In her career, Sarah Hart has written and recorded thousands of songs for worship, for liturgy, and for Christian music stars such as Amy Grant and Matt Maher. Her work and her worldview are so imbued with the spirit of God that she relates most to St. Catherine of Siena who, at the age of seven, told her mother, "I see God in all things and all things in God."
The seeds of Sarah's faith were planted during her childhood. During a Christopher Closeup interview, she recalled, "Vatican II was new, and there was folk mass and community. I grew up in southeastern Ohio, and there were potlucks and people who gathered to sing and to pray, so I grew up a very free spirit in the church. My experience of faith as a child was that I was deeply loved and that there was freedom in faith and beauty in faith."
Even the best church experiences, however, don't prevent someone from questioning and wandering as they get older. When she went to college, Sarah wanted nothing more to do with "church," until she later found a non-denominational fellowship that she stayed with during her young adult years and where she met the man who would become her husband. A few years into their marriage, Sarah felt called back to the Catholic Church and has chosen to serve God through her music.
Sarah believes God used her time away from the Church to make her better. She explained, "There are things that all of us have to learn from other faiths, other religions, other cultures, and other peoples. So, I really bless that time because I learned so much, and it made me embrace my faith all the more when I came back."
One of Sarah's strong points is that she doesn't view the sacred and the secular as separate. She cites Thomas Merton's experience on a street corner in Louisville when he suddenly saw clearly "the face of Christ in all people, and how all things are interconnected." In our polarized world, Sarah hopes more people have this kind of revelation, and she hopes her music can enlighten others in this respect. She said, "Everybody has this universal sense of sadness, happiness, joy, sorrow, of everything in between. . . . All I want to do is put beauty in the world. . . . And that is how we all can help God. . . . Whatever we choose to do in our lives, we can choose beauty and good and kindness and light and mercy. To do anything less, I think, is to do a disservice to the Lord."
Sarah's latest way of bringing beauty into the world is through the devotional booklet "How Sweet the Sound: Lyrical Reflections Based on Amazing Grace." Her first reflection involves listening for the sound of grace in our lives. It's something we all must learn to do based on our individual circumstances. "Because of the busyness [of my life]," she said, "I've learned to adjust my prayer life and my conversations with God accordingly. My life doesn't afford me [time] to go to the adoration chapel every day. What I've learned to do is, tend to the adoration chapel in my heart, and take moments throughout the day where I'm talking out loud to God, or God is whispering to my heart. I'll say that at this age in my life, I've never been more comfortable with God. I've never felt like we've had a sweeter or a better relationship than right now."
This essay is a recent "Light One Candle"
column by Tony Rossi, Director of Communications, The Christophers; it is one of a series of
weekly columns that deal with a variety of topics and current
events.
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