There are no stars tonight.
We see only clouds and
hear the storm gathering
on the edge of town like
bandits in a Western.
There are no stars tonight,
so we say, waiting for rain,
listening to the thunder,
cosmic talking drummers
telling an old, old story.
There are no stars tonight,
but there will be stars –
stars outshine storms;
light beats clouds every time:
paper, rock, scissors.
Peace,
Milton
Because of some wonderful happenings in the lives of our Associate Pastor and her partner, I was the substitute preacher today. Those of you who read the blog regularly will see a few references to some recent posts, though they are in a new context. The passage was Mark 6:30-52. Thanks, as always for reading.
As soon as the meal was finished, Jesus insisted that the disciples get in the boat and go on ahead across to Bethsaida while he dismissed the congregation. After sending them off, he climbed a mountain to pray.None of this had yet penetrated their hearts.
Late at night, the boat was far out at sea; Jesus was still by himself on land. He could see his men struggling with the oars, the wind having come up against them. At about four o'clock in the morning, Jesus came toward them, walking on the sea. He intended to go right by them. But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and screamed, scared out of their wits.
Jesus was quick to comfort them: "Courage! It's me. Don't be afraid." As soon as he climbed into the boat, the wind died down. They were stunned, shaking their heads, wondering what was going on. They didn't understand what he had done at the supper. None of this had yet penetrated their hearts. (Mark 6:47-52)
My response is to get down on my knees before our Creator, this magnificent God who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask God to strengthen you by the Holy Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask God that with both feet planted firmly on love, you'll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:14-21)And here is a glimpse into the fullness of God. A couple of Sundays ago, Brian Lord told me scientists have made a new discovery about our galaxy. They are expanding our vision of the universe by searching for amino acids in far away places, which would mean the possibility of life emerging on other planets. They found a molecule called ethyl formate in a gas cloud in the middle of the Milky Way. It is the molecule that gives raspberries their flavor; and it also smells of rum. The Milky Way is actually a raspberry daquiri.
the depth of God’s love reaches down, down, downAmen.
to where we are until we’re found, found, found
a quiet word or none at all
pursues the heart behind the wall
and for those who wait with darkness all around
the depth of God’s love reaches down
Driving through Birmingham, I passed a Jewish Community Center whose billboard encouraged its members to take a “J-cation” by using their facilities. We are all now familiar with the concept of the stay-cation, now so over-used by our media. Here, in the closing moments of my week away from work, I began to wonder what other possibilities there might be:
a weekend by the water would be a bay-cation;
an equestrian adventure could be a bray-cation;
another way to think of a cruise would be a buffet-cation;
potters might take a clay-cation;
those who live with depression hope for a dismay-cation;
rappers might take a Dr. Dre-cation;
activists could step away for a fray-cation;
and farmers take a hay-cation;
another way to think of a week in Hawaii would be a lei-cation;
a gathering of poets could be called a millay-cation;
dogs must dream of an obey-cation;
a weekend at the spa could be called an olay-cation;
a minister’s get-a-way would be a pray-cation;
and the chef’s, a sauté-cation;
a slow down for a serial killer would be a slay-cation;
Santa takes the summers off for a sleigh-cation;
an adopted pet finally gets a stray-cation;
an old school Vegas trip would be a Mel Torme-cation;
a break from a diet could be a weigh-cation;
vegans, it seems, would look forward to a whey-cation;
and I, now that I’ve finished this piece, will take a word play-cation.
Peace,
Milton
I was in ninth grade when they came to town.
The town was Nairobi, Kenya and they were Up With People. Members of the American community provided host homes for the group and so a couple of them stayed at our house, and in the homes of my friends from Nairobi International School. It was the fall of 1969; most of us were ninth graders, had guitars, and were completely consumed with playing music together. We were completely taken with this traveling band trying so hard to tell the world we were all connected:
if more people were for peopleI still remember the songs. One of them came back this week as we celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the first moon landing. (Of course, in a wonderful bit of technological irony, I couldn’t get web access in my hotel room last night to write.) Up With People had a song called “John Jacob Sebastian Smith” that was about a little baby born the day Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon.
like people everywhere
there’d be a lot less people to worry about
and a lot more people who care
John Jacob Sebastian Smith took his first breath todayThe story line was the dad telling his new son he would see a world his father had hardly dreamed of, as he sang in the chorus:
in a little river town in the middle of I-o-way
the day the train came down the track
the corn stood shoulder high
and it was just as the whistle blew
that papa first heard him cry . . .
