Spark

one thing I learned from narrating my book + a poem sneak peek

In less than two months, Art Is How God Loves Us will be in your hands!

In celebration of narrating the audiobook this week,¹ I’m sharing a poem from the intro to Part One.

As you’ll see from the ending inscription, it was inspired by David Whyte’s poem, “Self Portrait.”² The first time I heard his poem, my husband was reading it aloud as a gathering prayer at the church he was planting when we first got married. Something about the poem imprinted on my heart.

“It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned”

(opening lines of David Whyte’s “Self-portrait”)

He goes onto explore the weight of existence—the “harsh need” the world has to change us and the “bitter unwanted passion” of our own limitations. I was struck by how Whyte doesn’t care about theological arguments or religious labels. Instead, he asks if you are willing to “melt into that fierce heat of living.”

As a musician and a writer, I spend so much of my life trying to be perfect, or at least “good enough.” Sometimes I feel like I come up against the “bitter, unwanted passion” of my own limitations, well… daily. That’s what being an artist is all about, in some ways.

Whyte’s poem gave me a different goal than goodness: he urged me instead to be prepared.

Prepared to stand with “firm eyes” in the face of a world with its “harsh need to change” me, prepared to “melt into that fierce heat of living, falling toward the center of [my] longing.”

The poem taught me that our most honest “self-portrait” isn’t a polished image; it’s the place where we finally stop running and say who we are.

Dirk Gouwens was my wonderful engineer at Oasis Audio

“Spark,” was written as a response to that invitation. If Whyte is asking if we are willing to stand in the fire of living, “Spark” is naming what that fire actually is.

I wanted to explore the idea that the despair or the longing Whyte mentions isn’t just human emotion—it’s a signal. When you find yourself weeping before a painting or feeling less alone because of a certain piece of music, you are catching a glimpse of the Artist God.

“Spark” is about the inextinguishable pilot light that burns even when we feel defeated, even when we fear we do not belong. It’s a reminder that our tenderness isn’t a weakness; it’s that “fierce surrender” to the fact that we are constantly being found by a Goodness that is older and larger than we.

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Spark

It doesn’t interest me if you believe
in the God of my understanding or yours.
I want to know if you’ve stood weeping
before a painting,
if you’ve found the world of a novel more palatable
than this one.
I want to know if you’ve woken in the night
to the answer,
if rush of word or image or interval
doused the flames of overthinking
while you washed the dishes.

The Greeks said, “Eureka!”
(I have found it)
but I want to know if One has found you,
if the music makes you feel less alone.
I want to know if you’ve sensed
some overwhelming goodness
behind the color of the sky
or in the way baby hair wisps upward
along the back of her neck.
Have you ever wondered if your tenderness
makes you weak
or if it’s this fierce surrender to Love
that makes us strong?

In every creation
there glows a glint in recognition of an Artist God.
The studio door slightly cracked,
a remnant, a spark of
Let There Be Light,
an inextinguishable pilot burns, still flickering.
I have been told, in that beauty, art sings a refrain
every heart knows.

—After David Whyte’s poem “Self-Portrait”

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What the booth taught me

I’ll have a longer list at some point soon, but one thing I learned listening to myself read the entire 60K-word book in just two sittings: I especially loved voicing the poems and the short interludes.

In the silence of that room, the words stopped being just ink on a page and became breath, the smoke of incense, a proof of life. It reminded me that art is a living thing meant to be shared, and that when we create, we are participating in a much bigger conversation.

As I sat there (for 11 hours), something shifted. I realized it wasn’t really about my voice at all. It was about the Giver of Breath. If my words felt like “proof of life,” it’s because they are echoes of the One who spoke the first Word. When we create, we aren’t just sending out a message from and amongst ourselves; we are becoming a conduit for a message of Love that started at the beginning of time.

I can’t wait for you to hear this book in that same spirit—not as my own words, but as a small, flickering evidence of the Artist God who is always finding us, always speaking, and always loving us through the things we make.

How to Preorder✨

I am so excited for you to read (and hear!) the rest of the stories and reflections in Art Is How God Loves Us. This book is a deep dive into the sacred beauty of created things and how that beauty speaks of God.

Preordering helps bookstores know to keep it on the shelves and ensures that these messages of hope and creativity reach the people who need them most.

You can preorder your copy from these affiliate links:

• Bookshop (support local if you can!)

• Amazon

• Barnes and Noble

• If you’re a church or professional organization, you can order in bulk directly from the publisher and get a discount

The audiobook preorder link will be up soon and I will share it as soon as I have it!

Thank you for being part of this community and for helping me keep the spark alive.

I’d love to hear from you:

Is there a specific painting, a piece of music, or a line of poetry that has “made you feel less alone” or found you when you needed it most?

Please share it in the comments—I’d love to know what beauty is sustaining you right now.

1. If you want to see some of the process in action:

2. from: “David Whyte: Essentials,” Many Rivers Press, © David Whyte