The Underground Railroad

More Songs from the Underground

Talk about songs rising up from the Underground! Check out Songs of Justice: A Global Call to Prayer on Youtube.

It's so true... we cannot untangle song & the rise of justice in the Way of Christ. Song serves as encouragement, as teacher, as direction (literally), as message, as code, as inspiration, as community, as expression, as impression, and so much more. 

May more and more songs of justice keep rising up from our many, many undergrounds that we may hear their call from peak to valley, river to road, cave to mountain top. Amen

 

Wunderkind

In the girls' group I help facilitate on Monday nights, we're discussing what our identity in Christ means. For some, it means learning the meaning of our names; for others, it's flexing skills and putting in practice lifestyles of being part of a royal priesthood; still for others, it's taking a huge step of actually trusting this Invisible God - something adults have a hard enough time with, let alone teenage girls.

All of me will "grow old", but a part of me will never "grow up". As I write stories and poems, I still see myself as a young girl, perhaps sixteen or so, looking deeply for the first time into God, Jesus, His world, and His love. It is wounding... much of His Truth and reality I cannot bear. It is healing... it reveals places I never would have thought were hurt. It is fantastic... in the ordinary everday, in the common life of community, in the boredom and chaos, the ups and downs, there is breathless imagination that only God can stretch into infinity. 

What does this have to do with slavery? I mean, this is a blog about human trafficking isn't it? Well, slavery is an identity -- to be a slave shapes how you see yourself and often, it is a morbid and dying sight. However, even past slavery - to those of us who have never been trafficked - there are fears and oppressors over God's creative identity for us (including ourselves). Some days, even the most faithful of abolitionists need a reminder.

So call me childish (I'd prefer "child-like", if must call me something), but Alanis Morisette's Wunderkind is a Song from the Underground that declares so much of who we are... of who I am. "...destined to serve... destined to roam..." It is a declaration of paradoxes, enigmas, and yet full childlike discovery. Written for the movie The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, I gravitated instantly to the song. You see, I saw myself very much like Lucy Pevencie growing up -- in wonder, in hiding, in exploration, in daring, in danger, but full of mysterious faith and childlike belief. I still do.

I very much believe that "I am a magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment". 

Will this help end slavery?

Yes.

The mystery of Christ is to be embraced. Once embraced, there's no telling where we will end up. It will be dangerous. BUT... it will be good. Very good.

Cheesy post, perhaps. But today, knowing the very real dangers we're all facing in this struggle for freedom, I needed a childlike perspective speaking truth in ways we adults all too soon forget.

Enjoy.

"Wunderkind" ~ Alanis Morisette

Oh perilous place
Walk backwards toward you
Blink disbelieving eyes chilled to the bone
Most visibly brave
No apprehended gloom
First to take this foot to virgin snow

I am a magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment
I am a wunderkind ohwowoh
I lift the envelope pushed far enough to believe this
I am a princess on the way to my throne
destined to serve
destined to roam

Oh ominous place
Spellbound and un-childproofed
My least favorite chill to bear alone

Compatriots in place
They’d cringe if I told you
Our best back pocket secret: our bond full blown

I am a magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment
I am a wunderkind ohwowoh
I am a pioneer naïve enough to believe this
I am a princess on the way to my throne
destined to seek
destined to know

Most beautiful place
Reborn and blown off roof
My view: about face whether, great will be done

I am a magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment
I am a wunderkind ohwowoh
I am a groundbreaker naïve enough to believe this
I am a princess on the way to my throne

I am a magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment
I am a wunderkind ohwowoh
I am the Joan of Arc and smart enough to believe this
I am a princess on the way to my throne

Destined to reign, destined to roam
Destined to reign, destined to roam
Ohahahoohah
Ohahahoohah
Destined to reign, destined to roam
Destined to reign, destined to roam

 

I Love Lac La Biche

There. I admit it. I love this messy, crazy, colorful, wonderful, conflicted, peaceful, redneck, hippie collision of nowheresvilles, Alberta. Happy?

Yes.

I am.

