embrace both their religion and their LGBTQ children.

His second film, “For They Know Not What They Do,” came after Karslake received death threats and homophobic emails through the website of his 2015 film. He found that in the same week, there was a Republican presidential debate where candidates discussed LGBTQ rights. He said the Republican Party really “buckled down” on LGBTQ rights in a state by state campaign.

“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” Karslake said. “Eight out of 10 of the candidates were saying very, very anti-LGBTQ things. I’m used to that coming from the fringe but it all of a sudden seemed to me that it became mainstream.”

In “For They Know Not What They Do”, Karslake tackles the topic of religious freedom, which people can use to discriminate because being LGBTQ is against their religion.

“Religious, conservative people aren’t just using the Bible anymore, they’re using the U.S. Constitution,” Karslake said. “They are claiming that it is their religious freedom to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people.”

Karslake said people have been misinformed about what the Bible says about homosexuality in that God doesn’t hate LGBTQ people. He hopes people learn about compassion through this film.

The topic of LGBTQ rights and religion has always been something Karslake wanted to capture through a lens. He worked at PBS for a show called “In the Life,” which was an LGBTQ television magazine. Karslake produced a story about an African American woman who was a Christian and a lesbian. She was an orphan but worked her way to higher education on a full scholarship.

The morning after the story ran, Karslake found an email in his inbox from a 13-year-old boy who decided not to kill himself because he saw hope in the episode Karslake produced.

“I read that email 20 times,” Karslake said. “I finally got that this kid was going to kill himself, had a plan and had settled on it and then he saw this one thing I produced about this one woman who was proudly lesbian and proudly Christian. And it made this kid decide to stay on this Earth.”

That single email continues to motivate Karslake every day. Since then, Karslake knew creating films about religion and sexual orientation is his life’s work.   

“I’m about showing stories of Christians who are able to embrace their children and their faith,” Karslake said. “That is something really important to me.”

While the film has been screened at film festivals like Tribeca Film Festival and Montclair Film, he said the Chautauqua audience is not only welcoming, but helps spark conversation about the film’s topics, something that is helpful to an independent filmmaker.

“My movies are heavily what they are because of the Chautauqua audience, so I am excited to screen my film there,” Karslake said.

He hopes the film makes a difference by pushing people toward compassion and love.

“I would like the people who are not with this yet and are not in favor of equality — for all people — to see the film and maybe think twice or reevaluate where they are,” Karslake said. “Because we are all just humans.”

LGBTQ Friends and Community is excited to welcome Judy Shepard to Chautauqua Institution and sponsor her lecture and conversation with James Fallows.

Shepard’s conversation with Fallows will take place at 2 p.m. Tuesday, July 2 in the Hall of Philosophy. After a collective fundraising effort, the organization was able to provide underwriting support for the lecture and bring Shepard, founding president of the Matthew Shepard Foundation board of directors, to Chautauqua.

“We’re interested in LGBTQ topics, so a couple of years ago I approached the Foundation and said ‘If we’ve got speakers that we would be interested in sponsoring, we’d be interested in doing fundraising,’ ” said Bob Jeffrey, a member of LGBTQ Friends and Community and Institution trustee. “Part of our mission is to really raise consciousness about our community.”

The organization holds many events throughout the season to provide a welcoming presence and raise awareness about the LGBTQ community. Hosting events allows them to reach more people and spread more knowledge.

“We have social events, meet and greets; things like that where we can show ourselves as welcoming and welcome those that are coming to the community for the first time and to also build that presence here,” Jeffrey said. “It’s important to do that — (and) to have speakers here as well. They can talk about various topics that help people understand a little bit more about our community.”

LGBTQ Friends and Community’s mission statement is to increase diversity within the greater Chautauqua community. The organization strives to create a sense of welcome and shared community for LGBTQ people and educating family, friends, allies, teachers, pastors and others about LGBTQ people and their experiences.

“A big part of our mission is to really be part of the whole diversity effort that Chautauqua’s undertaking,” said Barbara Britton, LGBTQ and Friends Community member. “The LGBTQ and Friends group really takes that seriously, not just for diversity and accepting our organization, but it’s that whole phenomena when you have anybody who’s lived their life as the ‘other’ and knows what it’s like not to be accepted by society.”

Once Britton caught wind that Shepard was a potential speaker, she immediately took action to raise the necessary funds. LGBTQ Friends and Community were excited for the opportunity because of Shepard’s impact in the community.

“We really believe in the mission of what Chautauqua’s doing,” Britton said. “So over the winter, when they let us know that Judy Shepard was a potential speaker, we got really excited because of course, in our community, everybody knows about Matthew Shepard.”

During the month of June, New York State hosted a Pride Celebration to honor the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots and a half-century of the LGBTQ rights movement. Chautauqua is an official part of the state’s Stonwall50/World Pride 2019 celebration.

Britton is confident that with such a strong advocate like Shepard, the event will spread awareness and is very much worth supporting.

“Judy Shepard has been just fearlessly fighting for our rights — LGBTQ rights,” Britton said. “She’s known worldwide as an advocate and a fighter. It was really special to raise money for someone like that (to come to Chautauqua).”

Shepard is the founder of the Matthew Shepard Foundation and president of its board of directors. After losing her son, Matthew Shepard, to a murder fueled by anti-gay hate in 1998, she now travels the nation speaking to audiences and communities about what they can do to make the world a better and more accepting place for everyone regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, sex, gender identity and expression or sexual orientation. Shepard has written a memoir, The Meaning of Matthew, which describes the family’s journey through the prosecution of Matthew’s attackers and their continued work to fight for progressive civil rights.

For more information on program underwriting opportunities, contact Karen Blozie, senior major gifts officer at the Chautauqua Foundation, at 716-357-6244 or kblozie@chq.org.

Dennis Galucki sums up the idea of Buffalo Day at Chautauqua in 10 words: “To explore American legacy through place-based, lifelong learning and imagination.”

