This summer, as you might already know, Brian Wilson of Beach Boys fame passed away. What you might not know is that my eleven-year-old son is about to start middle school. While at first glance these two events may seem entirely disparate, as I have reflected on my own journey to the Catholic faith—and the small but strangely integral role Wilson’s music played in it—I have not been able to shake the feeling these past few months of a connection between them. My son is stepping into that transitional, somewhat mysterious period of adolescence. And my husband and I are preparing to shepherd him through it, even as we both reflect on the death of an artist who formed us spiritually and emotionally in different ways.
My husband has been a Brian Wilson fan for a long time. He can rattle off every track on every album—every chord change, every quirky sonic flourish, and every blowup in Wilson and cousin Mike Love’s storied six-decade collaboration of brilliance and bickering. My own love for the Beach Boys emerged more slowly—less a lightning bolt than a gradual tide—and, admittedly, at first only vicariously through my spouse. And, to be honest, that is also how I came to love the Catholic faith. When we met, my husband was a somewhat lapsed Catholic, and I was a somewhat lapsed Baptist. We visited various places of worship, but while I preferred guitars, he always preferred bells at Mass. Over time, through his urging and reverence, I began to perceive the Church’s beauty.
Somewhat surprisingly, I have to admit that the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson contributed to my religious awakening and offered me two unexpected gifts: a joyful attentiveness to beauty and a vision of spiritual accompaniment. Wilson—though not attached to any particular religious tradition—taught me, a sometimes (read: oftentimes) overthinking English professor, not to be embarrassed by spiritual joy. His music helped me let beauty of all kinds minister to my senses, a skill I began to carry into worship, as the liturgy progressively became less something to comprehend and more something to receive.
Falling in Love with the Beach Boys—and the Church
For example, while I am not a music aficionado by any means, listening to “Good Vibrations”—oh, for the cello, the shaker, the piano, the layered melodies all moving in different directions!—affected me in a way no other music had before. I did not have the precise technical verbiage, but I knew something in me was responding to that music. My soul soared! And, as cheesy as it may sound, listening to the Beach Boys attuned me to the richness of the Mass: the bells announcing the sacred, the chant lifting prayers heavenward, and the beauty—ever ancient, ever new—in patterns at once familiar and unknowable that touched the depths of my soul. Wilson’s musical textures made me a more attentive listener, not simply to songs, but to the liturgy itself as I commenced and continued my conversion to the Catholic faith.
As the Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–88)—one of the twentieth century’s preeminent theologians of beauty—might term it, I was becoming more receptive, or more attuned to Christ’s own frequency, if you will, through a fresh attentiveness to the music of life and liturgy alike. For Balthasar, beauty is not the decorative trapping of faith but rather its very center: “We should always be hearing, as with bodily ears, the gurgling wellspring of our origin in God,” he articulates in his meditative classic The Grain of Wheat.[1] Attunement is not merely recognizing beauty but allowing oneself to be re‑formed by it. It is akin to the way a violinist leans toward a lead tone, listening until the strings themselves come alive, moving from what one might call the closed circuit of the self into the harmonies of reciprocal divine love. Once you begin listening for that divine pitch (as I did when first drawn into Wilson’s music and simultaneously to the Church’s call), you start to catch its harmonies in unexpected places—flowing from the measured cadences of Gregorian chant to, in my case, the many‑voiced intricacies of Wilson’s pop songs, circling back again as if the two were answering one another across time—or, at the very least, across my heart in its season of conversion.
In fact, part of Wilson’s genius lies in precisely this: drawing distinct melodic lines into a unity that is greater than the sum of its parts. Those well‑versed in both early Christian music and iconic pop already know that Wilson is a master of polyphony, the layering of distinct melodic lines that also shaped the Church’s earliest sacred compositions. As Micah Towery notes, “his ability with polyphony mirrors the greatest of the church’s composers, Palestrina,” the latter being perhaps the best-known Italian Catholic Renaissance composer of sacred music. Now that might sound like a lofty comparison—but for those who, as I have, taken the time to contemplate God through Wilson’s music, it might begin to make sense. And for those who are already Beach Boys fans, I suspect (and hope) Brian, Dennis, Carl, Mike, and Al (the original group members) are already harmonizing in the background with you as you read this article.
