Emily Hurd: SONGS

Father who art in the sky, can you hear your children cry?
They are calling you to rise up fighting.
Saints are showing signs of hate.
They won’t pray outside your gate.
With all of this shallow faith, I’m finding no signs of anything holy.

Preacher says the sinner’s way is to save it all away, so he guilts us into paying double.
We all watch him demonstrate how to hoard the Lord’s estate, but passin round the collection plate, I had trouble finding anything holy.

Sunday morn, a man we know made a quiet cameo.
He was lookin for a hand to hold through his sorrow.
The congregation shook their heads, and judged him while in pious threads, they went on drinking wine of red.
I saw no sight of anything holy.

Christian man with Christian face says, “Man we gotta get some grace.”
So into strangers’ sacred space, he burrows.
He says, “See the helpless heretics.
Let’s save their souls through politics.”
But in his stained-glass rhetoric, I heard no sound of anything holy.

Once I knew a girl who thought she must fear the word of God.
Now she’s made a life she’s not ashamed of.
Father who art in the sky, baptize me with rain and light.
That may be the only right way of feeling anything holy.


Written by Emily Hurd