If anyone knows me well, they know I am prone to long rambles along the highways around LLB. Not exactly the safest route, I've been told, but still... no better view of the town at sunset, in starlight or moonlight, or during the afternoon sun as me on the open highway. Anyone who knows me well will also know that I will do almost whatever it takes to get the best view of... anywhere... anything. To really, truly experience a place -- a sense of being -- you have to go straight to the edge of all things... a look down... look across... look out... look in...

After convincing myself that God really wanted me in "The Inner-City of Somewhere Else", I was relieved to be ditching this place. I was done with.... (insert list here of all things I perceived to be wrong, broken, frustrating, and blocked). But then God happened.

He happens at the most inconvenient of times, I must say.

"Why are you announcing community, intentionally love where you are moving to if you have not learned to truly love the community you are in?"

BAM.

Checkmate.

Running away to the proverbial mission under the guise that I wanted to good (which I did), was only a thin veneer for dodging messy community in all its glory (which I was). In the past couple days, I've taken extremely long rambles about the trucking bypass and began to realize something: I really do love this place. I really have been given a heart for this place. What a shock! In all this beauty, scenic nature, cultural diversity, religious affiliations, here I am. In all the conflicts, family wars, gang junk, racial tension, drug & alcohol abuse, legalism, here I am.

Some have said that, despite this being my 7th year here (has a rather biblical tone, does it not?), I will never be from here. I wasn't born and raised here, thus I will never be able to call this home. Others even more transient than I have been in life marvel that I have stayed as long as I have. Well, in response to both perspectives, I go to John 1... read it just this morning:

 ¹² Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— ¹³ children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

Call me crazy (don't worry, a lot of people have, me being one of them), but I am not of this world as the world knows itself to be. I am flesh, created in the image of God, but more than that I am not of this world. So that I am not of good ol' LLB is quite true... yet the roots I put down here are deeper than physical birth. My identity, my birth, my personhood is of another kingdom, a deeper one -- a richer one that is eternal.

I was thinking all of this as Collective Soul sang out into my iPod: "So I walk up on high and I step to the edge to see the world I love. And I laugh at myself as the tears roll down, 'cause it's the world I love.

It's the world I love."

Thinking deeply as I spied the Mosque across from the bypass, as I chatted with some leisurely paced mule deer in a field, as I watched my own shadow grow longer in the afternoon winter sun, as every 18-wheeler passed me, as I passed churches, forests, barns, trailer courts, gas stations, suburbs... everywhere...

Some days I want to pull out my hair over the petty squabbles... other days there is deep sorrow for the injustices we have inflicted upon one another... other days I am awed at the beauty of the cultures who have found their way here, in whatever manner... and still on other days, I sometimes think I would pay a million bucks just for someone to take me to the Sir Francis Winspear Centre for Music in Edmonton so I could get a breath of wondrous classical music because I just can't take another second of another twangy country voice anymore.

(Smiles)

So here I am... Coming Home.

Here's Collective Soul's "The World I Know" - http://youtu.be/n7TLTjqUyog

"Chains Shall He Break..."

As I stood with my congregation this morning, it was with the uneasy frustration of "nothingness" once again. Why the jadedness, I cannot say for sure at this point, but each time I rise to sing, I feel guilty for praising God with my lips, but having my heart far from Him.

Yet today... even the entire congregation was different. We sang traditional carols of the season, but there was an "umph" to our voices... a desperation... a shouting out that I had not heard (or perhaps had not been able to hear) for many months. We were a hungry people -- arms reached out to gather their loved ones close, shoulders were touched gently, and our spirits began to become loud, rather than our physical voices. I cannot explain it. Nor do I care to.

We began singing "O Holy Night", and our voices crescendoed. As we came to the next verse, my heart about stopped: "How had I been so blind as to not see this before?" I had sung this song many, many times, yet these words have never pierced me so profoundly as they did today.

"Truly He taught us to love one another..."

People are hard to love. We are. Sometimes, we turn to the poor and marginalized so that we can find someone "easy to love" because of their circumstance, rather than turning to the person next to us with whom we might have a disagreement, with whom we might be afraid of, or for whom we harbor secret resentments. Only we find the poor and marginalized are just as hard to love as ourselves, for the reflect the very same things we see in ourselves that we resent, fear, and loathe.

"His law is Love, and His gospel is peace..."

