Rocks Would Scream
Rocks Would Scream-Silence is Killing Me
Silence Is,
Silence Is,
Killing Me
My Silence Is
My Silence Is
Killing You and Me
These Rocks could scream it
But it shouldnt have to be that way
Chorus:
Take this heart
But not just for today
Take my words
And have Your Say
Take these hands
And rearrange
All my labor
Into fruit that saves
Into fruit that saves
These rocks could scream
But it shouldnt have to be that way
-Silence Is
Silence Is
Silence is Not the Way
I am
I have been
Ready for a change
Chorus:
Take this heart
But not just for today
Take my words
And have Your Say
Take these hands
And rearrange
All my labor
Into fruit that saves
Into fruit that saves
These rocks could scream
But it shouldnt have to be that way
-The children cry
And it shouldnt have to be that way
Were missing Love
Were kissing pain
And Lord it stabs your heart
Shouldnt it do mine the same?
Silence is,
Silence is,
My Silence is killing You and me
Its just the same
People dying inside and out
Every single day
My Rock is crying streams
But it shouldnt be this way
My silence is,
Killing you and me
Rocks Could Scream was my first attempt at Christian Song. It was written at a time when I first realized that there was so much more to entering the Kingdom that just remember to not do all the things you did before that hurt yourself and other people (both of which are the Creator’s because He made them). This was a time when the stirring of that fire within began, the stirring in all of us that takes place sometime in our teens or our twenties during what John Eldredge calls the “Warrior Stage” of a boy’s development. Eldredge’s book “Way of the Wild Heart” lists all of the stages from Golden Boy, to Cowboy, to Lover, to Warrior, to King, to Sage but the Warrior stage is where I was at during this writing. The Warrior Stage is the time when a boy or young realizes that there is a battle all around him, that people he loves need him to pick up his sword and fight for them and also when he is Divinely Assigned to his position on the battlefield. This is when he is given his sword, his message, and his battle station and how he responds to that call and how long he holds on to it will shape the rest of his life.
Some men pick up a gun to become a thug but some pick up the gun to become a cop while some men pick up the pen to become a novelists other men pick up the pen to become evangelist and some pick up the microphone to become a rock star with other pick up the microphone to give their generation a better anthem. They all pick up the sword in one way or another and carry it for a time despite the best efforts of the Church and the Feminist Movement to prevent it from ever being removed from the sheath (Paul Coughlin’s “No More Christian Nice Guy” addresses this issue well, as does “The War Against Boys” from a secular perspective). Every man also carries a message, the message is often unspoken but it is heard loud and clear by the hearts of every boy in the vicinity, listening desperately for someone to tell them how to be a man. The message instructs them on who to serve, what to make a priority, how to prove themselves and what to pursue with their life and their energy and what to protect with their strength and perhaps most importantly what to allow within the walls of their territory and what to defend against. Men are also given a battle station during this time and that could be the basketball court, the office, the laptop or the streets or the stage but everyone has a battlefield which is a place to confront whatever is wrong with the world and wrestle that territory from the hands of the enemy.
“Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.But the LORD said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’; for to all to whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak.” Jeremiah 1:6-7
The Prophet Jeremiah was given his sword and his message and his battle station early on in life, so early that he was afraid he was too young to be of us. His sword was the pen of his scribe Baruch, his message was a verbal bombardment of the religiosity of his culture and his battle station was the Southern Kingdom of Judah. If prophets and other men were judged by results Jeremiah would have been listed as a complete failure, as he was a prophet yet hardly anyone repented of the darkness they were bringing into the world and defending with all of their strength and spreading to the next generation and surrounding nations like a plague. The Creator does not measure us by our outward success however, but by our inward dedication, as sometimes the purpose is not a matter of change but of justice and a fair judgment after a people have been given the message that would have changed everything if they had listened.
Our responsibility for the fire within is not to set the rest of the world ablaze, but to simply let it burn and never die out. Those who need the light, the warmth, the protection of that fire within will be sent along our path and it is simply our duty to serve our fellow travelers as best we can with the flame we were given. The flame can be our protection or our wisdom or our knowledge in an area of their crisis or our courage or our leadership or sometimes just our time and our love (which is very much the case with our children). John Paul Jackson said that “Darkness can only advance at the speed with which light retreats” but I also like what Mike Rosenblum had to say about people standing united “If we all light up we can scare away the dark”. Manhood is simply when we are given the flame and learn to use it to ‘scare away the dark” for others, we become torches in the night.
