Interchange · GIA Publications

Love to the Loveless Shown

February 3, 2026·1 hr 22 min·5 clips

David Dalt traces his movement from militant atheism toward faith to hymn 458, “Love to the Loveless Shown.”

1. Interchange examines how David Dalt understands faith, music, belonging, and public engagement through the episode “Love to the Loveless Shown.” 2. Kate Williams hosts Dalt, a Loyola University Christian-spirituality and spiritual-direction leader who also works as a screenwriter, media producer, consultant, and radio host. 3. The episode asks how music can communicate grace, stabilize people, and create communal forms of reassurance that language alone cannot provide. 4. Dalt names Things Not Seen, The Francis Effect, and Stephen and David Read the Federalist Papers among the podcasts he hosts or co-hosts. 5. He also works behind the scenes on Interchange, Intercambio, the Commonweal Magazine podcast, and projects with the Paulist Fathers and Brothers. 6. Dalt says regular scheduling, supportive family members, adequate sleep, and years of experience make his many production roles manageable. 7. His musical background includes a decade as a touring singer-songwriter in the Southern circuit near the Indigo Girls, although he no longer performs publicly. 8. Dalt recalls hearing the Indigo Girls song “Closer to Fine” before its wider audience after his friend Gerard McHugh heard the band perform it at Atlanta’s Trackside Tavern. 9. He says the Indigo Girls made a lasting impression by treating Atlanta’s music scene as a home and supporting less-famous musicians around them. 10. Dalt describes arriving at faith from atheism after singing “My song is love unknown” in the choir at Swanee’s All Saints Chapel. 11. The phrase “love to the loveless shown” became a framework for Dalt’s responsibility to show love to people told they do not belong. 12. He credits Julia with opening a Bible without attacking him and later taking him to watch a sunrise from a wilderness outcropping. 13. Dalt connects the Indigo Girls’ “The Prince of Darkness” and David Wilcox’s “Fearless Love” with grace, darkness, and choosing against violence. 14. Kate Williams links communal singing with mental health after noticing a decline in stability when she moved from music direction into editorial work. 15. Dalt compares harmonizing with another singer to an act of trust because, except for Tuvan throat singing, a person cannot harmonize with themself. 16. He compares Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” and repeated lines from Good Will Hunting with mantras that help people finally hear reassurance. 17. Dalt recounts a religious path through 15 years as a Quaker, Presbyterian seminary study with Walter Brueggemann, and later Catholic formation. 18. He describes social-media engagement as prayerful work that holds open a door while naming violence and resisting escapes from accountability. 19. Music-and-faith listeners seeking belonging, grace, and communal healing. 20. Listeners uninterested in spirituality, songwriting, or online ethics may skip.

As heard by us

A patient, reflective conversation about faith, belonging, and a religious journey shaped by study, sunrise, and invitation.

David Dalt's movement from Quaker life toward Catholicism gives this Interchange conversation a clear center, but the episode is less interested in conversion as a tidy arc than in faith as something recognized over time.

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Why you'd press play

You get a four a.m. wake-up, a long drive to sunrise, and a faith journey that keeps belonging beautifully in motion.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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