Speak For Yourself

In Which I Listen to a Song

File: Christ-jesus.jpg - Wikimedia Commons—also, Jesus contemplating a long morning of singing at The Well Church

It’s two and a half weeks—actually less than—until the one child gets married, and only a week until the other child graduates from college. Therefore, I’ve decided to go with Matt next week to DC to hear him preach a sermon. I would be sad to miss it, so I’m going. It’s sheer madness, of course, but that’s how it is.

Also, Portia the Puppy, who had been very good at using the outdoors as her personal loo, has suddenly forgotten how it works, so that’s terrible, though it’s hard to fault her, as we are all caught up on various degrees of frenzied worry. Some things I have to do are order shoes, send out rehearsal dinner invitations, figure out what I’m wearing to the wedding, acquire a house cleaner, and figure out how to fit 250 people into the parish hall for luncheon. Meanwhile, the end of term means that I’m reading lots of papers, being available for science experiment mishaps, and just generally being cheerful and friendly, as though I’m not anxious about anything.

In that spirit, I was much amused by a song that Protestia posted on the X app. On the whole, I really do believe everyone should go to church, but sometimes the churches we might be talking about are, well, differently different. So, there is a church in Arizona called The Well Church, and as part of a worship set, they sang a song that was definitely Christian adjacent but fell rather tragically short of Christian ideals, both theologically and in terms of simple human reason.

I have tried to cue it up to the correct spot, but if I haven’t, go forward to minute 9:06:

Here are the lyrics:

God bless our friends

God bless our enemies

all of our children all of our families

we've got no idea what we're doing

we've tried to find you throughout the centuries

different religions in different countries

we've got no idea what we're doing

we'll never make it on our own

we've got too much dark inside of

us we'll never make it on our own

God bless the poor

God bless the brokenhearted

God bless the widow

God bless the long departed

We've got no idea what we're doing

God bless the Christian

God bless the atheist

God bless the Muslim

God bless the rest of us

We've got no idea what we're doing

We'll never make it on our own

We've got too much dark inside of us

We'll never make it on our own

Keep us all close

everyone of us

close don't let anyone go

keep us all close

everyone of us know

don't let anyone go

we'll never make it on our own

we've got too much dark inside of

us we'll never make it on our

own we've got too much dark inside of us

we'll never make it on our own

let all our friends in

and all our enemies

all of our children

all of our families

we've got no idea what we're doing

we've tried to find you throughout the centuries

different religions in different countries

we've got no idea what we're doing

we've got no idea what we're doing

keep us all close

everyone of us close

don't let anyone go

keep us all close

everyone of us close

don't let anyone go

We’ve got no idea what we’re doing.

I know this is ridiculous, but I might as well have all the usual thoughts on this musical effort. Gosh, I miss Johnny Simmons right now. Taking the thing in chunks: