"Start seeing everything as God
But keep it a secret." Hafiz
I wrote this song in 1999, shortly after the tragic shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado. At the time, the news was also full of stories about the war in Croatia, detailing the horrors that neighbors were inflicting upon one another. I found the confluence of these events emotionally overwhelming, and wrote this song to try to make some sense of it. I think of it as a dark gospel song. -Steve
A stormy ocean swirls around the sailor.
He’s treading water as his ship goes down.
He’s cold and tired and scared and he keeps wondering,
“What’s it going to feel like when I drown?”
And as he starts to slip away
He turns his thoughts to Jesus, and he prays,
Can You call the angels down
Will they hear, will they come?
Can they touch us with their lives?
Can they speak or are they dumb?
Do they care about my pain,
Or do they watch with careless eyes?
Can You call the angels down
From their mansions in the skies?
Far away another man sits grieving.
The news is filled with cruel and savage crimes,
With families who are driven from their homelands,
Or children taken way before their time.
“Where is the human heart?
And how can people do this to their kind?
And why is it no one can see an answer?
Are we like Saul, have we all been struck blind?”
He asks these questions every day.
He looks into his heart, and then he prays,
Can we call the angels down?
Will they hear, will they come?
Can they touch us with their lives?
Can they speak or are they dumb?
Do they care about our pain,
Or do they watch with careless eyes?
Can we call the angels down
From their mansions in the skies?
All night long the woman moans in labor.
She cries out, “What in the world was I thinking of?”
But finally with the sun rise she delivers
She holds her child, her world explodes in love.
And as they fall into each others eyes,
This wonderment is realized,
Can we call the angels down?
Will they hear, will they come?
Can they touch us with their lives?
Can they speak or are they dumb?
Do they care about our pain,
Or do they watch with careless eyes?
Can we call the angels down
From their mansions in the skies?
© 1999 Steven Flynn