“I can't just fight when I think I'll win.”
Why is a soft-spoken, introspective, Minnesota mother of three talking about fighting? On her new album, Tell Me What You Know, acoustic pop artist Sara Groves explores what she has learned over the past two years, lessons on the value of long defeats, and the defiance of hope in the face of insurmountable odds. Since the 2005 release of her last project, Add to the Beauty, Groves has been questioning just how, exactly, she is called to do that.
Sara explains, “I believe God invites us to add to the beauty of his plan, letting us participate in his redemptive work. But I found myself asking, ‘How have I applied this idea?' I had groomed and groomed and groomed my personal faith, but to what end?”
Her answers came in a series of global conversations and experiences, from the flood-ravaged gulf of Louisiana, to the genocide memorials of Rwanda, to the testimonies of Southeast Asia sex trade survivors. These experiences showed the disparity between some of the American pursuits of comfort and wealth and the joy of joining the difficult work of social justice and engaging in the suffering of the afflicted.
“One of the main inspirations behind this album is a girl named Elisabeth,” Sara says. “I knew about human trafficking and modern day slavery at some sort of global level, but I didn’t truly understand the personal stories behind what was happening until I met Elisabeth in Washington, D.C.”
Elisabeth’s story is both heartbreaking and phenomenal. The oldest of seven children living in Southeast Asia, the teenager had just finished her sophomore year of high school and decided to take a job in a neighboring community to save money for Bible college. But, tragically, she was betrayed by a traveling companion, kidnapped and sold to a brothel owner. She found herself days later in a foreign country, unable to speak the language, forced into a life of prostitution.
Sara relates the rest of the story: “Elizabeth prayed every night for God to rescue her, even though the other girls in the brothel mocked her. After eight months, an International Justice Mission operative was able to secure her freedom. While retrieving her belongings, they saw Psalm 27 written on the wall above her mattress in her tiny room: The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?’
“The phrase ‘social justice’ can be loaded. To some people it is a political or a liberal conversation, but to me, it is a Kingdom conversation. There are people behind these stories and statistics, and God’s heart for justice burns on their behalf. I wanted to write songs that drew attention to the people like Elizabeth who know God deeply because of their suffering. There is a commonality in all of these friends, and that is the perseverance of hope.”
Much of what Groves has learned has come through her new friends at International Justice Mission, an organization that stands in the gap for victims of violence, sexual exploitation, slavery and oppression when they are left without an advocate. Her interactions with IJM, as well as recent mission trips to Rwanda and New Orleans, have brought a fresh sense of purpose and excitement to Sara’s life-long Christian faith.
“Much of what I had done before along the lines of service was guilt induced. When I would hear a horrific story, I would want to respond quickly, write a check, and be done with it. But I have met many incredible people who are responding with their lives, and that has exposed something in me. I have been given a lot of joy in life, but I’ve also missed something. All of my life I have been grooming my faith, but have missed something about the purpose of that grooming. If I understand scripture at all, I have to know that to enter into the suffering of the poor and the oppressed is to know Christ and his suffering.”
When listening to the new songs on Tell Me What You Know, it’s clear just how much Sara Groves has been learning. Groves’ songs have always communicated profound insight via an organic yet eclectic musical palette. However, this time around Groves accomplishes something even more incredibly rare, 11 tracks detailing hardship and injustice while defiantly and exuberantly celebrating hope. “I want this album to be enjoyable, for people to be able to listen to it in their car and not be heavy hearted about all the ills in the world. I’ve tried to create music that represents the joy that comes in getting to enter into this work.”
Her joy is contagious, and is certain to extend to her growing family. Sara was writing and recording this album while pregnant with her third child, Ruby Cate, born mere days after the final songs were mixed. Now as Sara and husband Troy welcome their first daughter to a home filled with the sounds of two rambunctious big brothers (Toby, 4, and Kirby, 7), the Groves’ family look forward to learning more about how their lives will be useful in bringing hope to individuals like Elizabeth.
