Forgotten Song
FORGOTTEN SONG
Will you call me to your place
Palace of poets where we're safe
From a world of war and rage
Would you fall with me to the knees
Would you pray with me that we both rest our heads in peace
Surrounded By the Truths so Epic they will heal
Can you feel this?
We're held inside this scene tonite
By the weight of a Gravity all too real
And the incense of burning motions We can't fight
Inside the pounding of the rain
Within the heartbeat of the flame
Will you be the one?
To maybe play my Forgotten Song?
CHORUS:
Will you play my Forgotten song?
Will you call the voice I've lost
Are you from the promised land
You hold the water in those hands
I'll show you all I am
Just to drink it from your palm
Will you be the one
Will you play my Forgotten song?
Darling, Set me free to see All the reasons why I bleed
Chalk your thoughts upon The walls around my heart
You've given me a reason to believe I am,
Your wounded soldier here tonite
So won't you stitch my soul up tight
Let me rest here for a while
Within the pyre of your eyes (Like a phoenix)
After your words of truth and love I'll rise refined
-Something larger than I've learned of
-Somebody bigger than I was born from
-Someone nobler than I have been
-You're a dream sweeter than I let in
CHORUS: Will you play my Forgotten Song
Will you call the voice I've lost
Are you the vision in starlit skin
Are you the vessel in satin sail
Here to set this anchored soul on out?
After Adam and Eve have lost their leaves
After we've both asked for the other’s hand upon our knees
Seen the secrets time will free
Will our wounds no longer bleed I've seen you, but will you still-believe in me?
Will you be the one? Will you play my Forgotten Song?
Forgotten Song is about what the world would call a Soul Mate but what Scripture calls a Helpmate, and there is a huge difference. The Soul Mate concept came about through Plato who believed that all souls exist before birth, and are also joined before birth. Then when one of the souls is born they are separated from each other and spend their wholes lives searching for the other half which will “complete” them. The concept sounds very romantic and hopeless, just finding that one other person will suddenly and miraculously heal all of your wounds and hurts and make you the person you were always meant to be, a person that will basically be, your own personal messiah. When I wrote this song originally, I did believe in Soul mates and a lot of other Greek Gnostic ideas along with it and the original name of the lyric was “Saviour Song”.
Over time and studying marriage like it was a part time job for 5 or 6 years and then being married (to someone that was absolutely not my soul mate or my help mate) and after earning a Master’s Degree in Human Services (Marriage and Family Counseling emphasis), I can assure you that “Soul Mates” do not exist. What does exist however is the problems from chasing the “Soul Mate” doctrine. Nicholas Sparks, formerly one of my favorite authors popularized the idea in his works such as “The Notebook” where a female character abandons her vow to her fiancé because she was missing her “Soul Mate’ Noah and the whole world cheered, my self included at the time. Then years later Nicholas Sparks leaves his wife because “this time” he has “found his soulmate”. The Christianized version of course is “The One God had for me since the beginning of time” which is again, Greek Pagan Soul Mates and like any idea with a bad root it has brought endless bad and even poisonous fruit. Divorce, Adultery, sentencing innocent children to basically 18 years to life without the other parent they need and vows becoming worthless along with your character and testimony are all acceptable if you have “missed” the “One” that God had for you.
This is of course an idea we can’t find anywhere in a Bible, the closest we find was Adam and Eve, and then possibly Isaac and Rebekah but those two would be the family leaders of a dynasty which would become a multitude of nations and bring forth the Messiah. The theological problems with the idea are numerous, such as are you without your soulmate if they marry someone else? What about the soulmates of Solomon’s 700 wives? Or David’s 4 wives? What if your Soulmate got hit by a bus when they were 25? The biggest problem however is the heart problem. We have conditioned ourselves to believe that marriage is about our happiness and our comfort instead of our holiness and our growth, as the one place that nothing good ever grows is the “Comfort Zone”.