John David it’s all yoursThe astronauts appear in the last verse, both as a way of dreaming of the stars and coming to terms with our humanity at the same time:
it’s a new world you’ve found
you can make it what you will
nothing can hold you down
John David as you took your first breath todayNothing happens in a vacuum, even in space. While Armstrong was planting a flag that couldn’t fly on the moon, the big blue ball below him was in turmoil: the Vietnam war waged on; Woodstock was not so far away; LBJ’s Great Society had given way to Nixon, and the Civil Rights movement continued in the aftermath of the deaths of both King and Malcolm X, among others. Even the dream of reaching the moon was fueled by the competition of the Cold War: we wanted to beat the Russians to show them who was Number One. I read in the Birmingham News yesterday that the amount NASA spent getting to the moon was equivalent to more money than we spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan last year. Long before Christopher Cross sang about it, we were caught between the moon and New York City.
others took the breath of life to a planet far away
someday maybe you’ll do even more
remember son it’s all about people
people like the folks next door
why do I lie awake at night and think back just as far as I canIn these days when we can “Google” our way to most anywhere in the world (except, of course, in my hotel room last night) and see YouTube videos from all across the planet, we are also the ones who see fewer stars from our porches and windows than any generation to have inhabited the planet. Since Armstrong’s steps, we have run rovers across Mars and we have yet to provide clean drinking water for over a quarter of the people on our planet. I’m not making an either/or case here by any means. My question is the same as those who have come before me: how do we look up at the stars and look out for one another at the same time?
to the sound of my father's laugh outdoors
to the thought of Sputnik in free flight
before I could fashion my poverty
before I distrusted the night
I must've known something
I must've known something
those were the times I live for tonight
why, why, why, I say why, mama, why?
why can't I sleep in peace tonight underneath the satellite sky
it can't be easy for my children
I'm hollow before my time
it looks like a desert here to me
where is the promise of youth for my child
where are the faraway kingdoms of dreams
we've been to the moon and there's trouble at home
they vanished in the mist with Saint Nicholas
they lie scattered to the ghettos and the war zones
why, why, why, I say why, mama, why?
why can't I sleep in peace tonight underneath the satellite sky
I want to stand out in the middle of the street and listen to the stars
I want to hear their sweet voices
I want to feel a big bang rattle my bones
I want to laugh for my children
I want the spark to ignite
before they find out what it means to be born into these times
why, why, why, I say why, mama, why?
why can't I sleep in peace tonight underneath the satellite sky
I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous,Forty years after Apollo 11, we have pictures of galaxies far, far, away; we know our own smells like raspberries; we have driven on Mars and have plans to go farther; my MacBook is a stronger computer than anything the Apollo astronauts understood; the Red Sox have won the World Series twice; there are twice as many people on the planet today than in the summer of ’69 (and Bryan Adams is still touring); we are in another unexplainable war; we have an African-American president; and our planet is plagued with poverty and need that cripples us all.
your handmade sky-jewelry,
Moon and stars mounted in their settings.
Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,
Why do you bother with us?
Why take a second look our way?
(The Message)
There are days my offerings on this blog are fairly finished pieces: I had an idea of where I was going with the piece when I started and was able to make it all come together nicely. Then, there are other days when I trust this space to be a place where I can think out loud, with some editing, and hope for a conversation to see where things might go. This is one of those other days. My experiences in Birmingham have set me thinking and feeling about race and, on a larger scale, about discrimination and the ways we define each other. Here, then, is a work in progress.