Thus, what I am suggesting overall is this: as a convert who began falling in love with the Beach Boys around the same time she was falling in love with Catholicism, it was far easier to admit—and even concede—that I felt the presence of God while listening to the Gregorian-chant-inspired “Prayer” on the Smile album than to speak openly about my own prayer life. One would eventually give way to the other, in both feeling and action, in devotion and discipleship, as the writing of this very public article about my faith life now attests.
“The Child Is the Father of the Man”: The Sacredness of Boyhood
Now, beyond that first gift—the way the Beach Boys’ music attuned me to the beauty of the Mass and the harmonies of divine love—Wilson, as an artist, also offered and helped me understand something else: the inner spiritual life of boys like my son, and the men they become, like my husband. Indicative of this is his track “Child Is Father of the Man,” first recorded during the Smile sessions in 1966–67. The title borrows from nineteenth-century British poet William Wordsworth’s “My Heart Leaps Up,” an often quoted line I teach in my Romantic literature courses and one that, in many ways, defines the movement itself. In that poem, Wordsworth affirms that the spiritual intuitions of childhood we all likely remember to some degree—its rich sense of wonder, awe, and even attendant moral clarity—are never fully outgrown but rather lay the foundation for our adult identities. We do not shed our childhood selves: we carry them forward into our adult lives. That is, spiritually speaking, the child’s experiences become the soil of the adult's inner life.
In Catholic teaching, early experience is not something to be dismissed or overcome, but it is a terrain where grace is already at work. As Jesus tells his disciples in Matthew 18:3–4: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Saints such as Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-98) and John Bosco (1815–88) maintain this truth, reminding us that childlikeness is not opposed to holiness but is often its purest expression. Thérèse’s “Little Way,” for instance, is a spiritually radical act of trust and simplicity; it is an invitation to sanctity not through magnificent gestures but through small acts of sacrifice and love. Bosco—perhaps best suited to this discussion—devoted his life to the spiritual care of boys, believing that affection, joy, and formative friendship could shape their souls more powerfully than fear or corporal punishment, which was commonly practiced in his time. He once wrote, “It is not enough to love the young; they must know that they are loved.” Both revered saints show us that childhood is not merely preparatory for a future stage of belief: it is already a space of encounter with our creator, one we can carry forward with us into adulthood.
And as further proof, already—even at eleven—I catch glimpses of my son’s potential to become a spiritual father—to grow, in Wordsworth’s words, into the father of the man—whether that means raising children of his own someday or being called to fatherhood through another vocation, such as the priesthood. I see, too, how my husband, in moments of ruminant reflection, names the ways his own childhood continues to shape the decisions he makes today—as a parent, a husband, a spiritual leader, a friend, a teacher, and a colleague. Moreover, as a mother, this recognition has transformed how I listen to my son: not as someone merely on a path toward faith, but as someone already immersed in its mystery. And I listen differently to my husband, too—who, though he may not always realize it, remains intensely connected to the boy he once was. (Neither he, nor our son, nor I would be Catholic otherwise, after all.)
In the broader Catholic tradition, the Trinity itself models this reality: the Father’s love poured into the Son, the Son’s loving obedience, and the Spirit who proceeds from them, binding all in perfect communion. Childhood is not outside this divine exchange! It participates in it. And Wilson’s music—layered, polyphonous—reminds me, and I believe all who listen and pay attention for God’s underlying message within it, that the spiritual life of the young is no waiting room for belief. It is already holy ground, alive with the harmonies of the Father, Son, and Spirit—like a melody already underway—into whose image every child is formed.
A Teenage Symphony to God: Brian Wilson’s Pro-Life Aesthetic
Ok, so I know you are enjoying reading this essay, and next I am going to make the case that there is perhaps no better pro-life musician than Brian Wilson—and that he captures the spirituality of boyhood in a way that is uniquely transcendent. So you will want to keep reading. But first, take two minutes—really, it is worth it—and go listen to “Song for Children,” a track originally conceived by Wilson in 1966 for Smile (mentioned above), but shelved for nearly forty years due to creative disagreements within the band and Wilson’s deteriorating mental health. This song makes me cry every time. (Yes, even when I pulled it up again and listened for you while writing this, I cried.) The version I am pointing you to is from Brian Wilson Presents Smile (2004), a reimagined release of the musician’s original vision, an album he once famously dubbed “a teenage symphony to God.” In 2011, The Smile Sessions compiled the original 1966–67 Beach Boys recordings. Both versions revealed Smile to be a sprawling, searching, and often, I assert, devotional work, one that, like Wilson himself, had to pass through suffering before it could be heard in full. Originally intended as the Beach Boys’ most ambitious project, it melds classical composition techniques, Americana, and avant-garde. It is astounding.
