Singing in the Shower
An Open and Relational Theology of Everyday Flourishing
Love always seeks flourishing Five Pillars of Health |
Singing in the Shower |
Many scientific studies show that the arts—alongside diet, sleep, exercise, and nature—are a fifth pillar of health. So we learn from Daisy Fancourt in Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Save Lives. She is of the world’s leading researchers at the intersection of arts, health, and science. She serves as Director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre on Arts and Health and Head of the Department of Behavioural Science and Health at University College London. Her work has received wide acclaim in many settings:
"Her work has helped redefine how we think about the arts — not as optional enrichment, but as a vital component of human health, alongside exercise, nutrition, sleep, and social connection. Drawing on neuroscience, psychology, immunology, and large-scale population studies, Daisy has shown how engaging with music, visual art, dance, theatre, and literature can measurably improve our mental, physical, and social wellbeing across the lifespan. She has advised governments, the WHO, and health systems around the world, and her research is shaping how the arts are being integrated into healthcare and public policy. Today, we’re going to explore what the science really tells us, why the arts are so powerful for health, and what this means for how we live, heal, and design healthier societies.""
- from Creative Process: Arts, Culture, Society Podcast interview with Professor Daisy Fancourt, interviewed by Mia Funk
In a page titles 8 Billion Artists in Open Horizons, I offer a fuller profile of her book. It offers a goldmine of resources
The Five Pillars of Health
Here, however, I want to explore connections between the five pillars of health and the idea of love developed by Thomas Jay Oord in A Systematic Theology of Love. The five pillars are diet, exercise, sleep, nature, and art. One thing I appreciate about Oord's understanding of love is that he links it with flourishing. He writes: “When properly defined, love’s primary focus is promoting abundant life, flourishing, blessedness, shalom, or well-being.”
My suggestion is that the five pillars of health can be understood as concrete, embodied ways of participating in this love—practices through which the Spirit of love nurtures flourishing in our lives and, through us, in the wider world. We respond to the lure of divine love, and add to the very life of God, when we eat well, move our bodies, rest deeply, spend time in nature, and engage the arts—whether by singing in the shower, dancing in the kitchen, or creating something by hand.
One value of recognizing this is that it expands our understanding of divine love. Love is not only about moral behavior or ethical obligation; it is also about health, flourishing, and well-being. It concerns how we live in our bodies, how we care for ourselves, how we experience joy, and how we cultivate the conditions for life to thrive.
Implications for Parenting
This idea has implications for parenting. To love a child is not only to teach right from wrong, but also to help create the conditions in which the child can flourish: nourishing food, adequate sleep, opportunities for movement, contact with the natural world, and exposure to the arts. In this sense, parenting becomes a participation in the Spirit’s work—helping another life become more fully alive.
Implications for Educaion and Community Life
Still another implication concerns education and community life. Schools, churches, and civic institutions often focus on information, rules, or productivity, but may neglect the conditions of flourishing. If love aims at well-being, then education should include not only intellectual development but also attention to the body, the imagination, and the environment: time for movement, access to nature, opportunities for artistic expression, and rhythms that honor rest. Likewise, communities can be evaluated, in part, by the degree to which they make the five pillars accessible to all. In this broader sense, to work for justice is to help create a world in which flourishing is not a privilege for a few, but a shared possibility for many.
Implications for Personal Spirituality
Additionally, the idea that love is about flourishing has implications for personal spirituality. Spiritual life need not be separated from the ordinary rhythms of daily living. It is not only found in prayer, worship, or meditation, but also in how we inhabit our bodies, structure our days, and attend to the small practices that sustain life. To eat with care, to rest when tired, to step outside, to move, to create—these, too, can be forms of prayer. They are ways of aligning ourselves with the Spirit of love, participating in its work, and becoming, in our own embodied way, more fully alive.
Implications for Church Life
And it has implications for church life as well. If the Spirit seeks flourishing, then congregations can be places not only of teaching and worship, but of holistic well-being. Churches might encourage healthy rhythms of life, create spaces for artistic expression, support connection with nature, and foster communities of care where people can rest, heal, and grow. In this way, church life becomes not simply a matter of belief, but a shared practice of flourishing—a community participating together in the life of the Spirit.