“If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in His name,” there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” Jeremiah 20:9
Rocks Could Scream also describes that question that haunts me personally every day, and I am sure many men through one voice or another. Before I close my eyes I spent many sober minutes on my pillow reviewing the day asking ‘Did I actually change anything today?” and “Is everyone’s life tonight just way it was this morning?” or “Am I leading a life that could be described with Honor or with Shame?”. The measure of that changes from man to man, it usually involves dollar signs for most, or letters behind their name, or reps at the gym, or notches on their bedpost unfortunately, but we all measure our days in one way or another looking for a sign that we swung our sword, that we gave away our message and that we manned our battle station, even if we got all of that crossed up along the way. Addiction, Suicide, the Walk Away Joe, the Emotionally Unavailable Husband and Father, the Mid-Life Crisis are all just signs of a sword allowed to rust and a message that has remained silent and a battle station left abandon. We have very sophisticated names for the problem and pharmaceuticals treatments that come in assorted sizes and colors but the cure is very simple, be who you were born to be.
The sword I was given didn’t come with bullets, or a jersey, or letters behind my name or guitar strings, it simply came with ink and notebook lines. Strangely enough I started as an artist until that was Divinely Thwarted by moving to an Elementary School that didn’t have Art Class after seemingly amazing the art teacher at my previous school who called me parents in to talk about my sketches in 1st and 2nd Grade. After we moved I couldn’t use art supplies at school so I tried to sharpen my dad’s carpenter pencils with a pocket knife and draw on the back of envelopes our overdue hospital bills came in but due to poverty and lack of opportunity the gifting seems to have just vanished. I attempted to resurrect it several times, even applied to Memphis College of Art, but joining the military ended any hopes I had of visualizing the dreams and messages in my heart.
During high school however I began to set down the carpenter’s pencils and pick up the ink pen. “Mr. Jones” by the Counting Crows inspired me to write my first lyric and just like Adam Duritz sang about painting himself a grey guitar if he knew Picasso, I painted all the flames inside my mind using words instead of images and sound (like my heroes did) because words were my consolation prize for not being someone “cooler” like a painter or a musician. Aside from a well received (by my Advanced English Teacher anyway) paper on the Protestant Reformation in High School, there was absolutely zero encouragement for my writing in High School. Then I joined the military and over four years the only notice it received was a few of my unit members thinking I might be gay, getting reprimanded for writing an essay on materialism while on duty, a girl on a bus in tech. school asking if I wrote that song “Armies” her roommate told her about, and a girlfriend who put my lyrics in a scrapbook and mailed them to me in Europe after 9/11, but other than that nothing for 4 years. Then over 8 years of college not a single person noticed either in any Academic sense. I was published in the Belmont Literary Journal in Nashville (2 lyrics) and one of the Belmont Songwriter’s Association Members put my song “Best Things” to music, but over 3 years of living in Nashville no deals, and songwriting was why I came there.
Then in 2007Facebook came along and for the first time the words that are constantly birthed inside my heart and my mind, that grow until there is no more room for them and I have to let them escape onto the page, finally found a home. Over the years the fire within, the living stones that could scream, all the words others and myself never say have taught me valuable lessons. Jacob Dylan of the Wallflowers voiced one of the “All of these voices, and all of these noises, with all of their illusions of choices have come to my door with one dozen roses. And all these horses that you chase around are the ones that always bring you down.” The illusion of choice comes to everyone with a gifting, all of the myriad ways they could “advance” themselves with the gift they have been given if they are a musician or an artist or a writer or other celebrated forms of poets.
The illusion of choices also comes to those who have been given a message, as this is how the enemy has been “turning shepherds into sheep, and leaders into celebrities, it’s totally sabotaged just look around you, welcome to the 21st Century” as Derek Webb sings about the corruption of the Church the Prophet Jeremiah wept over. The message is given an audience for the message, but sometimes we use the message to gain an audience for ourselves, which turns Pastors into Politicians and Psalmists into Christian Radio Rockstars and Prophets into a Circus of Psychics. This is also how our Battlestation becomes our Stage and instead of Warriors fighting for a King we simply become Talk Show Gladiators dueling it out for cheers of the crowd that only cares for the show not the cause.
How do we avoid this pit that I and so many others with a sword and a message and a battle station have fallen into? How do not become the shepherds Ezekiel warned and warned of “shepherds who feed only themselves”? Like the Samurai we must constantly keep in mind that all we have been given that sets us apart from others has been given so that we can serve our King and serve His People. If we can speak to their broken hearts instead of their fickle emotions, or reason with their troubled minds instead of tickling their itching ears, if we could fight for their freedom instead of their applause and love them more than we need them to love us. If we could reach people where they are at instead of only where we can reach from our stages and pulpits, and listen for their wounds instead of looking for an opening where we can be heard, and speak of what the King values in place of what we ourselves are lusting after or jonesing for. If we can only speak when He speaks and only be silent when He is silent, then and only then will we deliver the message of the King instead of our own message, then these rocks won’t have to scream and the world won’t have to be so full of noise but so silent of harmony.