There are few changes in life that force us to grow as much as marriage does, one is having children, and the other is the only Biblical counterpart for lifelong marriage which is lifelong singleness for the purpose of the Kingdom (full time ministry in conditions so harsh or dangerous you could not bring a family along, or that may cause you to surrender your life at an early age). Lifelong singleness does not include dating, or numerous opposite sex friends to meet your emotional or sexual needs in replacement for a spouse, and the courts and daycares were never meant to replace a spouse or a parent either, two institutions that have greatly decreased the value society holds for both genders.
If no Soul Mates, then what are Help Mates? A Helpmate or Helpmeet is someone by your side (a mate) that complements you (they are strong where you are weak). They are the person designed to meet the needs that must be met in your for your to accomplish the mission the Creator has given you. Every Sniper has a Spotter, every Pilot has a Gunner, every Cop has a Dispatcher, and everyone who is fulfilling their Mission faces opposition that demands they not face the battle alone. A helpmate is meant to be your shelter in the daily storms, the comrade in arms in your foxhole, the medic when you are bleeding on the daily battlefield. When we quite the fight and go home, we forget to value our helpmates, but when we are facing the world head on every day, especially trying to raise children in a world that opposes us every day, we are daily reminded of their necessity.
A helpmate is given by the Creator to ensure you are emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually prepared to face the battles of the day before it begins and are healed from the battles of the day when it ends. A man’s mission is severely crippled without a woman’s support, her prayer support for his spirit, her emotional support for his heart, her attention and nourishment for his body, and her perspective for his mind. Jewish Culture felt that a woman was so essential to the success and growth of a man that they developed a saying “an unmarried man is only half a man”, as he had would likely not reach full spiritual maturity without the help of a godly wife in his life to grow him. In Hebrew the word for Helpmate is “Ezer Kenegdo” or “The Rescuer by his side”, she is a rescuer like a lifeguard when you are going under or like a medic at D-Day, not like a maid when your house is dirty or a short order cook when you want a sandwich. Without her, your mission is doubled in its danger and halfed in its success, and our current Church culture which delays marriages like it once delayed funerals, is leaving many men with half finished missions and also leaving many women and their children as well uncovered spiritually, emotionally, mentally and even physically as we see from all of the sexual assault and child abuse that happens when fathers are replaced by boyfriends over and over again.
Men and women were made to need each other, and while not just anyone will do, we can never hold someone up to a pedistool of perfection based on a perfect match that doesn’t exist. The Creator searches hearts for those who will help us accomplish our mission if we allow Him to define our mission and to help us find the helpmeet to meet the needs of our hour in History, but He never promised they would be perfect or be perfect for us, Walt Disney promised all of that and failed to deliver. Hollywood Romance or Holy Warfare, we have to choose a marriage. As the Scripture says “I will make a Help Mate SUITABLE for Him” it never said a Helpmate that is PERFECT for Him or a Maid for him, a Prostitute for him, or a Nanny for him, or a trophy for him, it said an Ezer Kenedgo (Life Saving Rescuer) designed to help him accomplish his specific mission that the Creator gave them as a couple, a mission that can barrely be done without her. Of course, if one refuses to help the other in the way they were designed to help, support and defend the other, they are blocking the mission the Creator gave.
“Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Genesis 2:18
Forgotten Song was born out of a very inspired but very lonely place in my life. It was written at the same coffee shop that I wrote the song “California” about, a place that gave me hope for the first time that someone, somewhere might understand me. This was the first place I had ever met someone else who read Rumi (the co-owner Kathy), the first time I had ever met a musician (the owner Aaron Rose), or spoke a foreign language (my good friend and later girlfriend Jennifer spoke 5 fluently at the age of 17) and met the first girl who ever thought that a guy with an ink pen and a book was just as manly as a guy with a 4x4 and a deer rifle. For a while I had some hopes of being understood, possibly even by a girl, but as time progressed I found that I am every strange amongst the outcasts.
