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Striving to be fully alive.

I've been a pretty big fan of Sara Groves for a while now, despite being a somewhat slow adopter of Conversation, so when I had the opportunity to chat with Sara on the phone, I was pretty excited and jumped at the chance. Her latest album, Add to the Beauty, seems timeless, unveiling new insight with each listen and proves to be a powerful statement about life as a follower of Christ.

Besides her musical contributions, Sara has recently been writing various pieces for magazines as well as being the subject for the debut NOMAD Series DVD. Our conversation ranged from these accomplishments to the eternal Kingdom of Heaven and much more. Below is that discussion.

How are you doing today?

Good. How are you doing?

I'm doing alright. It's good to hear from you.

You too.

You're popping up everywhere, writing these days.

I've been writing a lot, yeah. It's good. I enjoy it. I've got an ongoing commission with Radiant Magazine that's been a lot of fun.

Yeah, I actually read one of those last night - a little piece you wrote in Radiant - trying to do my homework. It was good. . . and I saw that you did an interview with Johnny Lang not too long ago.

Yeah.

That was fun for you?

It was great, it was really great.

So, are you planning a takeover of the writing industry?

No. (laughs) It causes me a lot of brain damage.

(laughs) It takes a lot out of you?

Yeah. It takes me quite a while to formulate my ideas and it's not the easiest thing for me to do, but I like to do it when I have the opportunity. This thing with Radiant is great because it's only once a month. Actually, Mark Moring at Christianity Today - I mean, I just turned in my interview pretty much and he did a lot of the writing. . . So it was kind of interesting because it was me, but some of it wasn't really my voice. I just did the live interview, transcribed it and edited it down to just the conversation. But yeah, that was really fun to meet Johnny Lang. It was really incredible.

Very cool. Let's see. . . You recently released a documentary as the first part of the Nomad series. Can you talk a little bit about that series?

Well, my husband and his good friend, Chip Johnson, who worked for Target Corporation for a long time here in Minneapolis - shooting Target commercials and all kinds of pretty quality things, for sure. [Chip's] really got a gift for film and he is a missionary kid who grew up overseas and he just felt that in all the craze of reality television. . . He knew of so many believers whose faith had taken them in so many incredible directions and he wanted to take advantage of this interest in reality television to tell the story of believers and where their faith takes them. So they actually started - they began production for - Nomad about three years ago. And now they have been to Ghana with a group of 15-18 year-old kids. I think the mission has many goals. One is to show believers in a positive light - you know, evangelicals are not usually painted in a favorable light in mainstream media. They have a long way to go to be represented in the way I would view them or the way Chip or Troy would view them. So one aspect is to show believers in the adventure of their lives, because of the compassion that Christ brings. The second thing is to show these people as their lives collide with other cultures, sort of expanding their worldview. Every single person that has been featured in a Nomad [documentary] has had a pretty large worldview expansion during the project. The project has been focused around a time in their life when that's happening, when they are doing some pretty life-changing things. I feel like their other topics, their other subjects are actually much more interesting than I am. I'm definitely the least interesting of the topics that are on the slate to come. My story came about when Chip and Troy were working on a standard DVD project for me for the label. Basically, the behind the scenes footage just kept growing and growing until the behind the scenes became more compelling than the concert footage. Then they invited me to be a part of their project and I ended up being their first release. I'm really honored to be part of what they are doing. I'm excited about what they are doing and I hope that it goes beyond this, because I'm just a CCM artist being introduced here. I think Nomad and especially the topics that are upcoming. . . I believe that it'll be a lot bigger than just a CCM type project.

Yeah, I would think so. I would expect to see them at film festivals and stuff.

Yeah, I think so.

They're definitely shot pretty well and it's kind of interesting. . . I think that most people would buy a DVD for the concert, but then it was funny to see that the concert was a special feature of the DVD.

Yeah.

So, we still wanted to include it and we had the footage. We wanted to make it a big part of it. The story in this, I guess is documenting how a soccer mom wakes up to the world. The places that we go are really just a backdrop to that thread.

Yeah. "Awakening" is a good word.

Yeah.

So, the actual title isn't "Soccer Mom Wakes Up To The World," but that would have worked well.

(laughs)

But the title is Just Showed Up for My Own Life which is named after a song on your latest CD. . .