Ten words, and now, 10 years. Buffalo Day at Chautauqua is spending its 10th summer on the grounds with a lineup of lectures and presentations throughout the day and across the grounds on Tuesday, June 2.

Buffalo Day at Chautauqua, Galucki said, started with a Special Studies course he taught in 2006 and 2007: “Imagine Buffalo in the 21st Century: The Buffalo-Chautauqua Idea.” The idea, he said, “flowed from that thought.”

All of the events scheduled on the grounds today are tied to the theme of “Imagine Communities Working Toward the Common Good: Imagine Greater Buffalo.”

Galucki opens the day with a brief presentation at 12:15 p.m. in the Hall of Philosophy, on “The Buffalo-Chautauqua Idea.” Galucki’s presentation serves as an introduction to a 12:30 p.m. panel discussion: “Education, Environment, Racial Equity, Arts & Culture.” The panel, led by Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker, president and CEO of the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo, includes Rabbi Jonathan Freirich, the Rev. Jonathan Staples, and David Rust.

“The panel came together through the work being done in Buffalo, where the city is dealing with many of the same issues that Chautauqua is dealing with, whether they’re diversity, whether they’re equity,” Galucki said. “And the lead on that, as far as I can see, is the Community Foundation. They’re a natural fit.”

Following the panel, at 2 p.m. in Smith Memorial Library, Chautauqua Watershed Conservancy Executive Director John Jablonski will join Betsy Constantine, executive vice president of the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo, in a discussion on “Buffalo & American Legacy.”

Buffalo Day concludes at 3:30 p.m. in the Hall of Christ, when Stanton Hudson, executive director of the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site, and Peter Schiffmacher, the founder of iTours 369VR and co-founder of Reality Capture Experts, deliver the latest program of the Oliver Archives Heritage Lecture Series.

“That works at two levels,” Galucki said. “One is the story of Theodore Roosevelt’s being inaugurated in Buffalo. That’s really the beginning of the Progressive Era. … The other dimension is the virtual reality.”

Schiffmacher and the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site have worked with a grant from New York State that will allow students in fourth and eighth grades to use virtual reality in their classrooms to experience the site — without ever having to set foot there.

Galucki said that, throughout the years, Buffalo Day at Chautauqua has showcased how the work being done on the grounds can exist in cities across the country.

“What if you could take the spirit and idealism of Chautauqua and plunk it into a city all year long?” he said.

Review By Johanna Keller:

A pair of beloved Romantic symphonic masterworks — by Franz Schubert and Johannes Brahms — were performed back-to-back without intermission to close out the first week of Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra’s 90th season. The news of the night was that about half the concerts this year will be intermission-free, due to popular demand from the audience, a change announced by Deborah Sunya Moore, vice president of performing and visual arts, in her opening remarks from the stage.

On a more serious note, Moore also paid tribute to Peter Haas, principal bass player of the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra, who performed with the CSO for 24 years and passed away last autumn after a year-long battle with cancer. It was a profound loss for the close-knit community of Chautauqua, and in an interview after the performance, Haas was fondly remembered by bass player Kaitlyn Kamminga, who called him “a consummate professional and great colleague.”

The evening’s performance of Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759, dubbed the “Unfinished,” was appropriately dedicated to Haas’ memory.

So, it was in this somber mood that Music Director Rossen Milanov took the stage and stood for a long moment before conducting a singularly poignant interpretation of the two movements that Schubert wrote in 1822.

In the Allegro moderato opening, Milanov kept his gestures small, maintaining a restrained dynamic throughout. He pushed the lyricism of phrasing, demanding sweeping arcs of sound, so that the cellos and violins seemed to sing, while the sforzandi provided a muted punctuation. One of the most shattering moments in this work comes when Schubert abruptly halts the gorgeous second theme, follows it with a full measure rest and then brings in an unrelated chord, in C minor. The crispness of the CSO’s playing made this interruption freshly shocking. In the Andante con moto, each of Schubert’s unusual transitions and daring key changes — often a kind of pivot on a solo instrument — seemed transparent, even fragile. The pizzicati (plucked passages) in the low strings were on tiptoe.

I have heard the “Unfinished” played countless times with dozens of approaches — it can sound muscular, bouncy, tragic, dramatic, stately, yearning. But I have never heard it sound so tender. Such a subtle approach requires the kind of musical imagination that Milanov possesses, as well as a true fusion and trust between conductor and players that has obviously developed during his five years on the CSO podium.

The mystery of why Schubert never completed his Eighth Symphony has been the subject of much scholarly debate, and the consensus seems to be that after writing his first six symphonies that hewed to fairly conventional classical structures, Schubert suffered a kind of artistic crisis — and it certainly couldn’t have helped that he also contracted syphilis. It is theorized that he was blocked by comparing himself to Beethoven, then a towering musical figure at the height of his renown. Schubert had sketched out a Seventh Symphony and then set to work on the eighth, composing two movements and leaving a third movement in an incomplete sketch.

By the time of his death in 1828, at the age of 31, Schubert left dozens of projects incomplete or abandoned, yet he was among the most prolific of major composers. He had written more than 600 songs, nine or 10 symphonies (or sketches, depending on how you count them), 15 string quartets, two piano trios, two quintets, 21 piano sonatas, 10 operas and other incidental music for the stage, seven full masses and a whole lot more. The two completed movements of the “Unfinished” symphony show Schubert experimenting with bizarre key modulations and harmonies, in a direction Beethoven never pursued. We are left to wonder how much more Schubert would have written, and how his music would have evolved, had he not died so young.

By contrast, after a short pause (not an intermission), Milanov hopped onto the podium and dove headlong into Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90 by Brahms. Hans Richter, who conducted the premiere, called this robust 1883 piece “Brahms’s Eroica,” referring to the nickname for Beethoven’s “heroic” Third Symphony. Both works open with a spirited Allegro con brio, and Milanov flung out his arms and stirred the orchestra into a full-out rendition that had the strings swirling while the brass and woodwind sections interwove those Brahmsian motives.