I joined the Air Force which separated me from most of the artistic crowd that would be starting the Art School I had applied for instead of marching in boot camp with me, and living in Germany further separated me from the people I grew up with who mostly thought the world was flat and if you went past the city limit city you could just fall off the edge. Then I began to come back to the faith I had abandoned which separated me from all of my Wiccans friends, but not growing up with a White Picket Fence and College Fund still separated me from the Church people, and seeking the Ancient Paths, a very Jewish 1st Century Christianity finally built a fortified wall around every fitting in near a Church again. So over time the hope for being understood, appreciated, respected, cared for and being an essential part of anyone’s life faded and then vanished, which led to a terrible marriage to a woman who turned out to be a lesbian hoping that when I finished college I would move her to Europe with me as my career plan was to teach for the State Department in Italy or Germany.
When those plans didn’t work out after I couldn’t student teach working at Lowe’s off and one for five different seasons of employment put a final nail in that coffin. It seemed that there was simply no one that could understand me enough to allow me a permanent and valuable place in their life, as who wants to go through life never being understood by the person who should be closest to you, and never understanding them either? As my mission in life has become clearer however, the need for a helpmate has become stronger and stronger, not just a desire born out of lust and loneliness and the slow death of eating from Styrofoam on a coffee table instead of a family dinner prepared with love by loving hands, but a true need born out of the drive to accomplish the mission and the great difficulty of fighting for hearts when you own heart is alone at the end of the day. When tending wounds while neglecting your own, the healing of those you fight for is just as delayed as yours as the seasons progress in solitude, since it takes two to bear fruit in any garden.
We all reach the point of total reliance on our Creator at some point our lives. We reach this point eventually when we are pursuing our own plans and need His Divine assistance, but when we are pursuing His plans we fall to the end of our own rope in what seems like moments because He never gives anyone a mission that they could accomplish on their own. Every mission He ever began required not only the move of His Divine Hand, but also a trusted comrade in arms. Often times that partner is a helpmate such as Isaac was given to help his heart heal from the loss of his mother the Scripture says, but occasionally it is a Timothy to a Paul or an Elisha to an Elijah or Disciples sent out two by two. I finally prayed to the Creator one night in my kitchen that if He wanted me to accomplish this mission He would choose someone capable as He knows their hearts and their Calling.
The rest of that story is still being written, and my part in it is simply to wait for Him to reveal all that He has promised to reveal that friends that know His Voice, through Dreams and circumstances and through the still quiet voice in my heart. I no longer expect for her to be perfect or to be perfect for me, only that we can accomplish our mission together better than we ever could apart or with someone else if it is truly the Creator who has arranged the meeting. I look forward to that day not because I need a family, or a home cooked meal or a house that isn’t empty, or even because “I need a big love and I need a phone call, and I need a raincoat, and I need a big love” as the Counting Crows sing, I look forward with anticipation because everything I was born to do has been on hold and I am anxious for the mission. I am ready to fight for hearts the moment that mine can have its own wounds tended to by the person the Creator sent for that very mission. I look forward to that day not just for me, but also for you, for the hearts of us all.
“To Love a Person is to Learn the Song in their Heart and play it back to them when they have forgotten its Sound”, or it is to read the Name on their White Stone back to them every night as the chaos and battle of the world makes them misplace it throughout the day. This is the role of the helpmate, to play the forgotten song. Perhaps if we are one flesh, then the one who has become one with us can read our white stone as well as ourselves?
Revelation 2:17
Will you call me to your place
Palace of poets where we're safe
From a world of war and rage
Would you fall with me to the knees
Would you pray with me that we both rest our heads in peace
Surrounded By the Truths so Epic they will heal
Can you feel this?
We're held inside this scene tonite
By the weight of a Gravity all too real
And the incense of burning motions We can't fight
Inside the pounding of the rain
Within the heartbeat of the flame
Will you be the one?