So go listen. If you have not already, I will be here when you get back.
Ok—heavy sigh, right? One of my favorite essays ever written about pop music is Owen Gleiberman’s “Brian Wilson’s Genius Was the Surest Sign We’ll Ever Have That Pop Music Is Religious.” In it, Gleiberman reflects that even if you were not moved by “Song for Children” the same way I was (although really, note the title even; could there conceivably be a better poetic and pro‑life message than that?!), he certainly was moved. “And when [the song] was over,” he shares, “I was changed. Something had shifted within me. I knew that I wanted to have children.”
Gleiberman is not alone in his sentiments. When I converted to Catholicism in my late twenties, I had not really thought seriously about having children. But somehow—as if responding to a pulse in Wilson’s music that had unsuspectingly become the soundtrack of my life—I began to sense and appreciate the potential abundance of life, with all its varied splendors, a fresh way. In both the Catholic faith and the joyful music he created, there was always the sense of more: more beauty, more meaning, more love—found not in escape or fantasy, but in the ordinary I should have already been noticing: the bells of the liturgy, a child’s voice, a two‑minute song that can make someone suddenly certain they want children. Wilson’s gift was not only in composing unforgettable melodies; it was in listening to the God-graced music of the everyday that others (myself included) overlooked, the so-called background noise most people tune out—noise that he as an artist found gloriously melodious.
In his album Smile, and in his earlier 1966 album Pet Sounds, which is another ode to childhood, he layered these ordinary sounds into transcendent magnificence. The clink of bobby pins, the ringing of bike bells, dogs barking, a can of Coke fizzing, snippets of conversation: all were interspersed into full orchestration and into some of the most exquisitely harmonized vocals ever recorded. Ah, the kinds of sounds most people would tune out, he amplified. The kinds of moments most would deem unworthy of attention, he transformed into beauty. That is why I now believe Wilson was (and his music is), in the truest sense of the word, pro-life. He believed in the dignity of everything: of children, of suffering, of joy, of noise, of silence. Oh, yes!: he believed that everything could become—and was already—God’s music, if only we would attune ourselves as humans to hear it.
What Wilson noticed most acutely were the sounds that score childhood—and, just as importantly, the sounds that proceed from then to us as adults. When I think of what my son hears every day, I imagine and know that it is the pop of soda cans (Sprite, his favorite), the whirr of bicycle wheels, his sister’s bobby pins clattering to the floor, our family chihuahua barking at the neighborhood kids who stop by to play, and the distant jingle of the ice cream truck—another sound Wilson himself incorporated into his music. As in Wilson’s work, there are also the half‑heard (and often half‑listened‑to by choice) adult conversations drifting through the background, composing the music of my eleven-year-old’s life.
Plus, I am pretty sure my son’s inner monologue could be summed up in those first lines that ring out from Pet Sounds: “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older? / Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long.” How often do young boys get antsy while waiting—for everything and anything: in line, at Mass, at the dinner table before eating, for haircuts, for a YouTube video to load, for dessert to arrive, for their learner’s permit, for their turn on the Nintendo Switch? But what Wilson taught me—and what I continue to try to teach my children—is that, in the words of poet Mary Oliver, “attention is the beginning of devotion.” Attention is a spiritual, prayerful mode of being present in the now, not in the future, in the people and the moments in front of us. That is hard for a grown-up, much less a young person. Pope Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium, reminds us that we are called to know “the aspirations, the riches and limitations, the ways of praying, of loving, of looking at life and the world” that characterize and form our communities. In other words, listening to people—really listening—is itself a form of the contemplative spiritual life. It is another way of becoming attuned to the pitch of divine love.
And that is what Wilson models for. He paid attention to what others dismissed. Not only did he write music that was inspired by prayer, I suggest he also showed us how to do it, how to turn the ordinary into the transcendent. While most casual Beach Boys listeners know the secular hit “Little Saint Nick” from the 1964 Beach Boys’ Christmas Album (a project designed with fans in mind), Wilson also famously created a new arrangement of “The Lord’s Prayer” for it, knowing that a Christmas album was hallowed ground and that audiences would respond to—and, more to the point, their hearts would desire—both kinds of music, the joyful dancing kind with each other and the joyful praising kind with their God. “Wouldn’t it be nice” if more of the world realized that there is a yearning for God and a yearning for fun in the sun, and that thinking about both can merge and enhance our understanding of the other, and find communion with both? Wilson once said of Pet Sounds—his most critically acclaimed album that often tops the “greatest of all time” lists: “When I was making Pet Sounds, I did have a dream about a halo over my head but people couldn’t see it. God was with us the whole time we were doing this record. God was right there with me” (1996).