A particularly telling moment occurred in the third movement, Poco allegretto. The cellos introduce this throbbing minor key theme that is then handed around the orchestra and repeated again and again. This is a movement that can unfortunately become lugubrious and sentimental. But Milanov took it at a brisk pace and pushed the articulation in a fascinating way. Usually the two phrases of the main theme are played (bear with me here) Dah-dee-Daaaaah, Dah-dee-Dah. But Milanov demanded a legato that crescendoed into the second phrase with an extra surge at the top, so that it turned into Dah-dee-daaahHH-DAH-dee-dah. The difference in phrasing may seem minor, but it is just such a detail as this that turns a good performance into a great one, and demonstrates Milanov’s intelligence and refined taste.

Composers have often gotten their jollies by incorporating cryptograms — sequences of notes whose letters spell out words or names. Most notably, Bach spelled out his name (in German music, B-flat was named B and B-natural was H), and Robert Schumann inserted a form of his name into his music as well. Brahms had a friend and collaborator, Joseph Joachim, whose musical motto was “Frei aber einsam” (Free but lonely). A lifelong bachelor, Brahms converted Joachim’s motto into his own theme on F-A-F, to signify “Frei aber froh (Free but happy), and sprinkled it throughout the symphony.

Alas, it must be said that three times during the evening, dogs being walked by their clearly unmusical owners, added unwelcome interruptions, and always at the quietest and most sublime moments; why can’t Chautauqua institute a dog-free No Barking Zone on orchestra nights?

Speaking of acoustical matters, while I usually prefer to sit two-thirds of the way back to enjoy the surprisingly well-blended sound in the Amphitheater, I took this opportunity to take a seat in the choral section behind and above the orchestra, an experiment I recommend to any serious listener. Of course, the sound there is dry, like being in a recording studio, so that you hear the sections of the orchestra separately, including sonic details like the slight rasp of the bows. You also miss the visceral blare of the brass section (they are sitting 15 feet below with their bell ends pointed away from you). On the other hand, you get to closely observe the interactions of the players and see the conductor from the perspective of the orchestra members; it is revelatory to watch Milanov use his gaze and facial expressions to elicit the sound he wants from his players.

Finally, it should be noted that a new element has been added to the orchestral season — program books. Handsomely edited, the 51-page booklet contains repertoire, guest artist bios and David Levy’s fine musicological notes for the opening few weeks of the season. Best of all is the list of orchestra members with a photo of each and a note about their other institutional affiliations. Highlighting each musician is a great idea that all orchestras should adopt. It’s just another reminder of the atmosphere of Chautauqua, where each individual voice contributes to the whole.

Johanna Keller received the ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for her essays on music in The New York Times. She writes for Opera and The Hopkins Review and teaches journalism at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School.

Review by Eric Grode:

Chautauqua Theater Company’s first play of the season begins with a musical number, some two dozen voices strong. It ends stirringly. But no one in the audience claps.

Then the leading man steps forth, microphone in hand, and begins a lengthy monologue. Its very first line sets the stage while also uprooting us: “Brothers and sisters, let us pray.” And it is around this time that we realize the house lights are still on.

What the hell kind of play is this?

It is The Christians, Lucas Hnath’s nuanced dissection of the limits of tolerance within a contemporary megachurch. And its blend of earnest theology and Shavian verbal gymnastics makes the 2014 play a natural fit for Chautauqua Institution, as Hnath himself pointed out during an Amphitheater event last year.

That opening monologue is, of course, a sermon, one in which the charismatic Pastor Paul (a convincingly earnest Jamison Jones) touches upon the courtship of his wife and the church’s material success before pivoting to a harrowing act of violence in a suffering (but unnamed) country far away. A young man there died in the act of rescuing his sister from a bomb, and a missionary from the pastor’s (also unnamed) denomination regrets that this heroic young nonbeliever faces eternal damnation.

The ramifications of this idea lead Paul to detonate his own bomb, one that rattles the newly bought-and-paid-for church (conveyed effectively by Adam Rigg’s antiseptic scenic design) to its bones. “We are no longer a congregation that believes in Hell,” he announces from the pulpit. “We are no longer that kind of church.”

Well, then.

How does an entire congregation change a linchpin of its core theology on a dime? Does it? Should it? Hnath, a daring young playwright with two playfully revisionist works reaching Broadway in the last three seasons, and himself a former member of an Evangelical church, takes the respectful measure of these questions by approaching them from several different angles.

The skepticism toward Paul’s abrupt shift is apparent from the beginning, at first in Associate Pastor Joshua (the stealthily powerful Ricardy Fabre). And as the two pastors wrangle over scriptural interpretations in front of the congregation, The Christians feels at first like “12 Angry Churchmen,” with one progressive dissenter patiently converting the room one naysayer at a time.

But as we’ve learned in plays from Saint Joan to Galileo to The Crucible to A Man for All Seasons, speaking out against religious dogma can be a risky business. And as the pushback continues from the church’s bottom-line-conscious board of elders (led by the stentorian Malcolm Ingram), its congregants and even Paul’s wife (the terrific Stori Ayers), Hnath manages to convey the congregation’s estrangement from Paul without ever condescending to those more hidebound voices.

Some of his less thought-through twists get the better of director Taibi Magar and her cast: Why does Paul spar so commandingly with Joshua early on and then turn into a stammering, and vaguely sleazy, mess when a deceptively meek congregant takes issue with virtually the same concept just two scenes later? But Magar shows a keen ear for subtle shifts in power — you learn a lot about the various characters’ misgivings even when they are silent — and finds an almost ideal synthesis of emotion and rigor during even the most Scripture-heavy passages.

