Sara Groves
Sara Groves Bio
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
Courtesy INO records
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