One of the best gifts Ginger ever gave me was a Byzantine Iconography course. I learned, from my marvelous mentor, Chris Gosey, how to write icons as spiritual practice. The point of iconography is as much the process as the product. The paint, for instance, is almost translucent, and required me to go over every line anywhere from twenty-five to forty times for it to be seen as it should. The patience and persistence were part of the prayer and practice.I hope this has been more conversation starter than sermon. Thanks for listening.
I thought about those lines of love that came into view after dedicated repetition as I walked through the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute because I saw in the pictures and words and sounds there that the history of humanity and, more particularly, the history of race in our country show we have been diligent about drawing lines and then going over and over them so decidedly as to make them almost indelible. It is most certainly the way we have taught hatred and prejudice. Go over and over the lines that define our differences – putting up signs, calling names, inflicting violence, paying disparate wages – and you can make darkness come through just as the relining of an icon opens a window to heaven.
Even as I write these words, I realize how hard it is to communicate how I was affected by my time in the museum without sounding sanctimonious or overly didactic or, well, just too damn emotional, and (not but) I couldn’t get past the intentionality of the violence and discrimination. People went out of their way, expending untold amounts of time and energy, to make sure others didn’t vote or get an education or get paid fairly for their work or get to sit down on a bus, and they did it year after year after year.
How could we hate so intentionally? How did we learn to let that feel normal?
In the opening pages of Willa Cather’s wonderful novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop, one priest says to the other, “Where there is great love, there are always great miracles.” What I saw in our history laid out before me was where there is great fear and hatred, there is great damage -- and that damage cannot undone by taking down signs and saying, “We’re not prejudiced anymore.” We can’t so easily erase lines marked so indelibly into the fabric or our existence with a couple of quick washes or grand gestures. Perhaps, I hope, they can begin to disappear over time when we paint new strokes, day after day, and offer a new vision – a portrait of love – and, going line over line, redraw our hearts into wholeness.
In other words, repent.
Those of us who are white have to come to terms with the life we have come to know and except having been made possible, at least in part, by racial oppression. We are not clean, nor unaffected. I learned this week, for instance, from someone in Durham that officials in our city were planning to use hoses and dogs to stop protests there until the national attention to the events in Birmingham caused them to rethink their approach. They didn’t change their minds; they just didn’t want the negative attention. Boston didn’t integrate their public high schools until the Seventies and still deals with racism embedded deep in its story. The power grid that lets us turn on our lights, our transportation system, and most any industrial convenience we take for granted grew to success relying on the misuse and abuse of the less fortunate in our culture, which in many, many cases meant black workers were the ones put in the most dangerous jobs for the least pay. We may not have brutally abused workers, or supported segregation, or turned hoses on anyone, but we are not blameless; and we cannot be significant agents of healing until we confess we have been carriers of pain simply because of the history that lies in the DNA of our cities and streets and stories, whether North or South or East or West.
The final hallways of the museum hold stories of civil rights beyond race in America, pointing to Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the Gdansk Shipyard in Poland, the fall of apartheid in South Africa, and then on to relational issues of the day that call us to draw new lines including immigration and equal marriage, both issues that seem to attract the same kind of fear and violence that burned crosses and led lynchings, far too often in Jesus’ name. (My conclusion, not the BCRI’s).
I watched and listened to self-defined “good Christian people” talk about how fair their discrimination of blacks was during segregation as if the primary points of faith were propriety and profit. I also watched faith in action as young people sat down at lunch counters seeking to leave fresh new lines for others to trace in order to change the picture of what it meant to be an American, and a Christian. Both lines are still there, in both country and church; which ones are we emphasizing?
I hope that question comes across as something other than rhetorical. When are congregations are predominantly white, we aren’t going to become more racially diverse by telling each other how open we are to nonwhite members and then going on about life as usual. The gays and lesbians in our communities, who have heard from most churches that they are on the wrong side of God’s grace, are not going to come flocking to church because we put out a sign to say we welcome all sinners. The undocumented folks in our communities need churches with Spanish classes and (helpful) lawyers and food pantries. If, as King said, we must choose between nonviolence and nonexistence, then we must open our hearts and minds and doors; inclusion is as nonviolent as it gets.
Can we be militantly inclusive? It sounds like the kind of paradox of faith that Jesus loved.