Incidentally, Fabre and Madeline Seidman (palpably touching as that concerned congregant) are the only two members of the vaunted CTC conservatory to take the stage, and their material adds up to roughly a half hour of stage time. Granted, the Motet Choir lends solid support throughout The Christians. But with just two mainstage productions this season, using guest artists for 60% of the speaking roles feels like an odd underutilization of CTC’s considerable resources. Here is a gentle prayer that One Man, Two Guvnors, its next show, will use more of these talented performers and create a sufficiently ungodly mess.

Eric Grode is the director of the Goldring Arts Journalism Program at Syracuse University and a regular freelance theater contributor to The New York Times.

The members of ChamberFest Cleveland are bringing three classical masterpieces back into conversation.

The group will perform “Precocious Virtuosity,” a set of three compositions at 4 p.m. today, July 1, in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall. This recital focuses on composers who were catapulted into musical fame at young ages: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Felix Mendelssohn and Moritz Moszkowski.

ChamberFest Cleveland is a yearly festival that features both new and returning members every summer. Their performance today opens with Mozart’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, K. 478.

Jessica Bodner, a celebrated violinist, Harvard University faculty member and repeat performer with ChamberFest Cleveland, said the piece’s precise quality makes it perfect for chamber groups — especially for her group.

“The Mozart is a beautifully pristine, perfect piece of music,” Bodner said. “The group of people that I’m playing it with are wonderful musicians — it’s a total dream to play that pristine piece in that situation.”

ChamberFest Cleveland will also perform Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat major, Op. 20. Bodner said the popular piece is a key part of any chamber musician’s repertoire — and that its composer perfectly fits the theme of “Precocious Virtuosity.”

“Mendelssohn was a prodigy; he wrote this piece when he was 16 years old,” Bodner said. “It’s just this outpouring of a masterpiece from such a masterful mind.”

The last piece on ChamberFest Cleveland’s program is Moszkowski’s Suite for Two Violins and Piano, Op. 71. Itamar Zorman, an internationally acclaimed performer and three-time violinist with ChamberFest Cleveland, said Moszkowski’s piece is the least known on the program, but that its melodic, Romantic qualities make it another masterpiece.

“The piece that’s less well-known is the Moszkowski,” Zorman said. “This piece is very brilliant, first of all, and wonderfully melodic. Throughout, it has something of … this Romantic spirit; a somewhat gentle, personal sort of music-making.”

According to Bodner, that “personal sort of music-making” is not limited to one piece. Instead, it is a key quality of chamber music — a performance style that features a small group of musicians with individual roles.

“I think that chamber music performances can be one of the most dynamic performances, because there’s this personal energy that’s pulsing through the group when everyone is communicating well,” Bodner said.

Zorman agreed, describing chamber music as a form of conversation.

“From the audience’s perspective, part of the excitement is just watching (the musicians) interact — watching how they literally communicate with notes, with music on the stage,” Zorman said.

With a small group like ChamberFest Cleveland, Zorman said, unique personalities and styles can shine — and they can create something new.

“From a broader perspective, when you put a small group on stage, you put different personalities and playing styles (together),” Zorman said. “It’s like you’re putting together a dish. Sometimes things really don’t work well, but when they do, the sum can be larger than its parts. Something new and special can come out of it.”

To Bodner, chamber music is unique among performance types because every member performs an individual part.

“A soloist has the responsibility of just taking care of that one part, and in an orchestra you don’t really get an individual voice because you’re part of a larger section,” Bodner said. “But with chamber music, you have a soloistic element where you’re the only person playing your part, but then you get to play off of each other and have this great dialogue.”

According to new member and Juilliard School violinist, Nathan Meltzer, the festival filled a major gap in Cleveland when founders Franklin and Diana Cohen launched it in 2012.

“Most of the great chamber music festivals are in vacation areas,” Meltzer said. “There are some great ones in Florida, in Upstate New York, in California — and (the Cohens) wanted to bring high-quality chamber music to some areas that weren’t being represented fairly (in chamber music). They just wanted to bring some great music to the community of Cleveland.”

When the Music School Festival Orchestra makes its debut this season, the performance will feature a mix of pieces, both old and new, by composers both living and dead. So at 8:15 p.m. Monday, July 1 in the Amphitheater, audiences will get a taste of classical standards and be exposed to work from a modern composer.

There are more than 80 student musicians in the MSFO, playing around 14 different types of instruments. For some, it is their first summer at Chautauqua; others have returned from previous years. But tonight is the first time this group of students will play together in concert.

Every year, the MSFO is faced with the same challenge: forming a brand new orchestra and getting concert-ready within a week of the musicians first meeting each other. However, even after just seven days of rehearsals, a collection of strangers has transformed into an orchestra.

“It was difficult at first because we all come from different schools and different backgrounds,” said violinist Cristina Micci. “But I think after having rehearsal after rehearsal, we all kind of fit together.”

The concert will begin with a 7-minute piece by American composer Donald Grantham titled “To the Wind’s Twelve Quarters.”

“Part of a young professional’s training is playing new music and music by living composers,” said Timothy Muffitt, artistic and music director and conductor of the MSFO. “It also balances the concert out nicely from an artistic perspective.”

Though the piece is the shortest in the program, it’s full of personality.

“It’s (exciting) in that it’s very fresh and music of today,” Muffitt said. “It’s also a very exciting, rousing, uplifting work — but it has a dark side, which is where the fun is.”

This piece will be followed by Edward Elgar’s Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36, “Enigma,” a composition that Muffitt called “a Romantic-era staple.”

“Elgar really puts the whole orchestra to work in exploring the full palette of color and sonority that a symphony orchestra can create,” Muffitt said.

Much longer than Grantham’s, Elgar’s piece lasts for around 35 minutes, presenting many of its own unique challenges to the musicians.

“I really like the Elgar; it’s a fun piece,” said violinist Julimar Gonzalez. “It’s really hard, but a lot of fun.”

After intermission, the MSFO will launch into the finale: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 38 in D major, K. 504, “Prague.”

