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The Missing Lyrics

I found out when I was almost ready to publish How I Became a Christian Despite the Church that you have to pay royalties for using more than one line of a song in something sold for commercial purposes. AND that you have to do this even if you are promoting playlists that would certainly bring further royalties to these songwriters/artists! That being the case, I removed several lyrics along with some of what I had written about those lyrics. Below is what I removed, and I have provided chapter titles, and in some instances context, for easy reference:

Chapter 1: A River Ran Through It

My family’s love aside, it was these negative things—combined with “bad religion” and my parents’ later divorce—that fueled an unconscious decision to spend twenty years of my life despising my roots… The lyrics of “The River,” by Dan Fogelberg, capture the cynicism I carried, tried to hide, and didn’t fully understand for most of my twenties and thirties:

I was born by a river
 rolling past a town
 Given no direction
 Just told to keep my head down. 

Chapter 2: God Versus the Boulevard

Jesus freaks out on the street 

handing tickets out for God. 

Turning back, she just laughs. 

The boulevard is not that bad.

—Elton, John, Tiny Dancer

Christians have a strange proclivity to fashion Jesus’ teaching on the narrow way into a joyless pursuit that devalues creation and makes the world he created very small.

It’s usually not until we’re older and have suffered some ourselves that we develop empathy; that is, the ability to see things from another person’s point of view. Take the snapshot “she just laughs” that we get of Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” in the lyric that opened this chapter. Although I wouldn’t want her to laugh off questions of God and a life beyond this life, there’s a place for amusement and enjoyment of common things. Everything out there in the “boulevard;” that is, the world or culture, is not all unregenerate and nefarious.

Chapter 4: Breaking Free

It’s funny that way, you can get used

To the tears and the pain

What a child will believe…

You can’t hurt me now

I got away from you, I never thought I would.

—Madonna, “Oh Father”

I realized at 15 that much of what Mr. and Mrs. Janson were saying was not from God. I resented their control and strongly resonated with lyrics like these from that decade:

I don’t care what you say anymore this is my life…
 go ahead with your own life leave me alone.
 —Billy Joel, “My Life”

They’re lying, killing, they’re pushing their rules

They tell you the prophets all are just fools

But I know different and I won’t be used

It's they that are lost, it’s they are confused.

—The Association, “The Time it is Today”

Chapter 5: Healing Moves

Like the pine trees lining the winding road
 I got a name, I got a name
 Like the singing bird and the croaking toad
 I got a name, I got a name
 And I carry it with me like my daddy did…

Like the fool I am and I’ll always be
 I got a dream, I got a dream
 They can change their minds but they can’t change me
 I got a dream, I got a dream
 Oh, I know I could share it if you’d want me to
 If you’re goin’ my way, I’ll go with you…

Moving me down the highway, rolling me down the highway

Moving ahead so life won’t pass me by

—Jim Croce, “I Got a Name”

Chapter 8: Finding God

I used to shoot you like an 8-ball
 I used to shoot you like a gun
 I used to hold you like a hammer
 Try to nail down everyone
 I used to keep you in a steeple
 Used to bind you in a book
 I used to take you by prescription
 Without knowing what I took

But now I just don’t buy it anymore
 No, I’ve tried and I’ve tried to know everything for sure
 But I find I know less as I come to know you more
 You’re not who I thought you were
 Praise the Lord
 —David Crowder, "Praise the Lord"

Conclusion

Finally able to put all this behind me, I began to focus on the road ahead, leaning heavily on three quotes [the one removed is below] that I entered in my journal:

I’m packing up my old things with my old and foolish ways. 
They just don’t seem to fit me anymore. 
I see the light of morning with different eyes today 
and I’m giving my tomorrows to the Lord. 
—Randy Stonehill, "Old Things"