How Do the Arts Shape Our Souls?

Monday, August 10, 2026

Series: Arts That Shape Our Souls

Followers of Jesus are sometimes guilty of separating everything into categories. We like things neat and tidy. We want a place for everything and everything in its place.

I do this. How about you?

When I catch myself doing it, I sometimes think about Peter.

Peter had been taught that some things were clean and others were unclean. Those categories were deeply ingrained in him. Then, in a vision, God challenged the boundaries Peter had always known:

“What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”
— Acts 10:15

Peter’s vision was about much more than food. God was preparing him to see people differently and to recognize that God’s work was larger than the boundaries Peter had inherited.

I think about that when I hear a song, watch a movie, attend a theater production, visit a museum, read a book, or even go to a sporting event.

Every day on my way to work, I pass the Springfield Art Museum. I have visited it many times. Inside are paintings, sculptures, and other works created by people who have been given the ability to see something and express it in ways the rest of us might never have imagined.

Perhaps that is one of the ways God speaks to us.

We all have different gifts and talents. Some are musicians. Some are writers. Some are gifted speakers. Some are athletes. Some are actors. Some teach. Some paint or sculpt. Some cook. Some sew. Some design beautiful things.

Have you ever been deeply moved by a song, a poem, a book, a painting, or a movie?

I have.

The movie Places in the Heart is a powerful story for me. Its final scene takes place around Communion—the Eucharist. Somehow, around that table, divisions that seemed impossible to overcome disappear. The living and the dead, the wounded and those who wounded them, are gathered together. That scene brings tears to my eyes every time I watch it.

When I hear the Judds sing Love Can Build a Bridge, I hear something about the love of God—the possibility that love can reach across the distances that divide us.

Books have shaped my soul as well. Spiritual Friendship by St. Aelred of Rievaulx has helped me understand the sacredness of friendship. Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis has challenged generations of people to think more deeply about Christian faith.

And imagine what it must have been like to hear Sojourner Truth speak about human dignity and justice in the speech remembered as Ain’t I a Woman?

Art does not exist only in museums, concert halls, theaters, and libraries.

I remember the quilting bees of the 1950s. My mother and other women in the community would gather and make quilts. Pieces of ordinary fabric became something beautiful and useful through patience, skill, creativity, and community.

That was art too.

So is preparing a beautiful meal.

So is sewing a garment.

So is teaching a child.

So is telling a story.

So is creating music.

So is designing a room where people feel welcome.

Perhaps we need to stop dividing the world so quickly into “sacred” and “secular.”

God may speak to us in church through Scripture, prayer, preaching, music, and the Eucharist. But perhaps God also whispers to us through a movie, surprises us through a painting, challenges us through a novel, moves us through a song, or teaches us something about perseverance through an athlete.

We come from different religions, languages, ethnicities, cultures, and nations. We have different experiences and different abilities. Yet every human being bears the image of God, and each of us has something we can contribute to the lives of others.

None of us does it perfectly.

We are pilgrims.

We are still learning. Still growing. Still creating. Still listening.

And we need one another.

So today I give thanks for the musicians, actors, writers, poets, painters, sculptors, teachers, athletes, cooks, quilters, designers, storytellers, and countless others who use their gifts.

And I offer a simple prayer:

Thank you, God, for the gifts you have given me.
Thank you for the gifts you have given others.
Keep my eyes open, my ears attentive, and my heart receptive, so that I may recognize your mysterious grace wherever it appears.
Amen.

A question for the rocking chair:
What song, book, movie, painting, poem, or other work of art has shaped your soul—and what did it teach you?