(DADGAD / capo 3)
This was a writing exercise I took part in with some great songwriters whom I toured with in the spring of 2002. The task: pick any random page in the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader and write a song on the topic no matter how far-fetched or seemingly impossible. The topic of page 171 in the History Edition details Andre Maginot, the French minister of war in the years immediately following WW1, and his now infamous Maginot Line. Largely considered by the history books as a “monumental waste of effortâ€?, it became his glorious but doomed brainchild. The “lineâ€? in question was a series of massive fortifications and defense systems that spanned the entire French-German border – all 150 miles of it – and was designed to keep the despised Germans out of their beloved grape-crushing, wine-drinking, croissant-making nation once and for all. Maginot’s sentiment was that once the Germans took notice of the huge guns pointed at them, fixed atop the wall, the Germans would never in a million years consider attacking France again like they did a few years before in the “blitzkriegâ€? of WW1.  History books tell the rest of this story, but it is in this same world lesson that I see, in however small a way, my own personal shadows: my sin-scared, and –scarred, self running for the hills when I imagine that a holy God wants to crush me like a venomous serpent because of my faithlessness, my lack of trust, and the sin that encompasses me and dogs my every step. Somehow the thought never crosses my finite mind that the memory of God could indeed be a poor one. Perhaps the most miraculous of all miracles are the ones that leave us scratching our head at their sheer, incomprehensible, inhuman Graciousness. The miracle that we so often take for granted is the one that blesses our soul the most: the miracle of forgetting. It is the spectacle that spans the reaches of the universe, is as deep as a Greek ocean is blue, infiltrates both heart and mind, and is the one miracle that most theologians and preachers seem to forget (pun intended) or at least ignore. Of all the ones that God still performs, it is the miracle that I personally treasure the most because I need it the most. Written Feb. 18-22, 2002.

hemmed in like a pocket that a seamstress might have sewn
everyday the miracle of forgetting becomes known
that we are made for blessing and we are made to break
we are made for second chances that we often fail to take

everything about you strikes fear in me
but everything about you is so good

give us a dove, give us a sign
plant a burning bush on the Maginot line
give us bread, give us the sky
bring forth peace from the Maginot line

it’s like a drop of water when you’re dry to the bone
once I tasted graciousness I could never get enough

everything about you brings joy to me
everything about you is so good

give us a dove, give us a sign
plant a burning bush on the Maginot line
give us bread, give us the sky
bring forth peace from the Maginot line

and my tears, after all
are still tears when they fall
everything about you is good
everything about you is so good