Over the next year I will be hosting a series of nine nights at St. Mark’s Church in Austin called “Beauty As Well As Bread.” They will feature varieties of combination of song, poetry, stillness, reflection, lecture, and visual art, with featured guests ranging from scholars, painters, poets, priests, and fellow songwriters.
These nights are not concerts so much as experiments in cultivating resonance — resonance with the deeper layers of the world. Beauty puts us in touch with invisible things. Deep beckons to deep.
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread.” - John Muir, The Yosemite.
Muir understood how maintaining wild places in nature is essential for the flourishing of the human spirit; I want to maintain similar spaces for the arts for the same reason. Beauty stuns us, consoles us, stretches us, and rewrites us. I hope you’ll join us in discovering again that beauty is not a luxury for the artsy, but necessary nourishment for all.
— Jon Guerra
Beauty As Well As Bread
Second Gathering: October 14th, 2025
Fall Slate
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Gathering No. 1, Get Tickets
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Gathering No. 2, with Andy Squyres
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Gathering No. 3, with Dr. Judith Wolfe
Faith in a Hidden God — The Danger and Beauty of Belief (video)
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Gathering No. 4, with John Patrick Cobb
JON GUERRA is a singer-songwriter & producer who creates Devotional Music — less Sunday morning worship music, and more Monday morning prayer music.
Jon's debut Devotional Music album was Keeper of Days (2020), followed by Ordinary Ways (2023), and most recently Jesus (2025). Jon has also composed music for film (Terrence Malick's "A Hidden Life," 2019).
Jon collaborates with a wide variety of artists, tours regularly, is building a community around Devotional Music, and resides in Austin, TX.
Beauty As Well As Bread
Made possible by the Artist-in-Context program
from the Creative Arts Collective for Christian Life & Faith
and by St. Mark’s Episcopal Church