Jesus did not merely teach love. Had He stopped at that, we all know it would have come to nothing more than a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. But Jesus Christ IS love... thus His good news can be no other way than love and peace. God cannot be other than He is, and He is love. He loved us, and commands us to love one another not to oppress us, but to shape us more into His likeness. "Ahhh... but people are so hard to love"... hmmm. Yet is was God who chose to put skin on. Take a moment to think about how hard that was.

"Chains shall He break, for the slave... he is our brother..."

Advent is our timing of preparation. Not only do we prepare to announce compassion and justice, to assist victims, or to raise awareness of the chains people around the world bear daily... but we prepare ourselves to welcome warmly and lovingly these people we once considered beneath us. That thought might sound repugnant to us, especially those of us who emphatically believe in equality before God, but when push comes to shove: there are people groups whom we distance ourselves from. Oh sure, it's all well and good once they 'repent' and become like us, but until then, they must drop the chains themselves.

This line in the verse I nearly shouted... HE shall break the chains. It will not be any work of ours alone, nor are we to stand back and demand slaves free themselves of their burdens and look like we do first before they sense our love. Hence... we prepare. Often we think we are ready to embrace the released captive, only to find skeletons in our closets that prevent us from doing so.

"... and in His Name, ALL OPPRESSION SHALL CEASE."

Done.

Gone.

No more.

Not from traffickers.

Not from pimps.

Not from buyers.

Not from you.

Not from me.

Not from history.

Not from now.

Not from governments.

Not from corporations.

Not from each other.

No more.

I belted out this stanza like I had never sung it before in my life. For the children bought and sold to make our carpets... for the men bought and sold for their organs... for the women bought and sold just because they are women... for the many bought and sold to be destroyed through indentured servitude... for the many of all ages bought and sold to be destroyed by sex, porn, and prostitution... for the many bought and sold in the name of God for whatever deceitful purpose contrived by evil doers... we all sang together as one this morning. I pray that our humble and broken offering does not fall on deaf ears, divine or human.

Even in the brothels, there is the sacred. If God is everywhere, then He is indeed everywhere. It makes the saddest and most horrific of darknesses the holiest of nights. I don't say this lightly, or to suggest that because God is present, He is condoning the buying of flesh. Hardly.

What I am saying is... "chains shall He brake for the slave, he is our brother. And in His Name, all oppression shall cease."

If God Love chooses to enter flesh by way of the poorest class, nation, gender on earth, then no one anywhere is out of reach of His peace. The promise is true. Oppression will cease.

When The Saints... Yeah, I Want to be One of Them

There are heroes, and then there are heroes. When Wolverine extends his adamantium claws, goes on the rampage, and saves the day despite his tortured self, I'll admit I've felt like the day's been saved a time or two. 

But those heroes fade away. People who try to be lone gunmen end up losing out in the end. Oh sure, the world paints them as saints or overcomers for a while, but when you walk alone to save the day, you walk home alone at the end of the day.

The heroes I'm talking about are the next door neighbors who take in Jews during WWII at the risk of their lives. Corrie ten Boom is a woman I deeply admire, and have written about before. Her vulnerability about her anger and bitterness as she lived through Ravensbruck, lost her family, and yet still discovered "there's no pit so deep...", and she went on to humbly share her story around the world for the rest of her life. That's love. It was love to choose to go against the ruling authority, it was love to see all people as God's beloved creation, and it was love to choose against her human anger and let God transform her very person.

Lady Day... there are a good deal of white people who believe that in our post-modern age, there is no racism. It's over. It's done. Sadly, it's our very whiteness that lies to our souls. Our ignorant veneer of colour blindness upholds institutions and communities of oppression -- it makes them ordinary -- so ordinary we are revolted to be even accused of them being racist. 

Billie was a voice for her time -- and ours. Her rendition of the poem, "Strange Fruit" (written by a Jewish man, by the way), began to tear down walls that not even she could have anticipated. Yes, her life was met with much tragedy, but her message began to open the eyes and the minds of many who didn't even know that strange fruit was still being harvested in the American South. 

 

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a peace activist who stood for the love and grace of Jesus Christ, even when Adolph Hitler demanded German churches tow the Nazi party line. Bonhoeffer's founding of the Confessing Church raised up a generation of German leaders to remain true to the Prince of Peace, and not the Fuhrer. While his stance of non-violence was placed at odds with his involvement in a failed assasination attempt on the Fuhrer's life, he showed himself as a broken man, saved by God, conflicted with the world. He walked to his execution a free man, already knowing his real destination. 

