Connecting Lines: "Galatians 3:3"

First, I am so glad and humbled that at least a couple of you finally have a reason to look forward to Fridays.

Second, today’s post is going to be tagged “Poems, Lyrics, & Creative Stuff”.  Family and household stuff will come next week.  I’ve got topics for both lined up.

But this is a lyric that I wrote over the course of about 10 years.  “Wow, 10 years!  It must be awesome!  Or long!  Or BOTH!”  There, there.  Actually, the idea for the chorus first came to mind after reading Galatians 3:3—about 10 years ago.  I jotted it down.  Hummed a melody to it.  Then forgot about it.  Then a few months ago, I started doodling some images and ideas that kind of suddenly reminded me of this abandoned chorus.

It’s a serious topic, but I tried to be playful with the images, rhythms, and rhymes, as if the narrator was so incredulous with himself that it was laughable.

When I doodle like this, the pages in my journal look like a crazy man’s writings.  Partial sentences are all over the place, often with lots of repetition and little cohesion.  Sometimes I finally start to string ideas together, sometimes literally drawing lines (like geometry lines) to connect lines (like song lines) into something like a verse.

But I digress.  I like when the lines start to connect.  And I like the idea of being able to share a bunch of connected lines with someone—anyone—who, in reading this semi-finished product, may be inspired to connect a line or two in their own life.

-THP

            Galatians 3:3

Gravely dehydrated but some joker cruelly traded

Toxic waste for water at the bottom of my well

I was trapped like in a structure dreamed by Dali built by Escher

I was walking up some stairs down to darker floors of hell

PRE-CHORUS

I was nothing going nowhere

And it was you and you alone

So why oh why oh why oh why

CHORUS

Am I

So foolish that I try

To finish on my own what you started by your grace

Once dead

Now regenerated

My soul set free, my mind renewed, my heart replaced

By you

Every vision was a tunnel and every cloud a funnel

Rated 4 or 5 and spinning towards the trailer of my chest

With, respectively, no distant light to beckon me

Nor silver lining or even just an eye where I can rest

PRE-CHORUS

CHORUS

With the water level dropping this fish was dry and flopping

And the only ropes to pull me free had hooks tied to their ends

Like a needle in a haystack I was lost without a way back

To that place where needles gather to help skillful people mend

PRE-CHORUS

CHORUS