Song of the Day: Crawl Inside
To listen visit http://www.davidlamotte.com/music/change/ then click Track 2.
A few years ago I had a friend who had a habit of picking on herself. She would say things to and about herself that were far more cruel than anything she would ever say to another person.
This left me conflicted, and it occurs to me only now that it also illustrated a fundamental fallacy of violence. I wanted to defend her, so naturally, my instinct was to attack her attacker. But, of course, that attacker was herself.
John 3:16, perhaps one of the best known verses in the Bible, says “for God so loved the world…” not “for God so loved the Americans,” or the “wealthy,” or even “the Christians.” The world. If we are all profoundly and fundamentally interconnected as children of God, if we are all ‘us’ and none of us is ‘them’, then it seems to me that attacking the attacker to defend the attacked will always lead to the same senseless damaging of ourselves — because ‘them’ doesn’t exist.
In this case, the best idea I could come up with to defend my friend was to write a song for her. She immediately figured out that it was about her. Happily, she liked it. What’s better, she doesn’t pick on herself nearly as much as she used to. I take full credit, of course.
Loving each other is hard. Loving ourselves is sometimes harder, but you, too, are a treasured child of God, whom God loves so much that God gave God’s son to us, and continues to heal and renew this broken world each day. My prayer for you in the community this morning is that you will be gentle with yourselves, and that you will trust in the love of God is not wasted or misplaced when it is given to you.
Crawl Inside
Words and music by David LaMotte
© 2006 Lower Dryad MusicGonna crawl inside your head
Gonna move a few things around
Got your furniture up against the doors
It’s bound to be slowing you down
You’ve been getting in your own way
And that’s a silly thing to do
I’m gonna crawl inside your head
Make it work a little better for youGonna crawl inside
Gonna crawl insideGonna crawl inside your heart
And bring a whole bunch of paint
‘Cause from the outside it’s so beautiful
And from the inside it just ain’t
And I know this will be hard for you but your graffiti’s gotta go
I’m gonna crawl inside your heart
So you can see what we all knowGonna crawl inside
Gonna crawl insideGonna crawl inside your soul
Gonna cook you up a little meal
You’ve been feeding yourself this garbage
Makes you feel the way you feel
I mean you got stuff in your refrigerator
That’s way, way overdue
I’m gonna crawl inside your soul
And give you something that’s good for youI’m gonna crawl inside
I’m gonna crawl insideAnd when we’ve got the dishes washed
And soaked the brushes in turpentine
I was wondering if you might have a minute
To help me work on mine…I’m gonna crawl inside
I’m gonna crawl inside