That night in Washington D.C., Elizabeth was asked to share the Psalm she had written on the wall as part of her testimony, but Elizabeth refused, stating that Psalm 27 was for the brothel. Instead, she said, she would read Psalm 34: I sought the Lord, and He heard my cry. “When I met Elizabeth, I felt like I was in the presence of royalty,” says Sara. “She is a college graduate now, and with tremendous courage, has used her story to inspire action. I couldn’t get her out of my mind as I was writing these songs. She knows something about God that I will never know. Those verses are real to her in a way that I have never experienced. After meeting her, genocide survivors, and others who have suffered great oppression, I was humbled by my lack of understanding of life, of love, of courage, and of Christ, and was filled with a hunger to know more.”
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THIS IS GRACE, AN INVITATION TO BE BEAUTIFUL –
Every Thursday night for the last 44 years, my grandparents have gone to the Federal Medical Prison in Springfield, MO, a facility for sick or terminally ill prisoners, to hold a bible study with the inmates. As a rule, Grammie and Grandad never ask the men why they are incarcerated; they just talk, listen, and pray with them. It is to me my favorite image of my Grammie, who in her mid 80’s, is small in stature, and is usually a very quiet person. When she identifies a new person in the group, she crosses the room with determination, learns their name and makes sure they feel welcomed. Grammie and Grandad have taught me with their lives, their marriage, their work, and their service what it means to add to the beauty.
In another story, friends of ours are looking back over their 15-year marriage. Five years ago they survived an affair, and in the healing that followed, they had two more children in addition to the two they already had. As we were sitting around the table working on our photo albums, my girlfriend picked up a picture of her family, pointed to her little girl and her baby boy and said, “Mercy. Mercy.” Through brokenness and heartbreak, we have cried together and have witness together how God can create beauty and love in places that felt full of desolation.
In the wake of the genocide in Rwanda, the families of killers and survivors live side by side in communities trying to sort through the process of justice, and all in an atmosphere of poverty. Our friend Greg heard about the plight of farmers who work year round to grow their coffee crops only to sell them for pennies to a mill. The mills sell the beans for market value while the farmers themselves can barely feed their families. With his company Bull Run Roasting Company behind him, Greg went to Rwanda to build mini-mills for each farm, and to train the farmers to mill their own beans, allowing farmers to sell the beans at market value. Using his creativity in business, and heart for people, Greg is hoping to bring a new beginning, new growth, and new hope for beauty to one small war-torn town.
God has invited us, as mere human beings, to add to the beauty of his plan and creation. Unbelievable. The Kingdom of God transcends politics and policy, nationality, gender and race. It transcends the way we do church, and makes us a real live body of believers. It gives us the ability to be very different and still bear with one another. It gives us the power to extend the same kind of grace that has been extended to us, and to love each other with a love that never fails. The very real kingdom of God calls out of us, it’s inhabitants, beautiful art, creative lives, and redemptive work.
When we started Add to the Beauty, we set out to take beautiful pictures of the songs, to recapture the straight forward feel of Conversations, and couldn't have found a better song photographer than Brown Bannister. It has been a surreal and wonderful experience to work with the man who helped bring Age to Age to my living room over 20 years ago.
Song-writing has traditionally been a very closed process for me, but this album called me out of my writer’s nook to co-write with some amazing songwriters like Joel Hanson who gave me the great drive-with-the-windows-down music for Just Showed Up, and Ed Cash who took When It Was Over to a new level by capturing ‘the promise to stay while we’re working it out’ in music. Gordon Kennedy put the heart into Loving a Person, and It’s Going to Be Alright with his amazing gift for melodies. Matt Bronlewee helped me top the album off with an eleventh hour gift, and the album’s title in Add to the Beauty, and helped complete You are the Sun.
To capture these song pictures we worked with old and new friends. Steve Brewster (drums) and Matt Pierson (bass) returned to astonish us with their gifts on what I think is my most rhythm driven record to date. Scott Dente is a gift as a human being and an acoustic guitar player, and Jerry McPherson’s subtle solo on Rewrite this Tragedy (among others) adds to the beauty in my life. Likewise, Tom Bukuvak played like a cry on Loving a Person, and It’s Going to Be Alright. Partway through production I realized that this is my first true piano album. In the past we have divided the songs with the piano and the acoustic guitar, but this time around, almost every song features the acoustic piano. Blair Masters and Shane Kiester captured the heart of this album on piano and keys. A guest appearance by John Catchings on cello created one of my favorite moments on the album, Why It Matters.