“Nothing brings an orchestra together more quickly than having to play a  Haydn or Mozart symphony,” Muffit said. “It really helps us get to know each other. It’s immensely demanding music from the perspective of orchestral performance.”

Mozart’s piece lasts for about 30 minutes.

“It’s such a fun piece to play and collaborate with the new woodwind and orchestra players to come in,” said Ian Egeberg, an oboist who is at Chautauqua for his second year.

With every concert, the string seating is rotated so that the person who is sitting principal, or “first chair,” changes each time. The winds and percussion seating is rotated with every piece. This way, more of the musicians get more experience in being in the principal leadership position. Though later concerts in the season may have soloists, tonight’s performance is all about the MSFO coming together publicly for the first time this season.

“It’s just so exciting to watch this orchestra go from a group of people who’ve never played together before, into incredible unity in a short amount of time,” Muffitt said.

John Kasich has spent much of his life in the political sphere, serving in the Ohio Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives and most recently, as governor of Ohio.

He garnered national attention during the 2016 Republican presidential primary, where he was the last candidate to drop out before Donald Trump won the nomination.

Despite his political experience, Kasich’s 10:45 a.m. lecture today, July 1st, in the Amphitheater will focus on the power of the everyday person, as he kicks off Week Two: “Uncommon Ground: Communities Working Toward Solutions.”

“What we have to realize is that the real power that exists in our country comes from individuals,” he said. “Most of the change we have comes from the bottom up.”

Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education, said Kasich will open the week “by reminding us, as he has throughout his decades of service, of the power of individuals to make a difference, that power comes from communities.”

Kasich pointed to protests in Hong Kong, the Czech Republic and Venezuela as recent examples of regular people making a difference.

“People are fed up and they want to be heard,” Kasich said. “This is a good development, I believe, in the world.”

Elected leaders are important and have a lot of influence when it comes to things like war and immigration policy, Kasich said, but when it comes to the day-to-day, everyday people have the greatest impact.

“The power lies in communities,” he said. “It does not really lie in waiting for congressmen or senators.”

In his lecture this morning, Kasich will provide examples of everyday people who have made positive impacts in their communities, as well as ways Chautauquans can make change in their own worlds.

The topic is similar to what he will cover in his forthcoming book, It’s Up to Us: Ten Little Ways We Can Bring About Big Change.

Every individual can make a positive impact in their own way, Kasich said. It could be as simple as comforting a sick neighbor or having integrity within their profession.

In January, Kasich finished his eight-year tenure as governor of Ohio; his governorship was characterized by changes to healthcare, abortion access and taxes.

Although Kasich called for a repeal of the Affordable Care Act in 2014, he pushed to expand Ohio Medicaid to cover low-income, childless adults. Hundreds of thousands of Ohio residents signed up for Medicaid after the change.

Kasich took steps to address the opioid crisis in Ohio, holding doctors who over-prescribed painkillers accountable and improving the state database that tracks prescriptions.

While in office, Kasich privatized operations in some state prisons, including outsourcing prison food operations; signed abortion restriction bills into law, causing the closure of half of the abortion clinics in Ohio; and cut income taxes by 16%.

Kasich has been highly critical of Trump, often commenting about the president on national media. Kasich became a CNN political commentator in January. 

Additionally, he has kept busy writing his book and giving speeches.

“I’m having a great time; I’m really enjoying my life now,” he said. “It’s great.”

He hopes his lecture at the Institution will help inspire people to do what they can to better their communities.

“People think, ‘change the world? How am I going to change the world?’ ” he said. “It’s possible to change it in big ways and it’s possible to change it in smaller ways, but I think big and small is not really the issue. It’s doing something to make the world better.”

Every year, gifts to the Chautauqua Fund have an immediate impact on the innovations to the full range of programs discovered at Chautauqua Institution. The community’s active participation and investment makes the Chautauqua experience possible, from the lectures and worship, to artistic programming, scholarships for students of the Schools of Performing and Visual Arts and much more.

Last year, over $4.9 million was raised from nearly 3,500 individuals, families and organizations who  gave to the Chautauqua Fund. Chautauqua Fund volunteers play an essential role serving as supporters for the Institution, helping to raise critical funds.

Volunteers on the 2019 Chautauqua Fund team gathered with the Institution and Foundation leadership on Saturday, June 22, to learn more about important initiatives and projects that have been impacted by the work they are doing for Chautauquans.

The kick-off began with a welcome and opening remarks from Tim Renjilian, co-chair of the 2019 Chautauqua Fund, along with his wife, Leslie. Renjilian said he was eager to start the season and was anticipating multiple events that volunteers would enjoy as they engage with members of the community and encourage philanthropic support that makes Chautauqua’s programs possible.

“I’m actually really excited about the new strategic plan and the excitement that it’s creating for people,” Renjilian said, reflecting on the kick-off. “I think in terms of the program, there are all sorts of great events across all of our different disciplines. (In) the arts, I am specifically excited about the theater program this year.”

Renjilian said the kick-off is a great way to start the season, bringing together the dedicated volunteers who will be advocating on behalf of the Chautauqua Fund.

“My favorite part is just having everybody together,” he said. “That, for me, is kind of the official beginning of the season. It’s the first time when we have all of the familiar faces and old friends just in one place. Seeing all of the people and just feeling the excitement about the new season as everybody comes together and start to actually become part of the season plans, I think that’s the most exciting thing.”

Staff introductions and Foundation updates were presented by Geof Follansbee, CEO and vice president of development. The Foundation has welcomed many new faces to the development office this season — new staff members who were introduced included Amy Gardner, associate vice president for major and planned gifts; Debbie Meyers, assistant vice president for advancement operations; Jennifer Stitely, director of gift planning; and Jared Magoon, assistant director of the Chautauqua Fund.

After introductions, Institution President Michael E. Hill discussed with volunteers the new strategic plan that Chautauqua Institution wadopted this year, 150 Forward. Reflecting on the breakfast a few days later, he said the kick-off provided an opportunity to discuss the plan with fellow Chautauquans in detail and hear valuable feedback.