Yes.

. . . and in that song you repeat a quote from Saint Iraneus, "the glory of God is man fully alive." What does it mean to be fully alive?

Well, I'm trying to find that out. I think that maybe the only way that I can address things like that is to come at it from the negative. Not to be negative, but to come from what I know it is not. I know for me and, when I look in on their lives, I see that for many people it is very easy to slip into a parallel existence in your own life - one where everything that is true has a slightly lesser parallel. I don't know how to describe it, really. . . C.S. Lewis, another writer, said it much better than I ever could. He said the enemy of what's best is not what is the worst, but rather what is good. I guess something like that. You can have a good thing, but it might not be what God has fully intended. So, I guess when I look around - especially in our American Evangelical culture - it seems like we've been lulled or seduced or charmed by things that have left us as though we were the walking dead at times. Our spirits are [numb]. How can we be so troubled? We have so much and there are so many blessings. . . And yet we're not turning to God anymore than those who don't know Him. We are self destructive, trying to do things that don't sustain us. We fill our lives with business and miss out on the fruit, the joy and the beauty of the kingdom of God. I feel like I'm a passionate person but then I'll shake loose of something and realize that it was something that was really not fully what God has intended for me.

So what struggles or obstacles have been preventing you from feeling fully alive?

Well, I have so many examples. There is the example of parenting, marriage - pick one. Even doing music or going to church. I'll start with parenting. Any time somebody sets up something as an absolute. . . I think it's Charlie Peacock - I was just reading in his book New Way to be Human - he's talking about this disease of certainty that we have to have. . . these. . . Oh man, I've got this book right here. . . That we can let go of this. . . Anyway, he says that. There is a great book called The Myth of Certainty. There is a lot of doctrine laid out about parenting that a lot of people take as the only way [to raise kids]. I think you can get so consumed protecting your children, that you've missed the whole point. What are we raising them to be? I just don't want to raise my kids to be afraid of things. I want them to enter into the culture, to see and believe in a God that is great. To know that He is all that He says He is in the Bible. And I think that sometimes my parenting has been leaning more on psychology and all of these doctrines of parenting than it has been on trusting in God and displaying that type of life for my kids.

In marriage. . . Man, marriage is hard anyway. Then on top of that, I think you have this sort of, it's so easy to be lulled into this, again, this existence. It's hard to find good examples of marriage anymore. It's really hard to find people who have… I was talking to a friend who is on the verge of divorce. He's kind of given up and he said, "I know marriage is hard." I told him that marriage isn't hard. He said, "Well, I know marriage is work." And I said, "No. Marriage is death, it's not work." I've never have to die to myself more than in my relationship with Troy, but I never felt such a deep reward as I have in through my relationship with Troy. It's what God meant by the Kingdom of God, [and I'm] actually feeling it. So I don't know - Sorry, this is a long answer - but yeah, it's a challenge to be honest in your marriage. It's a challenge to be faithful and trusting in raising your kids, trusting God for raising your kids.

All of those things - and I haven't even touched on going to church and what a sub-existence that can become. In Isaiah 58, God says that this is your day of Sabbath. You kind of set that aside. You act like you are interested in Me. You act like you want to know My will. You study My word all day long. You say you want Me near to you. You look like a pious people and a faithful nation, but on your Sabbath, you go around and quarrel. You do what you please. Is this why I called for the Sabbath? That you would humble yourself for one day? That you would just bow your head like a reed once a week? He said, "No. This is the Sabbath - free the oppressed, feed the hungry." When I read that, my heart rings like a bell. I feel like, man, I've been seduced into something that Charlie Peacock calls my "Sunday experience." Sometimes it becomes a parasite that is stuck to the side of my otherwise busy life and I just don't want that. I want to keep trying to shake off all of that sleepiness and to keep trying to find that beauty of the Kingdom that is meant, that is intended in rearing my children and in my marriage and in being a part of the body of Christ.

Very good. I've actually started reading that book, New Way To Be Human, a while ago, but I get so distracted. I'm in the middle of at least five other books. . .

Yeah, I know. And it's very academic when you get into it. You could read the first four or five chapters and kind of get the heart of what he's saying. Then he goes into more detail. He gets very academic and it is a little bit hard to stick with it. It's really great the whole way through, but I got a little lost. I think I had to pick it up a few times.

