Have you ever felt strangely out of place in your own life? You know what I mean: those moments sitting in traffic, scrolling through a screen, or standing in a crowded room, when an inexplicable homesickness washes over you.
According to C.S. Lewis, that unsettling intuition is a clue to your real identity. In his classic sermon The Weight of Glory, Lewis observed:
“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.”
Evangelizing, sharing the gospel and our love for Jesus one by one with others, often involves helping people recover their true identity. And as C.S. Lewis and Walker Percy remind us, that begins by reminding ourselves and others that we are designed for a destiny far beyond the daily routine of mere survival. We are made in the image of God and called to communion with him.
The Castaway’s Dilemma: Walker Percy on the Modern "Malaise"
If Lewis gives us the vision of who we are, the novelist and philosopher Walker Percy diagnoses why we forget it. Throughout his work, Percy insisted that "it is pilgrims we are, wayfarers on a journey." Yet, modern culture continuously dulls that awareness, and we forget who we are.
In The Message in the Bottle, Percy offers a famous parable: imagine a castaway on an island who suffers from amnesia. Over time, he learns the customs of the island, builds a successful life, and excels at daily tasks. Yet he remains strangely troubled. Why? Because deep down, he knows he does not belong there.
Periodically, glass bottles wash up on the beach. Some contain “island news” —useful facts about local weather or food supplies. But occasionally, a message arrives containing what Percy calls “news from across the sea”—information that addresses his true condition, telling him who he is, where he came from, and how to get home.
Evangelization and “News from Across the Sea”
How do we receive this “news” today? Before we can preach or teach truth to people in a culture that has forgotten how to live, we must awaken its latent longing for home, its desire to know who they are and why they are here. Great art, literature, and music can act as those messages in a bottle—awakening people to transcendent beauty and ultimately to God and his love for them.
Even in secular pop culture, artists periodically stumble upon these bottles on the shore. Unwittingly or deliberately, their songs reflect the aching questions of the human heart: Who am I? Why do I feel lost? Is anyone searching for me?
When read together, four contemporary songs map out the castaway’s journey—from the search for worldly status to the discovery of eternal identity.
1. The Ambition: “Glitter and Gold” by Barns Courtney
Barns Courtney begins his hit song with a striking, inverted echo of Psalm 23. Where the psalmist finds peace in the shadow of death because the Shepherd is present, Courtney asks a question born of worldly striving: “Do you walk in the valley of kings?”
The song wrestles with the relentless pursuit of human status, fame, and wealth.
“I am flesh and I am bone / Rise up, ting ting, like glitter and gold / I've got fire in my soul / Rise up, ting ting, like glitter...”
— “Glitter and Gold” by Barns Courtney
To answer Courtney’s question: yes, we do walk in the valley of Kings. The King of Kings, as the Good Shepherd, is with us on our pilgrimage. Sometimes we forget that we are royals on pilgrimage together.
2. The Malaise: “Indigo” by Sam Barber
In his song “Indigo,” Sam Barber wonders why he used to shine like gold and is now indigo and concludes:
“I used to shine bright like gold / Now I’m all indigo / My colors are darker and cold / I think it’s time that I went home.”
— “Indigo” by Sam Barber
Indigo represents the malaise of a person lost in the search, who no longer knows who they are or where they are going. This person only knows that something is lost. He records the intuitive turn of the heart when it hits bottom: I don't belong here. It is time to go home.
3. The Awakening: “Saturn” by Sleeping at Last
The lyrics in “Glitter and Gold” focus on our longing for eternal vision; “Indigo” names the loss of it; “Saturn,” by Sleeping at Last, points toward wonder at an existence far from ordinary. These lyrics serve as a signpost on Courtney’s search and Barber’s dilemma:
“With shortness of breath / I’ll explain the infinite / How rare and beautiful it truly is that we exist.”
— “Saturn” by Sleeping at Last
Recognizing life’s deeper quest for meaning wakes us up from mindless routine, while sleepwalking through existence without any curiosity or longing is a true spiritual loss.