Silence Is,
Silence Is,
Killing Me
My Silence Is
My Silence Is
Killing You and Me
These Rocks could scream it
But it shouldnt have to be that way
Chorus:
Take this heart
But not just for today
Take my words
And have Your Say
Take these hands
And rearrange
All my labor
Into fruit that saves
Into fruit that saves
These rocks could scream
But it shouldnt have to be that way
-Silence Is
Silence Is
Silence is Not the Way
I am
I have been
Ready for a change
Chorus:
Take this heart
But not just for today
Take my words
And have Your Say
Take these hands
And rearrange
All my labor
Into fruit that saves
Into fruit that saves
These rocks could scream
But it shouldnt have to be that way
-The children cry
And it shouldnt have to be that way
Were missing Love
Were kissing pain
And Lord it stabs your heart
Shouldnt it do mine the same?
Silence is,
Silence is,
My Silence is killing You and me
Its just the same
People dying inside and out
Every single day
My Rock is crying streams
But it shouldnt be this way
My silence is,
Killing you and me
Rocks Could Scream was my first attempt at Christian Song. It was written at a time when I first realized that there was so much more to entering the Kingdom that just remember to not do all the things you did before that hurt yourself and other people (both of which are the Creator’s because He made them). This was a time when the stirring of that fire within began, the stirring in all of us that takes place sometime in our teens or our twenties during what John Eldredge calls the “Warrior Stage” of a boy’s development. Eldredge’s book “Way of the Wild Heart” lists all of the stages from Golden Boy, to Cowboy, to Lover, to Warrior, to King, to Sage but the Warrior stage is where I was at during this writing. The Warrior Stage is the time when a boy or young realizes that there is a battle all around him, that people he loves need him to pick up his sword and fight for them and also when he is Divinely Assigned to his position on the battlefield. This is when he is given his sword, his message, and his battle station and how he responds to that call and how long he holds on to it will shape the rest of his life.
Some men pick up a gun to become a thug but some pick up the gun to become a cop while some men pick up the pen to become a novelists other men pick up the pen to become evangelist and some pick up the microphone to become a rock star with other pick up the microphone to give their generation a better anthem. They all pick up the sword in one way or another and carry it for a time despite the best efforts of the Church and the Feminist Movement to prevent it from ever being removed from the sheath (Paul Coughlin’s “No More Christian Nice Guy” addresses this issue well, as does “The War Against Boys” from a secular perspective). Every man also carries a message, the message is often unspoken but it is heard loud and clear by the hearts of every boy in the vicinity, listening desperately for someone to tell them how to be a man. The message instructs them on who to serve, what to make a priority, how to prove themselves and what to pursue with their life and their energy and what to protect with their strength and perhaps most importantly what to allow within the walls of their territory and what to defend against. Men are also given a battle station during this time and that could be the basketball court, the office, the laptop or the streets or the stage but everyone has a battlefield which is a place to confront whatever is wrong with the world and wrestle that territory from the hands of the enemy.
“Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.But the LORD said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’; for to all to whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak.” Jeremiah 1:6-7
The Prophet Jeremiah was given his sword and his message and his battle station early on in life, so early that he was afraid he was too young to be of us. His sword was the pen of his scribe Baruch, his message was a verbal bombardment of the religiosity of his culture and his battle station was the Southern Kingdom of Judah. If prophets and other men were judged by results Jeremiah would have been listed as a complete failure, as he was a prophet yet hardly anyone repented of the darkness they were bringing into the world and defending with all of their strength and spreading to the next generation and surrounding nations like a plague. The Creator does not measure us by our outward success however, but by our inward dedication, as sometimes the purpose is not a matter of change but of justice and a fair judgment after a people have been given the message that would have changed everything if they had listened.
Our responsibility for the fire within is not to set the rest of the world ablaze, but to simply let it burn and never die out. Those who need the light, the warmth, the protection of that fire within will be sent along our path and it is simply our duty to serve our fellow travelers as best we can with the flame we were given. The flame can be our protection or our wisdom or our knowledge in an area of their crisis or our courage or our leadership or sometimes just our time and our love (which is very much the case with our children). John Paul Jackson said that “Darkness can only advance at the speed with which light retreats” but I also like what Mike Rosenblum had to say about people standing united “If we all light up we can scare away the dark”. Manhood is simply when we are given the flame and learn to use it to ‘scare away the dark” for others, we become torches in the night.