But it's good though, I was going to ask what the Kingdom of Heaven looks like to you? You've just touched on it a bit, but . . .

Yeah, well I don't claim to have taken hold of it. You know, I just see it in little moments. When it comes, I just understand it. It is so much better than anything I know of and it's. . . I love symmetry and I love beauty and I love orchestrated things and when I see the kingdom of God, it's the most beautiful, in every regard. Many times I don't understand how God is working. I just don't understand it. A thing will appear to be chaotic - our world is chaotic. This man that goes into this school building and shoots these little girls. . . I just don't even understand how God restrains himself at times. And even His love. I don't understand His love for me and how he has been so patient on my behalf. I get it every once in a while. I feel like He just never gives me too much, just this little fire, a little glimpse of something and I don't know what it looks like. I know that Jesus prayed for unity and I know that we have a long road to be unified as the body of Christ. I know that was important to Christ. I think the Kingdom of God is going to be full of surprises, because I think that it's a paradox. I think that the people who are most sure that they know what it means will be the most taken back when they discover what it really is.

Yeah, definitely. Once we start to think we understand it, we get a little bit more understanding of it and then we realize that we don't understand it at all.

Yeah. Solomon says wisdom isn't always. . . Sometimes your widening of knowledge just makes the chasm deeper and you realize how far you are from understanding.

So what would you say are some practical steps - to borrow your verse, the stones, the mortar, the seeds and water - that we can each take to begin building the Kingdom here on earth?

Well I'll just speak for myself. I'm lazy. I'm fighting these days to do what they used to call "mortify the flesh." It sounds horrible. It sounds archaic like something that would happen in a monastery.

But I think that I've forgotten how to do that and I don't know if I've ever really learned how to mortify the flesh. So, I'm like that verse in Isaiah. I do what I please and I think that there is some kind of really great. . . When I say mortify the flesh, I mean having a devotional life. Waking up in the morning and finding the space - there is no substitute for that conversation with God - and there is no way anyone can tell anyone else what God's purpose is for them. So to really know fully what God intends for us, we have to ask him directly, ourselves. In my life, as believer, I've been a church goer all of my life but that has not been. . . you know Christ talked to the Pharisees and He said you know. . . If I'm praying more at church than I am at home, I'm not talking about a legalism concerning prayer, I'm just saying that it's next to impossible to really understand God without talking to Him and asking Him directly about Himself and about what He intends. So, if you're talking about practical things and fighting a battle to undo years of selfishness and laziness I guess, to try to take cues from my heroes.

Mother Teresa and so many others, they practiced this mortifying the flesh, by fasting and doing these things. Then I think the second thing is to start. For me that's taking the expression of social justice. That verse in Isaiah talks about what church shouldn't be and then when it talks about what church should be, it's freeing the oppressed, canceling debt, clothing the naked, and feeding the hungry. Again, my laziness and the inconvenience of it largely kept me from starting somewhere in that regard. So now our family - my husband and I - are embarking and that is what Nomad is sort of trying to spark in people. I'm not in any way trying to tell people what to do. It's going to be different for each person. It may not be Rwanda or Africa even. It might be something totally different, but just to move from a place of fear and a sort of cultural norm, to Kingdom norms and a life of this great adventure in faith.

Yeah. And it almost seems like the church as a whole is opposed to reaching out and seeking social justice - you mentioned it a little bit on the song "To the Moon" - how we tend to insulate ourselves rather than reach out. Why do you think that is?

Well, the most encouraging thing that I've seen of late, the only thing that can challenge despair and how chaotic the world appears, how crazy these times feel, has been a renewed hope in a renewed vision in seeing the church respond in ways that I've never dreamt were possible. I wouldn't agree across the board with that statement that the church is not embracing social justice, because I feel like there is an awakening. There have been churches all along who think this way, like the body of Christ. Some of us have this social justice piece down and then our worship is dead. Other churches have incredible worship and the social justice piece is dead. What would be amazing would be if this whole reflection of Christ's heart for the oppressed and for righteousness and for worship and all of these things actually began to come together. And I feel like they are beginning to come together. . .