Quite apart from these practical considerations, there also broader implication for culture.
Integrating Science and Spirituality
One is that it helps integrate science and spirituality. The five pillars are supported by a growing body of empirical research, while the idea of love as a cosmic force is articulated theologically. Bringing them together suggests that the Spirit of love is not separate from the natural world, but is at work within the very processes that sustain life and health. Science helps us understand the conditions of flourishing; theology helps us interpret their meaning.
Highlighting Joy and Beauty
Another is that it highlights the role of joy and beauty in love. By including the arts and encounters with nature, we see that love is not only about care and compassion, but also about delight, play, and aesthetic experience. To enjoy beauty, to create something, or to be moved by music or landscape is not peripheral to love; it is one of its expressions.
Democratizing Spirituality
Another is that it democratizes spirituality. Participation in the Spirit of love is not limited to clergy, mystics, or the highly trained. It is available to anyone, anywhere, through the ordinary practices of daily life—eating, walking, resting, creating. In this sense, everyday life becomes a primary site of spiritual practice.
Encouraging Sustainable Rhythms of Life
Finally, it encourages sustainable rhythms of life. Love is not only expressed in dramatic or heroic acts, but in daily habits that sustain and nourish life over time. To care for one’s body, to rest, to move, to create—these are small but steady acts through which love becomes embodied and enduring.
For all of these reasons, it seems to me, the five pillars of health can enrich a consideration of divine love and, at the same time, an approach to divine love of the sort developed by Oord can add a spiritual dimension to the five pillars,
The Well-Being of God
For all of these reasons, it seems to me that the five pillars of health can enrich our understanding of divine love and, at the same time, that an approach to divine love of the sort developed by Thomas Jay Oord can add a spiritual dimension to the five pillars. Each illuminates the other: the pillars give concrete, embodied form to love, while love discloses their deeper meaning.
There is, however, a further idea to develop—namely, that the practice of wellness in human life enriches the divine life itself. It would be easy, and perhaps natural, to imagine that the divine reality—the universal Spirit of love—is completely Well (with an uppercase W) quite apart from the condition of the world. But this is not the case, given a relational understanding of God.
In this view, God is not detached from the world but deeply affected by it. The well-being of the world contributes to the well-being of God, just as the suffering of the world is felt by God. This idea is made explicit in Alfred North Whitehead’s understanding of the consequent nature of God: God receives and feels all that happens, weaving the experiences of the world into the divine life.
From this perspective, when we flourish, something of value is added to the life of God. When we eat well, rest deeply, move our bodies, delight in beauty, and participate in the arts, these are not only benefits to us; they are also offerings to the Spirit. Our well-being becomes, in a real sense, part of the divine well-being.
Hence there is still another reason to sing in the shower. It becomes, in its own small way, a hymn of praise—an offering of joy that adds, however modestly, to the very life of the universal Spirit of love.
There is, however, a further idea to develop—namely, that the practice of wellness in human life enriches the divine life itself. It would be easy, and perhaps natural, to imagine that the divine reality—the universal Spirit of love—is completely Well (with an uppercase W) quite apart from the condition of the world. But this is not the case, given a relational understanding of God.
In this view, God is not detached from the world but deeply affected by it. The well-being of the world contributes to the well-being of God, just as the suffering of the world is felt by God. This idea is made explicit in Alfred North Whitehead’s understanding of the consequent nature of God: God receives and feels all that happens, weaving the experiences of the world into the divine life.
From this perspective, when we flourish, something of value is added to the life of God. When we eat well, rest deeply, move our bodies, delight in beauty, and participate in the arts, these are not only benefits to us; they are also offerings to the Spirit. Our well-being becomes, in a real sense, part of the divine well-being.
Hence there is still another reason to sing in the shower. It becomes, in its own small way, a hymn of praise—an offering of joy that adds, however modestly, to the very life of the universal Spirit of love.