“It’s just an opportunity to sit down with key ambassadors and Chautauqua Fund volunteers to talk to them at a high level about the process that led to that plan, and what makes it similar or different from what Chautauquans might be used to, and how they might think about it and hopefully be in support of it,” Hill said.

Hill noted that the kick-off is “one of the first moments where we see Chautauquans in the season, so for me it always feels like a family reunion.”

“I enjoyed reconnecting with people, I enjoyed hearing their questions and seeing their enthusiasm, and it’s just a moment to express gratitude for everything these folks do for us year round,” Hill said.

After Hill’s speech, Emily Morris, vice president of marketing and communications and chief brand officer, discussed marketing initiatives for the Institution. John Shedd, vice president of campus planning and operations, provided community notes and updates on projects taking place across the grounds leading up to the summer and beyond.

Renjilian returned to the stage to reiterate his gratitude to the volunteers for their service and generosity to Chautauqua, and to encourage them as they work toward this year’s objectives.

“The most straightforward goal is to hit our target of $5 million to be raised for the 2019 Chautauqua Fund,” Renjilian said. “I think more importantly than that, we see this whole Chautauqua program and the group of volunteers that we have as a way of really strengthening the community.”

Anyone interested in serving as a volunteer for the Chautauqua Fund is invited to contact Christine Doolittle, administrative project manager, at cdoolittle@chq.org or 716-357-6465. For more information or to make a gift, visit
giving.chq.org.

Like many aging industrial cities, Erie, Pennsylvania, grapples with great challenges. Blight, poverty, deteriorating infrastructure and an eroding tax base are the opening lines of a litany of problems the city has in common with other once-vibrant urban centers in the Great Lakes region.

But something new and different is happening in Erie. The city’s mayor, Joe Schember, cast a vision when he took office in January 2018 that Erie would become a “community of choice.” While many challenges remain — and defy easy solutions — this city of about 100,000 residents has turned a corner in terms of hope, collaboration and entrepreneurial spirit. People are working together. They’re rewriting the narrative of decline.

At the center of these efforts are nonprofit ventures like the Erie Downtown Development Corporation, which was created in 2017 to revitalize a 12-block district in the city’s core, through real estate investments, business development and other improvements. Its participants — and investors in its $27.5 million development fund — include Gannon University, the Erie Community Foundation, regional banks, large health care nonprofits and other businesses.

Erie Insurance, Week Two program sponsor, is a founding partner of EDDC and an investor in additional efforts to spark revitalization in its hometown. These include the Erie Innovation District, which is building on the brainpower of local universities to grow and attract new high-tech businesses to the city’s downtown.

Erie Insurance CEO Tim NeCastro and Tom Hagen, the Fortune 500 company’s chairman of the board and longtime Chautauquan, are leaders in the city’s move toward unified action after decades of siloed and stalled efforts. NeCastro has been out front in driving the new spirit of collaboration. He serves as chairman of the EDDC and has devoted considerable effort to building a critical mass of investment and enthusiasm for turning the city’s trajectory upward.

“These are very exciting times in Erie, Pennsylvania,” NeCastro said. “A lot is happening. The EDDC, Erie Insurance and other companies, as well as the public sector and the community at large, are very actively involved in stimulating a revitalization of the Erie that we love.”

Investing in a city the company and its employees call home is a sound business decision. Erie Insurance has a growing workforce of 3,600 in Erie and a $135 million, 346,000-square-foot addition to its Home Office campus under construction.

“We have to look at ourselves as an essential component to this community, and as this community goes, so will we go,” NeCastro told employees during a 2018 panel discussion about the company’s efforts to revitalize its home city. “People who are talented want to live in a vibrant community with things to do and places to go.” 

But there’s more than self-interest at work. The commitment by the company and its top leaders also represents a deep sense of civic responsibility.

Hagen told the same employee audience that the company is providing leadership at a critical time.

“It really would have been a dereliction of duty if we didn’t stand up,” he said.

A model approach

The EDDC is modeling its work after a successful, much larger effort in Cincinnati, Ohio’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. The Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation is a nonprofit whose work has been funded by large corporations headquartered in that city, including several in the Fortune 500. Over the last decade, the 3CDC has transformed an area once considered the most dangerous neighborhood in America.

The rejuvenated Over-the-Rhine has earned national attention with its trendy restaurants, in-demand residential and office space and attractive public gathering spaces. It’s a destination for locals and visitors alike, including frequent guests from Erie who have done more than just admire the results. They have studied the formula.

That formula includes the use of patient capital to fill funding gaps when the cost of buying and renovating declining properties exceeds the value of the finished product in the current market. It also encompasses tactics to nurture startup businesses and event planning to create a vibrant atmosphere.

Erie Insurance and other investors in the EDDC believe strongly that the approach is scalable to the smaller footprint they’ve staked out in Erie. In September 2018, the EDDC made its first property purchase, spending $2.95 million for eight parcels within its footprint. The next step forward was the announcement in May, of a more than $30 million plan to transform the properties into a culinary arts district with space for more than 20 businesses and as many as 87 apartments.

This project promises to be a major move forward for downtown Erie. There’s still much work to bring it to fruition, but excitement about the potential is spreading. It is even reverberating 23 miles away in Corry, Pennsylvania.

In that city of just over 6,300 residents, a group called Impact Corry recently recast itself to pursue a yet smaller-scale version of the Over-the-Rhine model. Formerly focused on projects like bringing a farmers market to town and leading beautification efforts, Impact Corry expanded both its board and its aspirations to include fighting blight and redeveloping properties. In June, the nonprofit added its first employee, a part-time community development director.