But yes, I definitely grew up in a tradition where the most important thing was to groom my personal faith. [We didn't believe that] there could be a higher call than to know Christ and Him crucified and so that has been the end goal of my faith. I wonder why I have this restlessness now. I've pursued Christ. I've been passionate in wanting to know Him. I liken it to going to school versus being in your actual job. It's completely different. Actually, this is my article for Radiant this month. But driving in a simulation car in Driver's Ed and driving on the highway are two totally separate things. I think the way we do church to a large part, the way I've done church my entire life, has been preparing me for something. I thought that was the end goal, but you don't go to school to go to school. I thought that going to school [at church] was the end goal, but I feel now that there are ways that I can't know God. . . In all of my passion to know Him, I won't be able to know Him from the textbooks or from simulations of His sufferings in a cantata as well as if I'm suffering with my neighbor who truly suffers as Christ suffered. By identifying in that and the rest of that, I'll know Christ and the power of His resurrection and suffering, and I'll know Him in His death, so that I might also be resurrected. Sorry I kind of got off of your question. . .

Not at all. . .

I have felt a resurrection in my own spirit. I've felt this coming to life as I've left the school building and entered into the real [workplace]. I've entered into the work of justice and that is where God's heart is. I have a friend who does justice work. He's 15-years-old and he's an incredible young man. He says, "If my friend likes snowboarding, then I'm going to go snowboarding with him, because that's what he likes to do." And he said, "If I want to know God better, I need to do the work of justice, because that is what God likes to do. He likes to show up for the oppressed. He likes to release darkness for the prisoner and bind up the brokenhearted." Those are Jesus' words right out of the wilderness. If I want to know God, that is what I need to do. I think that the song, "To the Moon," is addressing this inward thinking. I grew up hearing stories that America was founded by a group of people who were persecuted in England. And I'm not belittling or being cynical about this story - I think it's a great story - but they came to the states to have freedom of religion. But persecution has continued and we've kind of found every corner of the earth. Where do we go, now? As the heat turns up, - even in the United States - as things get worse, I think it's time we turn [to face the persecution] and turn on our lights. To me, the saddest part of that song is when it says, "just grab that last bag and turn out the light." Unfortunately, I do feel like a lot of churches are turning off the light and are becoming inward instead of saying, "All right. Let's stoke the fires. This is it. This is what we are here for."

Yeah. It's kind of -you talked a little bit about marriage - it's almost like a picture of a marriage. You spend a lot of your life focusing on yourself and then when you get married, you realize that you can't really focus on yourself or your own desires so much.

Right. Or maturity too. As you mature, you begin thinking of others. It's sort of a childish response to think about yourself and as you mature - or in marriage, as you said - I realize even at 34, Wow! I'm drinking a lot of spiritual milk still. It's time for me to make applications of these things outside of. . . We are making applications everyday in our own marriages and our own families and there is nothing more important than that, but I think as I teach my children, I want to be serving others. I want them to grow up and serve others.

Very cool. So what is next for Sara Groves? Are you working on a new album?

You know, I really have no idea. I'm in that place where. . . Add of the Beauty was such a. . . I walked away feeling at peace. I don't know any other way to describe it. I felt like that was what I've been trying to say since I've started with Conversations. Yes, I'm definitely still writing. I'm trying to write about social justice. It's hard to write about social justice without being cliché and so I've taken it as my challenge to try. This is what God is stirring in my heart. In this new season, I'm trying to capture songs that are, again, explaining. I did Add to the Beauty and then all of these things happened. Donald Miller says that he writes a book and then it teaches him and that is kind of what I think happened with Add to the Beauty. I did Add to the Beauty and then the question was just staring me in the face: "In what way are you adding to the beauty? Or taking hold of the kingdom?" I feel like I've been learning, learning, learning. Just learning lessons and it's been pretty exhausting to tell you the truth. It's good, but it's just been uncomfortable. So I guess I'm just trying to land somewhere. I'm not sure where I'm going to land yet.

Very cool. It's a scary place to be but it's probably the best place to be.

Yeah, it is. It is not comfortable, but yeah.

Well, I don't want to keep you too much longer, so thanks for your time.

Thank you.

For more information, visit SaraGroves.com - MySpace - AddToTheBeauty.com - nomad
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