“If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in His name,” there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” Jeremiah 20:9
Rocks Could Scream also describes that question that haunts me personally every day, and I am sure many men through one voice or another. Before I close my eyes I spent many sober minutes on my pillow reviewing the day asking ‘Did I actually change anything today?” and “Is everyone’s life tonight just way it was this morning?” or “Am I leading a life that could be described with Honor or with Shame?”. The measure of that changes from man to man, it usually involves dollar signs for most, or letters behind their name, or reps at the gym, or notches on their bedpost unfortunately, but we all measure our days in one way or another looking for a sign that we swung our sword, that we gave away our message and that we manned our battle station, even if we got all of that crossed up along the way. Addiction, Suicide, the Walk Away Joe, the Emotionally Unavailable Husband and Father, the Mid-Life Crisis are all just signs of a sword allowed to rust and a message that has remained silent and a battle station left abandon. We have very sophisticated names for the problem and pharmaceuticals treatments that come in assorted sizes and colors but the cure is very simple, be who you were born to be.
The sword I was given didn’t come with bullets, or a jersey, or letters behind my name or guitar strings, it simply came with ink and notebook lines. Strangely enough I started as an artist until that was Divinely Thwarted by moving to an Elementary School that didn’t have Art Class after seemingly amazing the art teacher at my previous school who called me parents in to talk about my sketches in 1st and 2nd Grade. After we moved I couldn’t use art supplies at school so I tried to sharpen my dad’s carpenter pencils with a pocket knife and draw on the back of envelopes our overdue hospital bills came in but due to poverty and lack of opportunity the gifting seems to have just vanished. I attempted to resurrect it several times, even applied to Memphis College of Art, but joining the military ended any hopes I had of visualizing the dreams and messages in my heart.
During high school however I began to set down the carpenter’s pencils and pick up the ink pen. “Mr. Jones” by the Counting Crows inspired me to write my first lyric and just like Adam Duritz sang about painting himself a grey guitar if he knew Picasso, I painted all the flames inside my mind using words instead of images and sound (like my heroes did) because words were my consolation prize for not being someone “cooler” like a painter or a musician. Aside from a well received (by my Advanced English Teacher anyway) paper on the Protestant Reformation in High School, there was absolutely zero encouragement for my writing in High School. Then I joined the military and over four years the only notice it received was a few of my unit members thinking I might be gay, getting reprimanded for writing an essay on materialism while on duty, a girl on a bus in tech. school asking if I wrote that song “Armies” her roommate told her about, and a girlfriend who put my lyrics in a scrapbook and mailed them to me in Europe after 9/11, but other than that nothing for 4 years. Then over 8 years of college not a single person noticed either in any Academic sense. I was published in the Belmont Literary Journal in Nashville (2 lyrics) and one of the Belmont Songwriter’s Association Members put my song “Best Things” to music, but over 3 years of living in Nashville no deals, and songwriting was why I came there.
Then in 2007Facebook came along and for the first time the words that are constantly birthed inside my heart and my mind, that grow until there is no more room for them and I have to let them escape onto the page, finally found a home. Over the years the fire within, the living stones that could scream, all the words others and myself never say have taught me valuable lessons. Jacob Dylan of the Wallflowers voiced one of the “All of these voices, and all of these noises, with all of their illusions of choices have come to my door with one dozen roses. And all these horses that you chase around are the ones that always bring you down.” The illusion of choice comes to everyone with a gifting, all of the myriad ways they could “advance” themselves with the gift they have been given if they are a musician or an artist or a writer or other celebrated forms of poets.
The illusion of choices also comes to those who have been given a message, as this is how the enemy has been “turning shepherds into sheep, and leaders into celebrities, it’s totally sabotaged just look around you, welcome to the 21st Century” as Derek Webb sings about the corruption of the Church the Prophet Jeremiah wept over. The message is given an audience for the message, but sometimes we use the message to gain an audience for ourselves, which turns Pastors into Politicians and Psalmists into Christian Radio Rockstars and Prophets into a Circus of Psychics. This is also how our Battlestation becomes our Stage and instead of Warriors fighting for a King we simply become Talk Show Gladiators dueling it out for cheers of the crowd that only cares for the show not the cause.
How do we avoid this pit that I and so many others with a sword and a message and a battle station have fallen into? How do not become the shepherds Ezekiel warned and warned of “shepherds who feed only themselves”? Like the Samurai we must constantly keep in mind that all we have been given that sets us apart from others has been given so that we can serve our King and serve His People. If we can speak to their broken hearts instead of their fickle emotions, or reason with their troubled minds instead of tickling their itching ears, if we could fight for their freedom instead of their applause and love them more than we need them to love us. If we could reach people where they are at instead of only where we can reach from our stages and pulpits, and listen for their wounds instead of looking for an opening where we can be heard, and speak of what the King values in place of what we ourselves are lusting after or jonesing for. If we can only speak when He speaks and only be silent when He is silent, then and only then will we deliver the message of the King instead of our own message, then these rocks won’t have to scream and the world won’t have to be so full of noise but so silent of harmony.
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