God is right there with his listeners, too, young and old, child and man.
“I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times”: Harmonies in the Dark
And yet, I also feel that so far I have brushed over the pain of growing up—of transitioning to and being an adult—that marks so much of life. The beauty of Wilson’s music cannot be separated from the suffering that formed him—like the both/and of the Catholic faith, in which joy and sorrow, life and death, hope and lament are held together without diminishing either. There was the physical abuse by Wilson’s father, Murry, including one alleged incident in which he struck Brian in the head with a 2×4, leaving him permanently deaf in his right ear. There were also the years under the unethical “care” of Eugene Landy, who manipulated and exploited him. And there were long periods of mental illness, isolation, and fear. If “the child is the father of the man,” then the child, in Wilson’s case, did not have it easy.
If you recall, I mentioned at the start of this essay that my son is about to begin middle school. And while I pray he never leaves those years with stories like Wilson’s, middle school is hard by any account. My son’s paternal grandfather has been seriously ill for some time now. And on my side of the family, we have carried our own burdens of mental and physical suffering that continue to leave their mark on my son’s formative years. With this said, I ask you now to pause, just for a moment, and recall your adolescent years, approximately the ages of ten to fourteen. Can you remember them without at least one story of loneliness or pain? Did you feel those times were easy? I admit that I recall many times feeling as if I did not fit in, at school, home, anywhere.
Brian Wilson offers, in that second gift of his music I mentioned earlier, something more than the breeziness the name “the Beach Boys” belies. He offers accompaniment through adolescent struggle. His music does not look away from sorrow; it harmonizes with it and offers consolation. I suggest, like the psalms of David—who, in Scripture, we watch grow from boyhood into adulthood, maintaining a friendship with Jonathan at great personal sacrifice, and whose battle with Goliath remains a beloved tale of courage for many boys—Wilson’s songs give voice to the ache at the heart of the adolescent male experience. They are raw and intimate, yet unafraid to rest in an urgent longing for something more—and something lost—that cannot quite be fully understood or fathomed yet, if ever. (Who are the “Heroes and Villains” at thirteen, when a child begins to glimpse the shadowed edges of good and evil just a little more clearly than they did a year or two prior?) They capture the paradoxes of desiring independence while also wishing to return to an earlier time of sheltered dependence—of friendships that ebb and flow, becoming more complicated; of emotions that can no longer be easily controlled; and of seeking to understand God and how one’s life might find its place within the larger pantheon of creation.
“I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times,” from Pet Sounds, springs to mind as an anthem tailor-made for the middle school soul:
I keep lookin’ for a place to fit in
Where I can speak my mind
And I’ve been tryin’ hard to find the people . . .
Sometimes I feel very sad . . .
That last line of feeling “very sad” is repeated over, and over, and over. Harmonized beautifully. But repeated. Sometimes, in middle school—and throughout adolescence—we can all likely admit we have felt “very sad.” Knowing that other people do, too, and listening to songs about their experiences can make us feel less alone, can make us feel accompanied.
And what are the lyrics that follow that repeated refrain? Not at the beginning of the song, but tucked into parentheses and arriving later—almost like a confession—are these repeated words: “(Ain’t found the right thing I can put my heart and soul into).”
Here we discover a turn toward the sacred. The Beach Boys (men who, by the very title of their band, remain forever linked to their childhood and adolescent selves) harmonize a desire to give their “heart and soul” to something. They seek transcendence, but do not yet know where to find it. And with each crescendoing repetition of that line, the yearning for spiritual substance grows more acute. By the end of the song, the lyrics about searching for something to give one’s soul to are sung every time the line “Sometimes I feel very sad” reappears. Listeners experiencing that same sense of not belonging know they are not alone because others are harmonizing with their souls: yes, other “boys” are singing about their sorrows, loneliness, and the desire to find something to put their “heart and soul into.” In Wilson’s mind, accompaniment is not just a musical technique then. It is part of the shared act of listening, an assurance that you are not actually alone in your longing at all, even if you think you are when sitting in your room with your record player or headphones on.