To maybe play my Forgotten Song?
CHORUS:
Will you play my Forgotten song?
Will you call the voice I've lost
Are you from the promised land
You hold the water in those hands
I'll show you all I am
Just to drink it from your palm
Will you be the one
Will you play my Forgotten song?
Darling, Set me free to see All the reasons why I bleed
Chalk your thoughts upon The walls around my heart
You've given me a reason to believe I am,
Your wounded soldier here tonite
So won't you stitch my soul up tight
Let me rest here for a while
Within the pyre of your eyes (Like a phoenix)
After your words of truth and love I'll rise refined
-Something larger than I've learned of
-Somebody bigger than I was born from
-Someone nobler than I have been
-You're a dream sweeter than I let in
CHORUS: Will you play my Forgotten Song
Will you call the voice I've lost
Are you the vision in starlit skin
Are you the vessel in satin sail
Here to set this anchored soul on out?
After Adam and Eve have lost their leaves
After we've both asked for the other’s hand upon our knees
Seen the secrets time will free
Will our wounds no longer bleed I've seen you, but will you still-believe in me?
Will you be the one? Will you play my Forgotten Song?
Forgotten Song is about what the world would call a Soul Mate but what Scripture calls a Helpmate, and there is a huge difference. The Soul Mate concept came about through Plato who believed that all souls exist before birth, and are also joined before birth. Then when one of the souls is born they are separated from each other and spend their wholes lives searching for the other half which will “complete” them. The concept sounds very romantic and hopeless, just finding that one other person will suddenly and miraculously heal all of your wounds and hurts and make you the person you were always meant to be, a person that will basically be, your own personal messiah. When I wrote this song originally, I did believe in Soul mates and a lot of other Greek Gnostic ideas along with it and the original name of the lyric was “Saviour Song”.
Over time and studying marriage like it was a part time job for 5 or 6 years and then being married (to someone that was absolutely not my soul mate or my help mate) and after earning a Master’s Degree in Human Services (Marriage and Family Counseling emphasis), I can assure you that “Soul Mates” do not exist. What does exist however is the problems from chasing the “Soul Mate” doctrine. Nicholas Sparks, formerly one of my favorite authors popularized the idea in his works such as “The Notebook” where a female character abandons her vow to her fiancé because she was missing her “Soul Mate’ Noah and the whole world cheered, my self included at the time. Then years later Nicholas Sparks leaves his wife because “this time” he has “found his soulmate”. The Christianized version of course is “The One God had for me since the beginning of time” which is again, Greek Pagan Soul Mates and like any idea with a bad root it has brought endless bad and even poisonous fruit. Divorce, Adultery, sentencing innocent children to basically 18 years to life without the other parent they need and vows becoming worthless along with your character and testimony are all acceptable if you have “missed” the “One” that God had for you.
This is of course an idea we can’t find anywhere in a Bible, the closest we find was Adam and Eve, and then possibly Isaac and Rebekah but those two would be the family leaders of a dynasty which would become a multitude of nations and bring forth the Messiah. The theological problems with the idea are numerous, such as are you without your soulmate if they marry someone else? What about the soulmates of Solomon’s 700 wives? Or David’s 4 wives? What if your Soulmate got hit by a bus when they were 25? The biggest problem however is the heart problem. We have conditioned ourselves to believe that marriage is about our happiness and our comfort instead of our holiness and our growth, as the one place that nothing good ever grows is the “Comfort Zone”.
There are few changes in life that force us to grow as much as marriage does, one is having children, and the other is the only Biblical counterpart for lifelong marriage which is lifelong singleness for the purpose of the Kingdom (full time ministry in conditions so harsh or dangerous you could not bring a family along, or that may cause you to surrender your life at an early age). Lifelong singleness does not include dating, or numerous opposite sex friends to meet your emotional or sexual needs in replacement for a spouse, and the courts and daycares were never meant to replace a spouse or a parent either, two institutions that have greatly decreased the value society holds for both genders.