Sharing lessons learned

As part of the Week Two theme, “Uncommon Ground: Communities Working Toward Solutions,” Chautauquans will have an opportunity to learn more about the revitalization work in Erie and Corry through two programs. At 12:30 p.m. Wednesday in Smith Wilkes Hall, key players in the Erie effort, including Erie Insurance’s NeCastro, EDDC CEO John Persinger, Erie Mayor Joe Schember, Our West Bayfront’s Anna Frantz and New American representative Walaa Ahmed will participate in a panel discussion. A Corry panel will present at 12:30 p.m. Friday, July 5 in Smith Wilkes Hall.

Topics to be discussed include public and private partnerships, diversity and inclusion, the need for collaboration, the importance of neighborhood organizations and embracing the history of the city while being innovative for the future.

Both also will share how tired, self-defeating storylines are being replaced in their cities by new, upbeat narratives. Their stories are richly and authentically detailed, with themes of collaboration, civic pride and hope. Their casts of characters include captains of industry, elected officials, longtime residents, new Americans, entrepreneurial millennials and everyone else who’s been caught up in the growing spirit of optimism.

Those who have grown to love the Erie narrative include James Fallows, Week Two lecturer and author with his wife, Deborah, of Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America. In a 2017 Reporter’s Notebook column in The Atlantic, Fallows wrote:

“As we’ve been working away on our book based on our ‘American Futures’ travels over the past four years, my wife Deb and I have increasingly come to think of Erie, Pennsylvania, as the representative American city of this moment. … With particular sharpness in Erie, you see the shoulder-to-shoulder juxtaposition of two crucial realities in modern American life. One is the human pain, dislocation, and disruption caused by the overlapping forces of technological change and global competition. The other is the human ingenuity, passion, practicality and optimism involved in figuring out responses.”

To start off the Interfaith Friday Series in the Hall of Philosophy, the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, vice president of religion and senior pastor, posed a series of questions to Amy Brown Hughes, who spoke on behalf of Evangelicalism.

Hughes is an assistant professor of theology at Gordon College. She earned her  bachelor’s degree in theology and historical studies from Oral Roberts University in 2001; her master’s degree in historical theology from Wheaton College; and her Ph.D. in historical theology with a focus on early Christianity from Wheaton College.

She is the co-author of Christian Women in the Patrisitic World: Their Influence, Authority and Legacy in the Second through Fifth Centuries, regularly presents papers at the annual meeting of the North American Patristics Society and is a co-host for the theology stream of the biblical studies and theology podcast, “OnScript.”

What follows is an abridged version of Hughes’ conversation. Hughes and Robinson’s remarks have been condensed for clarity.

Robinson: Will God intervene if we ask? Or, should we be asking for something different?

Hughes: God does engage with us and wants to interact with us. A Jewish friend once told me that if you’re not arguing with God, you’re not doing it right. That same friend told me she didn’t like Noah because he never said anything back to God after killing all those people. And, I think God is inviting us to engage and wants to intervene, and we choose into it. The key is that we have to see it, to recognize it. Once we recognize it, that then becomes an opportunity to work with God.

What are we asking for when we say, “God bless America”?

It depends on who you talk to. I do think that there is an assumption that God is on our side based upon the narrative we have about our country, and that can be really problematic. But there is also the idea that people make up America and we want God to engage with us. We want God to help us flourish as a people who live in this particular land at this particular time. If that is what we are praying for when we say, “God bless America,” that makes a little more sense. However, with the assumption underneath that’s saying bless us over other people, that’s a problem.

How do you understand prayer?

With prayer, there’s an assumption underneath prayer. First, we have to ask ourselves this question about determinism: What kind of universe do I think I live in? If we live in a universe where we think God has planned everything and we are just along for the ride, then why pray at all? But in Scripture, people pray over and over again, expecting God to do something, expecting something to happen. So, there is also that kind of universe. Ultimately, God is perfectly free. He doesn’t have to do what we pray. God can choose not to do that, and I am so grateful that God didn’t answer my prayers in college because, if he had, I would be married to somebody else, and it would not have been good. We pray things all of the time that aren’t good for us, but we’re learning. It’s conversation. We don’t know, and we have to grow and grow into maturity. God is gracious to us: “Well, let’s talk about why you want that.” That’s the kind of grace we should extend to others, so when we are praying for others, we do have to be mindful of their agency. God does act, but he is not going to intervene in someone else’s life in a way that is going to destroy them because you asked him to.

What is an ask that would honor who God is and what God is willing or not willing to do when praying?

I would pray for people to come to know who they are and pray for their own flourishing because I do not know their personal path, so I want to ask for God to be near them, for God to be with them — that’s a beautiful prayer. If you know nothing else to pray, pray that God will be with someone because presence isn’t coercion. It can be transformative. Think about when you’ve gone through something awful and your friend came and sat next to you and didn’t say anything. It doesn’t solve any problems, but it sure helped in that moment. The Scripture talks about how, when we don’t know what to pray, we ask for help because the Holy Spirit is always with us, always ready to help us.

Many ordained people would describe part of their life as feeling a call from God, which is why ordained ministry can be known as a “calling.” Would that be considered God meddling in their business?

No, I think that we are all individually on a journey of coming to know who we are, and I think God is working with us to help us try to understand who we are. Origen talks about this fundamental dictum that has been around forever: scito te ipsum. This means, “Know thyself.” And, you kind of have to start any theological process with “know thyself.” So, when the Psalmist talks about “search me and know me,” that’s an invitation to God to work with us to help us to know who we are, and I think that’s what calling is. Calling is the middle or end of a conversation where you have sort of been in the process of the “search me and know me,” and you’ve sort of come to some understanding of who you are.

So, let’s say that you say to someone who has Hodgkin’s (lymphoma), thinking that it will somehow bring them comfort, “God is trying to teach you something.” So, with that being said, what are some of the bad theologies around us?