“In My Room”: Where Music Prays—and Boys Do Too
Therefore, if “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” encapsulates what it feels like when you are not sure where you belong, Wilson’s 1963 “In My Room” offers a place to set those feelings down, somewhere small enough to feel safe and still enough to let a young man pray for solace. Released in 1963 on the album Surfer Girl, this aching song is often considered a precursor to Wilson’s more introspective turn. Frankly, it is—at least to me—the most sacred pop song ever recorded about a boy’s spiritual interior life:
In my room, in my room
Do my dreaming and my scheming
Lie awake and pray
Do my crying and my sighing
Laugh at yesterday . . .
The music on this track sounds like a lullaby. It opens with a delicate electric guitar arpeggio, soon joined by soft percussion, bass, and a sparse organ line that sustains the whole harmonic, reverent atmosphere. The arrangement is minimal, leaving space for the voices to carry the emotional weight. The tones throughout are plaintive and devotional all at once (again, in the Psalmist tradition). The boy’s room reveals itself to be sanctuary, confessional, and chapel. And as a mother—of a boy with a mini altar in his room, who sometimes slams the door on me, and who I know sneaks screen time (and likely more than I realize)—this makes perfect sense. In Wilson’s hands, even four walls can hold the kind of prayer that carries you through growing up.
One can easily imagine a boy listening to this very song—“In My Room”—alone in the quiet, finding consolation, perhaps even spiritual communion with God, in the midst of what others might dismiss as mere hormonal angst or adolescent turmoil. And, is this not what music, in its highest form, has always done—offered consolation (and also inexpressible praise) when words fall short? Hasn’t it, perhaps most significantly, done this for boys and young men in particular, who have often been given few paths to express emotional highs and lows? Dennis Wilson, Brian’s brother and the drummer for the Beach Boys, once said, “The one thing that kept our family together was the music. The only thing that our family would share emotionally was to have our dad cry over something the kids did with music.” Murry Wilson may have failed his family in many sad and terrible ways, but music offered the Wilson boys at least a brief reprieve from their shared suffering, a rare space where emotion was not just permitted, but celebrated for its transcendent power. Music writ large, and Wilson’s music in particular (much like the Church even), offers the gift of emotional connection, provides emotional and spiritual connection even when other expressive means have been cut off.
As aforementioned, Wilson’s work mirrors the psalmist tradition of David, including in “In My Room.” He turns interior silence—like the musings of a boy alone in his room—into song and offers meaningful connection; the boy in the song, like the psalmist, realizes he is not truly alone. He might be in the dark, as one often is when alone in one’s room, but the Lord knows him; he prays there, after all. He also schemes (i.e. he sins): he is his whole self in that room. He is not known by any person externally present, yet he is fully known by the Lord. Psalm 139, reminiscent of this framing, reads as follows: “O Lord, you have searched me and known me . . . even the darkness is not dark to you.” Wilson elevated this kind of spiritual knowing, integral to the experience of growing up, as worthy of popularizing for others to hear and commiserate with. Unlike other pop songs, “In My Room” is not focused on chasing the opposite sex or being impressive for its own sake; it is about contemplating one’s thoughts—the good and the bad—and sometimes talking through those thoughts with God.
To reiterate, Wilson’s music embodies the Catholic concept of accompaniment: not rushing to provide answers, but walking alongside others in their joys and sorrows. Returning to Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis, who popularized the term, articulates the concept this way: “We need to learn to encounter others with the right attitude,” he relates, “which is to accept and esteem them as companions along the way, without interior resistance.” And that is exactly what Wilson does. He does not barge into the listener’s life with solutions or pretend he knows better than them. After all, “In My Room” is no empowerment anthem. (This is not “Eye of the Tiger”). Instead, Wilson sits with his listener and gives sound to what many young men especially could, or perhaps would, never quite say without Wilson’s openness. In doing so, he reminds them they are not alone in feeling struggle and the pain of being misunderstood.
Ultimately, Wilson’s music reminds us that accompaniment is not always a melody; in its best form, it is a harmony and this wisdom is worth holding onto when we think about ministering to or even simply better understanding young men’s spiritual lives. Parenting a boy—one I have come to understand more deeply through the music of the Beach Boys—is much like composing, or pastoring, or praying. The goal is not always to lead, but to listen—and then to step in tune. To dwell together. To stay. To accompany. And perhaps that is the final grace Wilson offers us—not just accompaniment in the musical sense, but in the truest Christian sense, the kind that echoes Christ’s own promise to remain with us always in communion. To dwell with us. To stay beside us. To keep us company in the dark times as we seek consolation in our sorrows. To sit with a boy—no longer quite-so-little—so he is not alone. And for him to sit with his mother—no longer quite-so-young—so she is not alone either.