When we finished the closing session of our mission trip last night with the folks from Beloved Community UCC in Birmingham, Alabama, one of our hosts suggested we move the gathering down the road to a local coffee shop/wine bar. We got there to find they were closing at nine and to discover the Crestwood Tavern across the parking lot. The night was cool so we rearranged tables on the patio and made ourselves at home. The owner of the bar saw us moving furniture and came out to talk to us. We ordered drinks and began talking and laughing and he came out again, asking who we were. After all, the rest of the clientele was noticeably younger and, actually, a good bit quieter. When we told him who we were and what we had been doing, he said,
“That’s what this place is all about. I want it to be a place where people can come hang out and feel at home. It’s fun to look out here and see a bunch of weirdoes like ya’ll having such a good time. You’re cool.”
Take note, my friends, of the power of community. A singular weirdo is an outcast; a bunch of weirdos is a cool group of people. There is power in numbers – and good, hearty laughter. As the evening wore on and our eighty-five year old group member put a twenty on the table to go toward the next round of beers, a voice breezed through the speaker and across the patio as a young woman covered a Patty Griffin song:
just before the flood comesOur traveling Pilgrims ate breakfast at my in-laws house this morning before they began their trip back to Durham; Ginger and I are hanging around for a couple of days for a family reunion, some time with her folks and some other friends, and then a couple of days exploring together. Since I joined the group well into their week, I took this afternoon to trace their steps through the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which is built across the street from Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and on the very ground where Bull Connor and his men bombarded the children with fire hoses and attack dogs even as Ginger’s mother was giving birth to her just blocks away at the city hospital.
just before the night falls
just before the blood runs
into the valley
just before my eyes go
just before we can't go any further
love throws a line to you and me
bring me a little water SylvieThe music ended and the screen lifted to invite us into the exhibit hall – an amazing collection of artifacts, information, images, film, and music telling the story of the struggle that culminated in what we call the Civil Rights Movement. At various places along the way, you could hear sounds from two or three of the presentations, the words and melodies both cacophonous and harmonious at the same time. Here were the stories of people who realized, in as profound a way as I suppose is possible, the power of community. Together they sat at lunch counters, sat down on buses, boycotted the same buses, walked and sang and died, determined, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “to use the weapon of love.”
bring me a little water now
bring me a little water Sylvie
every little once in awhile
got my hand on the freedom plowI realized, as I got deeper into the exhibit, both me and the folks around me were moving slower and becoming more aware of one another, even as we bumped into each other because we were so taken by what we were seeing and hearing. Where we all stopped was in front of the large screen broadcasting “I Have a Dream.” From there we wandered among a crowd of plaster-colored statues all looking out the window at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where the four little girls were killed by the bomb.
wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now
keep your eyes on the prize
hold on
I found them walking from Winchester High School one afternoon to meet Ginger at her church. A small handbill on the door of the Griffin Museum of Photography announced the showing of color pictures of the universe by David Malin. What I learned that afternoon, and in my subsequent trips with my English classes, was that Malin, who began as a micro-photographer (check out this book), had developed a way of photographing different levels of light, if you will, using different colored plates (I’m out of my league trying to describe this, you understand), such that he was able to give color and scape to what we can only see as small white lights or even darkness, if we can see them at all. This photograph, for instance, is the Horsehead Nebula in the constellation Orion, the Hunter; I do well to find the stars that make up his belt on any given winter evening.
I thought about Malin on my way home from church because of a conversation I had during coffee hour. Brian, who would be able to understand what Malin was doing, told me – with great joy – about a recent discovery. It seems scientists have been able to isolate the largest molecule in the galaxy (so far) outside of our solar system. The cool thing is it is the same molecule that gives raspberries their flavor.
“So you see,” Brian said with a smile, “our galaxy has a raspberry filling. I love it. God has a sense of humor.”
They also found alcohol molecules. The Milky Way appears to be a giant raspberry daquiri. Now that will preach.