If no Soul Mates, then what are Help Mates? A Helpmate or Helpmeet is someone by your side (a mate) that complements you (they are strong where you are weak). They are the person designed to meet the needs that must be met in your for your to accomplish the mission the Creator has given you. Every Sniper has a Spotter, every Pilot has a Gunner, every Cop has a Dispatcher, and everyone who is fulfilling their Mission faces opposition that demands they not face the battle alone. A helpmate is meant to be your shelter in the daily storms, the comrade in arms in your foxhole, the medic when you are bleeding on the daily battlefield. When we quite the fight and go home, we forget to value our helpmates, but when we are facing the world head on every day, especially trying to raise children in a world that opposes us every day, we are daily reminded of their necessity.
A helpmate is given by the Creator to ensure you are emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually prepared to face the battles of the day before it begins and are healed from the battles of the day when it ends. A man’s mission is severely crippled without a woman’s support, her prayer support for his spirit, her emotional support for his heart, her attention and nourishment for his body, and her perspective for his mind. Jewish Culture felt that a woman was so essential to the success and growth of a man that they developed a saying “an unmarried man is only half a man”, as he had would likely not reach full spiritual maturity without the help of a godly wife in his life to grow him. In Hebrew the word for Helpmate is “Ezer Kenegdo” or “The Rescuer by his side”, she is a rescuer like a lifeguard when you are going under or like a medic at D-Day, not like a maid when your house is dirty or a short order cook when you want a sandwich. Without her, your mission is doubled in its danger and halfed in its success, and our current Church culture which delays marriages like it once delayed funerals, is leaving many men with half finished missions and also leaving many women and their children as well uncovered spiritually, emotionally, mentally and even physically as we see from all of the sexual assault and child abuse that happens when fathers are replaced by boyfriends over and over again.
Men and women were made to need each other, and while not just anyone will do, we can never hold someone up to a pedistool of perfection based on a perfect match that doesn’t exist. The Creator searches hearts for those who will help us accomplish our mission if we allow Him to define our mission and to help us find the helpmeet to meet the needs of our hour in History, but He never promised they would be perfect or be perfect for us, Walt Disney promised all of that and failed to deliver. Hollywood Romance or Holy Warfare, we have to choose a marriage. As the Scripture says “I will make a Help Mate SUITABLE for Him” it never said a Helpmate that is PERFECT for Him or a Maid for him, a Prostitute for him, or a Nanny for him, or a trophy for him, it said an Ezer Kenedgo (Life Saving Rescuer) designed to help him accomplish his specific mission that the Creator gave them as a couple, a mission that can barrely be done without her. Of course, if one refuses to help the other in the way they were designed to help, support and defend the other, they are blocking the mission the Creator gave.
“Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Genesis 2:18
Forgotten Song was born out of a very inspired but very lonely place in my life. It was written at the same coffee shop that I wrote the song “California” about, a place that gave me hope for the first time that someone, somewhere might understand me. This was the first place I had ever met someone else who read Rumi (the co-owner Kathy), the first time I had ever met a musician (the owner Aaron Rose), or spoke a foreign language (my good friend and later girlfriend Jennifer spoke 5 fluently at the age of 17) and met the first girl who ever thought that a guy with an ink pen and a book was just as manly as a guy with a 4x4 and a deer rifle. For a while I had some hopes of being understood, possibly even by a girl, but as time progressed I found that I am every strange amongst the outcasts.
I joined the Air Force which separated me from most of the artistic crowd that would be starting the Art School I had applied for instead of marching in boot camp with me, and living in Germany further separated me from the people I grew up with who mostly thought the world was flat and if you went past the city limit city you could just fall off the edge. Then I began to come back to the faith I had abandoned which separated me from all of my Wiccans friends, but not growing up with a White Picket Fence and College Fund still separated me from the Church people, and seeking the Ancient Paths, a very Jewish 1st Century Christianity finally built a fortified wall around every fitting in near a Church again. So over time the hope for being understood, appreciated, respected, cared for and being an essential part of anyone’s life faded and then vanished, which led to a terrible marriage to a woman who turned out to be a lesbian hoping that when I finished college I would move her to Europe with me as my career plan was to teach for the State Department in Italy or Germany.