“God Only Knows”: A Coda on Love, Marriage, and Accompanying the Boy in the Baby Carriage
And in the end, all of Wilson’s melodies about staying, listening, and loving find their fullest harmony in one song.
Brian Wilson’s “God Only Knows” has often been called one of the greatest songs ever written (including by John Lennon), not only for its melodic brilliance, but also for its staggering emotional and spiritual vision. When I first heard it, I was not yet married. But I remember, with a vividness that still startles me, the moment I listened to it beside the man who would later become my husband. Like Owen Gleiberman, who writes of knowing he wanted children upon hearing Wilson’s “Song for Children,” I knew, while listening to “God Only Knows,” that I wanted to get married. I wanted to build a life—not just fall in love, but to forge something enduring—with the man sitting beside me. What moved me was not romantic infatuation; it was a spiritual longing and a sudden, white‑fire glimpse into my future that I cannot put into words. Yes, this pop song changed the entire trajectory of my life.
In it, I heard (and felt) a vision of love as fidelity, as permanence, and mystery—something far beyond any fleeting emotion. And somehow, sharing it with my now-spouse quelled all my fears about whether we would work out together. I knew we would. “God Only Knows” was the first dance we shared at our wedding. It was also the song my son—whose existence I somehow sensed in that first listening—was humming this afternoon in the car. Wilson himself once described the track as “a vision . . . like being blind, but in being blind, you can see more.” I often listen to it with my eyes closed, and I suggest that the next time you hear it, you try listening that way, too, noticing, attuning yourself, to whatever vision appears for you.
The paradox of blindness that yields deeper sight—the very paradox Wilson described above as inspiring this song, and the one I feel each time I listen to it still—is one our Christian tradition, of course, already knows well. In his Second Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul memorably writes that “we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7), and St. Augustine speaks of the heart’s inner knowledge: “Noverim me, noverim te,” or “Let me know myself, let me know You.”[2] Wilson’s music draws from that same wellspring of interiority. The refrain—“God only knows what I’d be without you”—is not merely a declaration of human love; instead, it is an explicit nod toward divine accompaniment within human love. It is, in many ways, a theology of the sacramental marriage covenant set to music: love not as fleeting passion, but as abiding presence—the kind I suddenly believed was possible when I first listened to it with my now-spouse. It is a kind of doxology for those who have learned, through suffering and joy alike, what it means to stay—and to love with the other’s good in mind first.
This vision aligns with Catholic understandings of both the Incarnation and the Eucharist, where love is not distant or abstract, but made flesh—received, consumed, and shared. As I have said, the sacrament of marriage is made manifest through music here: God is present first in the covenant, and the love between human spouses flourishes from his divine love. The marriage bond becomes a living sign of God’s fidelity to humanity—an accompaniment born of his self-gift, and sustained as that same love is given, through the sacrament, to others. Through our marriage, my spouse and I bear witness to God’s love in the world. Wilson’s harmonies reflect this incarnational and sacramental truth: they take the ephemeral and bind it to the real. With our eyes closed and our hearts open, I believe we can hear God accompanying us—if only we pay attention, if only we attune ourselves to the music all around us, like Brian Wilson did, in this song and so many others.
When I listen to “God Only Knows” now, as a wife and a mother, I realize it is not only a love song between two people. It is a prayer of belonging and mutual formation that leads to abundance; it is like so much of his other music, a pro-life offering to the world. It, too, is a psalm of accompaniment, where God is at the center of the covenant and the family builds outward from there. In the Catholic imagination, to be known by God is to be loved—and to be loved is never to be alone. Wilson’s music, at its most grace‑filled, reminds us that accompaniment is not always what we might expect. Sometimes it simply means being alone in your room—as my son is right now when I am finishing up this piece—and maybe inviting God there now and then to “tell [your] secrets to.” If she is lucky, your mom might be invited as well once in a blue moon to join you. Popping a soda can. Playing with the dog. Praying. Crying. Scheming. Living it all—childhood to adulthood—together, in God’s time.
And God only knows what we’d be without that kind of love—or without the kind of music Brian Wilson made to help us feel it.