Though A Wrinkle in Time is the book that gets the most attention, my favorite volume in Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quintet is A Wind in the Door. Before Malin started taking photographs, or scientists when berry picking, L’Engle was spinning a story of size and significance. Two siblings, Charles Wallace and Meg, face the same expanse of magnitude and minutiae as Charles Wallace has an infection in the smallest particles of his blood and Meg is fighting cosmic evil that is ripping stars out of the sky. (Did I mention it’s a science fiction story?) At one point in the book, Meg is taken to a planet where the mitochondria, the stars, and Meg are all the same size and she is told to remember everything matters and everything is connected.
In one of her nonfiction books, A Rock That is Higher Than I: Story as Truth, L’Engle wrote:
The secrets of the atom are not unlike Pandora's box, and what we must look for is not the destructive power but the vision of interrelatedness that is desperately needed on this fragmented planet. We are indeed part of a universe. We belong to each other; the fall of every sparrow is noted, every tear we shed is collected in the Creator's bottle.That we are inextricably connected to one another is not a new idea. In fact, I think it borders on cliché, as often as we give lip service to it. (I’m not sure we are quite as accustomed to incarnating the connections.) Here is what has caught me with its freshness today: the imagination of God is so extravagant that God makes connections we can’t even begin to see, or smell. In the middle of the galaxy, in a place we cannot even recognize with our own eyes, are beams of light and gatherings of gas older than anything we can comprehend, and they smell like raspberries. The layers of the universe, from the indistinguishable micro particles we have yet to discover to the starscape whose oldest light has yet to even find us, are full of the love and limitlessness of our Creator.
Earth's crammed with heaven,O, taste and see that the Lord is good. Smell, too.
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes –
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.
I posted this earlier today and then spent some time reading Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook, which led me to do a little revising.
it was good he was so hard at workPeace,
there was much to do from where he stood
next to the bags of candy
while his mother browsed the stacks
of cards and books a good distance away
across the wide pine boards
of what was once a tobacco warehouse
now a coffee house and grocery store
he carried two bags at a time
shuffling his baby blue Crocs across the floor
his eyes beaming as bright as his smile
and not once did she ever tell him to stop
she simply received the shipments
from her determined and diminutive deliverer
and kept about her task
until their work was done and it was time to go
she put the bags back in their bucket
and they smiled their way home to a well-deserved nap
Durham has a lot of good things about it, but a good independent radio station is not one of them. And so I spend my days in the kitchen listening to classic rock and hold the distinction of being the only one in the kitchen for whom the songs were my soundtrack for high school and college. One of the songs that plays daily for reasons I don’t understand is Bob Seger’s droning plea for the masses to have empathy for his rock star life, “Turn the Page.”
here I am out on the road againI mention the song not because I’m in the mood to do a little Bob bashing, but because I’ve been reading and thinking about writing and wonder how different I am from Bob when I use this space to write about what it feels like writing.
there I am up on the stage
there I go playing the star again
there I go turn the page
here I am back on my Mac againWhat I’m reading these days is Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write (brought back into my view by my blogging buddy, Simon, who is always worth reading) and she is giving me much to think – and write – about. Here’s the latest paragraph that has hounded me:
there I go blogging away . . .
[Writing] all the time, whether or not we are in the mood, gives us ownership of our writing ability. It takes it out of the realm of conjuring where stand on a rock of isolation, begging the winds for inspiration, and it makes it something as do-able as picking up a hammer and pounding a nail. Writing may be an art, but it is certainly a craft. It is a simple and workable thing that can be as steady and reliable as a chore – does that ruin the romance? (35)Before I answer her question, I have to back up a bit. I have not written as much as I would like over the past couple of months because many nights I haven’t felt like I had something to say. Cameron got me thinking a week or so ago when she said,
Writing is about getting something down, not thinking something up. . . . We can either “think a plot up” or we can “jot a plot down.” We can either “think of something to write about” or we can write about what we happen to be thinking about. We can either demand we write well or we can settle more comfortably into writing down what seems to want to come through us – good, bad, or indifferent. (10-11)She then quotes Henry Miller:
“Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music – the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls, and interesting people. Forget yourself.” (11)Ginger and I have been working on the room in our house that is our shared creative space. A home office, perhaps; we prefer to call it the studio. The biggest task continues to be to find a place for everything, which means, first of all, we have to go through the stacks of stuff that have lived on the floor now for some time. I spent the morning and part of this afternoon going through stacks of papers and old journals and, with Cameron’s words ringing in my ears, realized I’ve had seasons when I have been a better listener to my life than I appear to have been over these days when I felt I had nothing to say. I learned – again – I am a better writer when I speak in concert with my listening and offer harmony to the melody that is already playing, if you will.