Oh God, how many hours do we have? What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. God’s got a plan. God must be teaching you something through this. There are just tons of them. I mentioned earlier, the idea of “God must have planned this,” for a person to say that and think it’s comforting, it’s because the idea of something being out of God’s control scares them. Pentecostalism, for example, does a “God will heal you” kind of thing. “If you just believe, God will heal you,” and I have watched that literally destroy people’s lives. These people who believe in these preachers look so desperately for something, and these “ministers” sort of poke at this place of deep grief and pain, monopolize it, monetize it and sensationalize it. That sort of reputation of some ends of Pentecostalism is to our great shame, and we need to repent for that and change. Also, the idea of “it’s your fault” is problematic. I remember when there was all kinds of conversation around New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, that it was because they were so supportive of the LGBTQ community they got a hurricane. Oh my gosh, no. Either assuming that authority individually in one’s life or assigning an assumption of what God’s judgement looks like in that way, are two really disruptive ends of theology.

If God isn’t going to control all of that, and it seems to me that all of the bad things we say are in an effort to not take responsibility for them ourselves, what is he in control of?

I tend to not use the phrase, “God is in control,” because that does tend to undercut the other things we know about God being noncoercive and a God who holds all things together on our behalf so that we can choose. So, if there is a sense of God’s power, God’s power is allowing us to have our own power, and he has created a space for us to choose, to live and continue to grow or continue to say no to that.

For Jason Robert, conviviality “really means living well together,” a notion he’ll explore in the first Lincoln Applied Ethics Series lecture of the 2019 season, “Conviviality for the 21st Century” at 12:30 p.m. Monday, July 1 in the Hall of Philosophy.

“It’s what we at the Lincoln Center of Applied Ethics take to be as the heart, the ethical project that comprises our task on this earth as human beings,” Robert said.

Robert holds the Lincoln Chair in Ethics and is director of the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics at Arizona State University. He is also Dean’s Distinguished Professor in the Life Sciences at ASU.

“I’ll be elaborating a bit on what I mean by (conviviality) and I think it is reflective in the spirit of the Chautauqua Institution,” Robert said. “It is, in part, one of the things that we need to remind ourselves at all times — that living well together really is the goal and something that we are striving for wherever and whenever we can.”

According to its website, the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics “advances teaching, research and community engagement efforts that explore how best to live together as a human community, so that we all may achieve purposeful, productive and prosperous lives.”

For Chautauquans who would like to dive deeper into the subject, Robert will also be teaching master classes through Special Studies. In these classes he is able to elaborate on his lecture and get into more detail. The classes are held from 3:30 to 5 p.m. on Tuesday, July 2, Wednesday, July 3 and Thursday, July 4 in the Literary Arts Center Alumni Hall Ballroom.

“The master classes are an opportunity in a much smaller, seminar-based format for Chatauquans to dive a little bit more deeply into the subject matter,” Robert said. “What I do typically is a short version of Monday’s lecture and then spend time going into a little bit more detail on Tuesday and Wednesday at the master class, and it gives us an opportunity to really explore the issues that get raised at a deeper level.”

Robert said he wants people to understand the relevant principles that exist in what may come off as a simple concept.

“I think that the key takeaways are that there are deep biological roots and deep philosophical principles that can come together to shed light on what might seem like a very simple concept, but that has an absolutely critical role to play,” Robert said.

In the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra’s latest concert, two famous Romantic masterpieces will take center stage — and orchestra members hope to show just how well the pieces work together.

“A Saturday Evening of Symphonies” will take place at 8:15 p.m. Saturday in the Amphitheater. The concert features Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759, “Unfinished,” and Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 in F major, op. 90.

The two composers shared a background in 19th-century Romantic music, a movement that embraced individuality, imagination and emotion. CSO Conductor and Music Director Rossen Milanov said the composers exemplify the Austro-German Romanticism of their era.

“We have these two composers who are sharing some melodic DNA, which perfectly represents the tradition of the Romantic symphonic music of the 19th century,” Milanov said. “There’s an extra layer of meaning to the songs. That melodic quality finds its wonderful representation in these two works by Schubert and Brahms.”

The first piece of the concert, Schubert’s “Unfinished,” is a symphony in only two movements — distinct parts of a symphonic piece. As most 19th-century symphonies included four movements, “Unfinished” is starkly different from the norm. Milanov said that while the symphony is somewhat of a mystery, it is famously well-balanced.

“We don’t know exactly why it’s composed of only two movements, whether (Schubert) had any plans to add the standard two additional movements to make it a four-movement symphony,” Milanov said. “But both musicians and musicologists agree that this work has such perfect proportions, such perfect balance between the opening movement and the second movement.”

While “Unfinished” is different from most of its contemporaries, Milanov said it remains an exemplar of the era.

“It has found its rightful place as one of the masterpieces of the Romantic repertoire for orchestra,” Milanov said.

Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 is another classic masterpiece of Romanticism. Like Schubert’s “Unfinished,” the piece deviates from the 19th-century norm; it does not feature a dramatic, climactic ending. Milanov said the piece’s ending is nontraditional but beautiful.

“It’s a little bit off compared to his other symphonies in that it seems to be going in a very anticlimactic finish, which is not typical for the great symphonies of the time,” Milanov said. “But here, the motion is in the opposite direction. It starts with a very powerful beginning and submerges — goes away in a way that is very quiet and beautiful.”

Milanov said the pieces’ nontraditional aspects work together, creating a concert of different but complementary styles.

“You’re going to get two symphonies that have very peaceful, very serene endings,” Milanov said.

First violinist Lenelle Morse has performed with the CSO for 27 seasons. In her experience, most concerts feature a guest soloist — unlike Saturday’s performance. However, Morse said that CSO-only performances are a unique chance to fully experience the orchestra’s talents.

“It’s unusual that there’s no soloist,” Morse said. “So it’s a wonderful chance to see the CSO shine on its own, which it wonderfully does and which it’s done for so many years.”

Morse said that symphonies like those to be performed Saturday deeply engage listeners, bringing them into the creative elements of the music.

“One of the lovely things about symphonies is that, for the audience, the story is something that they can create,” she said. “Audiences are able to bring themselves into the creative moment; wherever they are, they’re able to understand and listen to it.”