4. The True Identity: “We Are Royals” by North Point Worship
If the previous songs trace the longing, loss, and wonder of the journey, “We Are Royals” delivers the actual “news from across the sea.” It answers Courtney’s question about the “valley of kings” and resolves Barber’s search for home:
“From urban streets to open plains / We are under one Name / No one is lost or goes unseen / ’Cause we’re all loved by our King / ... More than mortals / We are royals / We are Yours.”
— “We Are Royals” by North Point Worship
Here, the truth meets Lewis’ initial declaration. We are “more than mortals.” The King of Kings has come to the island to reclaim his children.
What these songs express—the ache, the search, the hopes—these are what our faith addresses. Pope Leo XIV confirms, “We are not the sum of what we possess, nor a random collection of matter in a silent cosmos; there is a special dignity inherent in every person. We are a desire, not an algorithm.” We are fearfully, wonderfully made (see Gen 1:26).
The Search for Eternal Identity
Recognizing people’s deeper longing and their search for their eternal identity is what Walker Percy famously wrote about in his award-winning novel The Moviegoer:
“To become aware of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”
We are all searching for who we ultimately and most deeply are in God. That search is often where evangelization starts. Before we offer any explanation or answers, we often find ourselves asking the question:
How do we look at an ordinary person on an ordinary day and recognize that we are standing before a mystery—that this person is an immortal being, a creature made in the image of God?
How do we move beyond the malaise and dullness of the everyday and recover a fuller vision of the glory hidden in our fellow human beings?
The transcendent signs we encounter in art and literature, as we have seen, awaken our deepest hunger for truth and meaning. When we allow ourselves to really feel how hungry we are, we discover that the longing stirred within us points beyond itself, leading us to the Eucharist, where Christ offers the true medicine of immortality and the ultimate restoration for which the human heart longs.
To truly see and love another person does not mean to escape the world in which we live. As humans, we must accept our creaturehood, our embodied, mortal life. Yet to see ourselves rightly, we must recognize one another as immortal. The Eucharist provides spiritual grounding for this. The Eucharist changes us, and it changes how we see.
The early Catholic Apostolic Father, St. Ignatius of Antioch, tells us that the Eucharist is “the medicine of immortality and the antidote against death, enabling us to live forever in Jesus Christ” (Letter to the Ephesians 20.2).
In Baptism, we receive our true identity in Christ and are united to his Body. Baptism makes us adopted children of God. We participate in the inner life of the Holy Trinity. By loving with the very love poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, we make God’s presence visible in the temporal world as grace brings our wonderfully made humanity to its intended fullness. We each reflect something of God’s glory. In the Eucharist, that identity is continually renewed as Christ draws us more deeply into communion with himself, conforming us to his own life.
Jared Ortiz draws us into wonder at the “everlasting splendor” of the “immortals” we are: “Through the power of the Holy Spirit, especially in the sacraments, we are united to God and, while never ceasing to be human, our union with God transforms us into the one to whom we are united. By cooperating with God’s grace, we advance in likeness to Christ—as St. Paul says, ‘being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another’ (2 Cor. 3:18)—until we see God ‘face to face’ (1 Cor. 13:12). Then, as St. John says, ‘We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is’ (1 Jn 3:2). This likeness to God is not external or merely metaphorical: rather, we are like God because God shares himself with us and we participate in him” (Jared Ortiz, “In the One, We Are One” in Church Life Journal).
There, finally, our hunger satisfied, we will see ourselves and each other as we truly are. For even now, we are royalty in God’s Kingdom as we await its fullness to come.
Fellow Immortals, “our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory” (Phil 3:20-21).
Sr. Margaret Kerry, FSP, has been a Daughter of St. Paul for more than 50 years. She holds a Master of Theological Studies from Boston College and has served in leadership, evangelization, publishing, and faith formation throughout the United States. She is the author of several books, writes for CatholicMom.com. Pauline Media Studies and Global Sisters Report. Sr. Kerry is an accomplished artist whose work is featured in Pauline Books & Media Centers.
Image Credit: Image by Manja Göhle from Pixabay