everyday I wake up just the sameIf I had been writing the soundtrack for a movie I couldn’t have scripted it any better. Sunday, in her sermon, Ginger recounted an experience she and I had walking through Davis Square, one of our favorite Somerville haunts. There was a homeless man sitting on the curb and and as we passed he said, rather loudly, “Change.”
waiting for something new
every night I have myself to blame
for dreams that haven’t come true
especially today I’m feeling blue
I only saw the words written,
requiring me to infer tone;
to assume either compassion
or conceit; to decide if the poet
mimed quotation marks when
he said, “diminished capacity,” --
or saints, for that matter --
if he even said the words out loud.
Either way, the phrase is
fragrant with failure, infused
with what might have been,
what came and went,
what once was lost . . .
and now is found faltering,
struggling, stumbling,
still hoping, as saints do,
failure is not the final word.
Forgiveness flows best from
brokenness; the capacity for
love is not diminished by
backs bowed by pain, or
hearts heavy with grief.
Write this down: the substance
of things hoped for fuels
those who walk wounded:
we are not lost; we are loved.
Peace,
Milton
I know I've already mentioned Woody Guthrie this week, but he comes to mind for me every Independence Day because he wrote my favorite song about America, "This Land is Your Land." He actually wrote the song in response to "God Bless America."
Here is one of my favorite covers of the song by Bruce Springsteen singing all the verses -- even the ones they left out when they taught it to us at school.
As I was walking that ribbon of highway,Peace,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.
I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
“It’s what’s inside the words,” she said;
“Inside heart there’s an ear and there’s art.”
After reading, I couldn’t help but look
for words among the bread and vegetables
that made up our simple supper last night,
both of us finally home after days
that felt longer than the time passed.
I couldn’t find God in the green beans,
or love in the tomatoes; no fun in foccacia;
not enough meal to make meaning.
But that's not the last word, is it?
The tomatoes tasted like the smile
of the brown baby at the farmer’s market;
the crisp sweet corn spelled summer
without letters; and the bread,
dipped in the olive oil we keep
for special occasions, was leavened
and flavored by all the suppers
we have shared together, fed
by the mystery in the mundane:
another day in our handmade life.
Peace,
Milton
The words are Woody Guthrie's; the voice is Ellis Paul's. I pass them both along to you with gratitude.
I didn't promise you skies painted bluePeace,
not all colored flowers all your days through
I didn't promise you sun with no rain
joys without sorrows, peace without pain
All that I promise is strength for this day,
rest for my worker, and light on your way
I give you truth when you need it, my help from above
Undying friendship, my unfailing love
I never did promise you crowns without trials,
food with no hard sweat, your tears without smiles
hot sunny days without cold wintry snows
no victory without fighting, no laughs without woes
All that I promise is strength for this day,
rest for my worker, and light on your way
I give you truth when you need it, my help from above
Undying friendship, my unfailing love
I sure didn't say I'd give you heaven on earth
a life with no labor no struggles no deaths
no earthquakes no dry spells, no fire flames, no droughts
no slaving, no hungers, no blizzards, no blights
All that I promise is strength for this day,
rest for my worker, and light on your way
I give you truth when you need it, my help from above
Undying friendship, my unfailing love
I promise you power, this minute, this hour,
the power you need when you fall down and bleed
I give you my peace and my strength to pull home
My love for all races, my creeds, and all kinds
My love for my races, my creeds of all kinds
My love for my saviors, all colors, all kinds
My love for my races, my creeds of all kinds
My dancers, my prancers, my colors, all kinds,
My saviors, my flavors, my creeds of all kinds.