Adding to the beauty is for all of us: homemakers, businessmen, clergy, car dealers, bowling alley attendants… in the everydayness of the kingdom we are invited to be brilliantly beautiful, all of us moons with no light of our own, invited to shine.
And on that note, this album is dedicated to my Grandad and Grammie who have lived as such brilliant examples of what it means to add to the beauty.
You can do no great things, just small things with great love. – Mother Theresa
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(courtesy of INO Records)
She doesn't look like a very formidable opponent. You wouldn't be afraid to meet her in a dark alley, she doesn't have washboard abs or well-defined biceps, and if she ever landed a punch it would probably be by accident. So while critically acclaimed singer/songwriter Sara Groves won't be facing Tatiana Ali in the ring anytime soon, she is definitely a fighter. Groves spent 2003 wrestling with God and struggling against the hold evil has on this world. She questioned, as David did, a Creator that she loves but doesn't always understand, and defended herself against an enemy she knows all too well. She emerged with a few cuts and bruises, but she also gained a new perspective, a more sure-footed faith despite life's uncertainties. And as she prepares for the March 23 release of her third album on INO Records, The Other Side of Something, Groves is ready to get back in the ring, and this time she's coming out swinging.
That wasn't the case last year. While Groves was quick to pledge her own life to serving God, the birth of her first child found her placing conditions on her faith. "I wanted a guarantee that because I believed and followed Him with all my heart, because I was on the road doing what I felt was the call of God, that my family was going to be safe. I was kind of saying, 'hands off,' that if something happened to my boys while I was on the road, I didn't know if my faith would survive that." It was a good friend who gently pointed out that if there is a scenario you don't think your faith would survive, then your faith isn't surviving. That sent Groves running to the Lord, but she didn't find the assurances she hoped for. "I went to the Bible for comfort and I found Job and Jonah and Paul in prison. So then I had to go and look at what I believed about life, about bad things happening to good people."
In the end, she didn't find answers so much as peace amid the questions, and the eventual realization that what we want isn't always what God knows we need. "I thought I wanted to be safe, but I realized I don't want my kids growing up watching me be safe," Groves says. "Jesus' walk is very unsafe. If I live that out with safety as my highest goal, then I'm not reaching out to the tax collector. I'm not surrounding myself with sinners. I needed to realize that so I could give my kids to Him again."
As she worked through these issues, they naturally turned into songs. She wrote "The Boxer" in her bunk on the tour bus when she was feeling particularly low. "I was feeling defeated and I just kept repeating, "when you said this was a fight, you weren't kidding." The song follows her from defeat to a renewed confidence in her ability to finish the fight well, ending fittingly with several choruses of "greater is He who is in me." "Spiritually, it's where I was," she says. "I felt beat up, but I returned to my corner. Now I'm rested and ready to go. And I feel more sure of my call, more confident in what I'm doing."
When producer Charlie Peacock asked her to define the effect the last year had on her, she explained that it felt like she was on the other side of something. That sentiment sparked "Compelled", an ultimately optimistic tune she wrote with Peacock: "I have a new hope that blows away/The small hopes I knew before/And at the end of the day I am yours/And I am compelled."
"I had been a fan of Charlie's for a long time, watching from afar," Groves says. She was also curious about how her sound would change with another producer. That's how Peacock was tapped to help Groves bring to life four of the songs born out of last year's struggles. To produce the balance of the album, she relied on the talents of long-time collaborator Nate Sabin. The result is a mix of songs that find Groves gamely exploring new musical territory while remaining always true to who she is. From the introspective "Leave It Like a Skin" to the marital honesty of "Roll to the Middle" and the timely "Esther," which touches on the African AIDS crisis, Groves isn't afraid to probe some still tender topics if her insights can challenge others and move them closer to God and each other.
While she may occasionally wish for an easier road, a sunnier path or at least weaker eyes that didn't see in such detail the darker side of this life, in the end, she knows she's right where she belongs. "I can't help myself. I have to follow Christ everyday. I've tried to walk away and I've tried to shake this whole thing off. I'd love to not know about the battle between good and evil, but at the end of the day, I'm marked. I'm His and I'm compelled to do the right thing. Realizing that is a tremendous freedom for me."
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