Let It Sing

Tending your soul and stepping into a larger story

Glen Eyrie Castle, Colorado Springs, CO

In downtown Brookhaven, Mississippi, a block from the railroad tracks, you’ll find a red brick auditorium with Greek Revival columns. Just over a century ago, five brothers built it in honor of their mother, Mary Jane. Today, it hosts performances by the Mississippi School of the Arts.

In a valley in Colorado Springs, hidden behind red rocks, you’ll discover a castle, also completed a century ago, built for the love of another Mary. From the roof tiles shipped across an ocean and a continent to its 15th-century monastery mantel, it tells of a man who loved his wife so much he brought England to Colorado for her.

I visited both places last month.

And I’ll tell you a secret, if you care to imagine with me.

Ready?

I like to imagine a golden thread that shimmers between the two—unbroken across the miles, glinting in the light.

This golden thread stretches from the stately Great Hall fireplace, framed by antlers and arching beams, to the Lampton’s hardwood stage, crimson velvet curtains pulled back, dust motes dancing in the spotlight.

Lampton Auditorium, Wyatt Waters

On the stage, a high school senior sang a song from Violet with a voice that stole our collective breath (if tears from grown men are any indication). This teenager recently starred as Hermes in the local production of Hadestown, and he has vocal power and stage presence beyond his years.

And in an armchair before the fireplace, a woman I’ve come to love dearly sat leaning forward intently, cane in hand, silver hair draped over one shoulder. An overflowing hall of writers hung on her words, pens scurrying to take notes and laughter rippling at her quick wit.

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I wasn’t familiar with the musical Violet before last month. It’s based on a Southern Gothic short story by Doris Betts, set almost entirely on a Greyhound bus in the 1960s.

The main character is a young woman traveling from North Carolina to Oklahoma in hopes of a miracle. When Violet was a child, her father’s axe flew off its handle and struck her in the face, leaving a scar. To Violet, the scar represents brokenness that will keep her alone forever, because she believes the scar is all others see when they look at her. (Interestingly, the audience does not see the scar in the musical.)

Violet is on a pilgrimage to meet a charismatic televangelist who promises miracles. On the bus, she meets Flick, a soldier facing racial prejudices and ongoing segregation in the South.

Flick befriends Violet and, as she talks about her plan to ask the Preacher for a perfect face, he realizes she has shrunk her entire identity down to the scar. Instead of pity or condolence, he pulls her attention up and out.

When I first heard this song in the Lampton auditorium, I didn’t know the context. “Let It Sing” is anything but a “you’re beautiful just the way you are” sentiment. It starts with the rhythm of a military cadence, a familiar call-and-response. It’s unassuming at first. Left, right, left, right.

Then the song starts to soar. Flick tells Violet there are two kinds of people in the world, and she is at a crossroads. She can keep hiding, or she can choose adventure and give herself a reason for joy. In fact, he tells her, if she’s brave enough to make music out of her life, it will give others a voice, too. He reminds her, “There’s precious little that folks like us control, but you can make music from the simplest thing.”

He tells her what his mother told him:

He was the only one who could tend his soul,

not to let his spirit close in on itself,

but to be patient,

give it room,

and let it sing.

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A few weeks later, as I sat in the castle’s great hall, Lancia E. Smith told us from her armchair,

“The world is full of ways to waste your life. It is not enough to write your thoughts on a napkin or in a notebook. Don’t be afraid to look at the pruning in your life, because there is one true narrative in your life, and it’s the one that matters. Your business, as a writer and as a human being, is to bear witness, to tell the truth with your whole life.

Don’t shortchange yourself.

Please step into a larger world.

Take your power back.

Live largely.

Live like immortals.”

Shame bets on silence and confusion. It cannot survive unless we are hiding, fixated on the scars on our faces or someone else’s. All oppression runs on the same engine—it erases our identity and our consciousness, replacing the one true story with a parasitic one, draining us of life. We cannot lift a voice we don’t know we have.

But shame cannot survive in the face of a loving truth-teller who, in singing their song, helps us remember who we are. Shame is cowed the moment we stop looking away in confusion and realize its story is a lie.

It takes courage to remember and reclaim our identity as beloved children.

It takes courage to look the monster of shame in the face.

It takes courage to tend our souls.

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I’ve often thought about a story in the book of Acts about two men singing in prison. It’s easy to assume that Silas had a good singing voice, that Paul chose soothing songs, that the other prisoners were listening to them in appreciation.

But we don’t know if those two could hold a tune. We don’t know how their voices sounded at midnight, with hoarse throats, after being flogged. We don’t know if the prisoners were listening simply because sleeping was impossible. We don’t know if anyone was annoyed.

But none of that matters.

Because what we do know is that while they sang from their chains, an earthquake shook the foundations of their prison, opened the doors, and set them free.

Tending our soul so we can let it sing might start slowly, a rhythm of mundane faithfulness. One foot in front of the other, left, right. Or it might start at midnight, motionless, trapped. It might start with a voice that has long been silenced—an imperfect voice, a voice shaken by pain.

And there is no labyrinth of pressure plates and false floors, no guesswork. Our task is simply to keep going, to keep doing the things that feel insignificant and unglamorous. For when we think nothing is within our control, and we wonder if the song is too faint—that is exactly when hope rumbles deep beneath our dug-in heels. Dungeons shake. And shame recoils into the shadows, though it may claw and snarl in its death throes.

The song has always been closer than we realized. And choosing to give it breath is an act of defiance.

Maybe the most important one we’ll ever make.

Because the song you sing may open someone else’s dungeon, too. I am who I am today because others sang when I couldn’t. Because they “stood between my heart and Satan’s knife”.¹

So that thing? It matters more than you think it does.

Whatever came to mind, hold onto it.

I may not know much, but I do know this: it matters more than you think it does.

I promise.

Yes, you. Yes, that thing.

Because C.S. Lewis said there are no ordinary people, and we have never talked to a mere mortal.² We are all immortals, with souls capable of singing.

And that, my friend, is the golden thread I discovered last month, tying Glen Eyrie’s hall to the Lampton’s stage. Your soul has a song, because you are no mere mortal. And you’ve gotta let it sing. Give it room. Step into a larger story. It’s been waiting for you.

“But you can make your music from the simplest thing
And you're the one who’s got to tend your soul;
You got to give it room, and let it sing.”

P.S. Here’s a video of Joshua Henry performing “Let It Sing” in his first musical in college, twenty years before winning his first Tony Award on June 7, 2026. He has credited “Let It Sing” as a song he’s lived by since he was eighteen, and God as his “endless creative source”. And his Tony, awarded for his role in Ragtime, is a testament to what can happen when you take it slow, lift your voice, and sing so loud you make them hear you.

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

- C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”

1. Gloria Gaither, “To All the Poets I Have Known”

2. C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory" (sermon, University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, June 8, 1941)