When those plans didn’t work out after I couldn’t student teach working at Lowe’s off and one for five different seasons of employment put a final nail in that coffin. It seemed that there was simply no one that could understand me enough to allow me a permanent and valuable place in their life, as who wants to go through life never being understood by the person who should be closest to you, and never understanding them either? As my mission in life has become clearer however, the need for a helpmate has become stronger and stronger, not just a desire born out of lust and loneliness and the slow death of eating from Styrofoam on a coffee table instead of a family dinner prepared with love by loving hands, but a true need born out of the drive to accomplish the mission and the great difficulty of fighting for hearts when you own heart is alone at the end of the day. When tending wounds while neglecting your own, the healing of those you fight for is just as delayed as yours as the seasons progress in solitude, since it takes two to bear fruit in any garden.
We all reach the point of total reliance on our Creator at some point our lives. We reach this point eventually when we are pursuing our own plans and need His Divine assistance, but when we are pursuing His plans we fall to the end of our own rope in what seems like moments because He never gives anyone a mission that they could accomplish on their own. Every mission He ever began required not only the move of His Divine Hand, but also a trusted comrade in arms. Often times that partner is a helpmate such as Isaac was given to help his heart heal from the loss of his mother the Scripture says, but occasionally it is a Timothy to a Paul or an Elisha to an Elijah or Disciples sent out two by two. I finally prayed to the Creator one night in my kitchen that if He wanted me to accomplish this mission He would choose someone capable as He knows their hearts and their Calling.
The rest of that story is still being written, and my part in it is simply to wait for Him to reveal all that He has promised to reveal that friends that know His Voice, through Dreams and circumstances and through the still quiet voice in my heart. I no longer expect for her to be perfect or to be perfect for me, only that we can accomplish our mission together better than we ever could apart or with someone else if it is truly the Creator who has arranged the meeting. I look forward to that day not because I need a family, or a home cooked meal or a house that isn’t empty, or even because “I need a big love and I need a phone call, and I need a raincoat, and I need a big love” as the Counting Crows sing, I look forward with anticipation because everything I was born to do has been on hold and I am anxious for the mission. I am ready to fight for hearts the moment that mine can have its own wounds tended to by the person the Creator sent for that very mission. I look forward to that day not just for me, but also for you, for the hearts of us all.
“To Love a Person is to Learn the Song in their Heart and play it back to them when they have forgotten its Sound”, or it is to read the Name on their White Stone back to them every night as the chaos and battle of the world makes them misplace it throughout the day. This is the role of the helpmate, to play the forgotten song. Perhaps if we are one flesh, then the one who has become one with us can read our white stone as well as ourselves?
Revelation 2:17
Prayer for Forgotten Song
Creator of Intimacy
We ask that you step into our Marriages
We ask that you reverse the Curse of Leaving Eden
We ask that you remove these Fig Leaves between our selfish selves and our Beloved
We ask for a big love, a brave love, a bold love, and a Holy Love
A love that is Kadosh, set-apart, something unlike the world East of Eden has ever Known
We ask for Faith where there was Fear
We ask for New and Burning Love where there was Lukewarm Affection and Worn out Lust
We ask that the Cherubim Guard our Bedrooms from the Lies that we have been Sold about our sewn up selves and our Beloved
We ask that we not forget the Healing was Real and Whole
When the Stitches come between our Souls
We ask for Olive Branches where the Fig Leaves
Once made us Alone
“Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made for themselves loin-coverings.” Genesis 3:7
Resource: “Love and War” by John and Stasi Eldredge
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