 

 

 

 

Sara Groves wrote the song, When the Saints. The lyrics rise up in me whenever I hear it -- a Song from the Underground. It was beautifully presented at our church's recent Missions Fest. While I have shared only 3 of the figures who have shaped my life personally (there are many others of all colours and ethnicities), I wish the lyrics and the music to be dedicated to the Nameless Ones -- the ones who are known by God, but hardly by humanity. Yet they dwell within the hardest places of our world. They are they heroes -- unworshiped, but dearly loved; un-idolized, but fully blessed; unknown, and content to be so. 

BTW... the brief images of the Sally Ann parade in the music video brought tears to my eyes. There I saw my parents... my grandparents... my great-grandparents... and my great-great grandparents... so speaking of heroes and saints...

I wanna be one of them.

When The Saints

By Sara Groves

Back to Album Back to Lyrics Menu

lord i have a heavy burden of all i've seen and know it's more than i can handle but your word is burning like a fire shut up in my bones and i can’t let it go and when i'm weary and overwrought with so many battles left unfought i think of paul and silas in the prison yard i hear their song of freedom rising to the stars and when the Saints go marching in i want to be one of them lord it's all that i can't carry and cannot leave behind it all can overwhelm me but when i think of all who've gone before and lived a faithful life their courage compels me and when i'm weary and overwrought with so many battles left unfought i think of paul and silas in the prison yard i hear their song of freedom rising to the stars i see the shepherd moses in the pharaohs court i hear his call for freedom for the people of the Lord chorus x2 i see the long quiet walk along the underground railroad i see the slave awakening to the value of her soul i see the young missionary and the angry spear  i see his family returning with no trace of fear i see the long hard shadows of calcutta nights i see the sister standing by the dying man’s side i see the young girl huddled on the brothel floor i see the man with a passion come kicking down that door i see the man of sorrow and his long troubled road i see the world on his shoulders and my easy load

 

Casting Crowns in a Strip Club

In a country that declares itself to be predominantly Roman Catholic, with a culture of Islam in the south, and a smattering of Pentecostal-related denominations (known as "born again" faiths), the Philippines is a very religous, very devout place. You cannot go anywhere without seeing a "John 3:16" on a license plate, or a "Jesus Cares for You" on a sticker somewhere. Everyone believes in God, and everyone knows about Jesus. Even the hotel I first sacked out at after my 4:30am arrival in Manila had a Bible waiting for me, a slip of paper for prayer requests that hotel staff could pray for, and Stephen Curtis Chapman playing in the cafeteria.

Should it have surprised me to hear Christian music playing in one of the bars we were in?

I guess not. But it seemed so... out of place.

When I recognized Casting Crowns' "I am a flower quickly fading... here today and gone tomorrow... a wave tossed in the ocean... a vapor in the wind... Still You hear me when I'm calling... You catch me when I'm falling... and You told me who I am... I am Yours..." -- I was mystified. It was as if the very establishment was trying to redeem itself in the eyes of God.

If we play this song, then the things that happen here won't be so bad.

It's not unheard of. Anyone who's into Bluetree knows precisely where the beloved "God if This City" originated (a brothel called "Climax" in Bangkok, Thailand). Spirit enters where He will, and will He does. Perhaps the owners or the girls or someone thought that by playing Christian music, it would somehow make it all 'better'. Yet we know music can't save people -- not by itself anyway.

But God can plant seeds.

And water.

And harvest.

I wonder if Casting Crowns knows its worship music is being blared in clubs like "Lips" or "The Office" or "Alley Cats" or "The Wet Spot"?

I wonder if it's not the better place for it to be shared?

 

 

They'll Call Me Freedom, Just Like a Wavin' Flag

Okay, so I'm usually not much for soccer chants, but this one grabbed me. With so many people working hard during the World Cup to raise awareness around the slave trade at large sporting events, I was leery about championing a song heralding just such an event.

But then I read the lyrics.

Really read them.

Soccer be thrashed (gasp! heresy!), this song is about freedom! This song is singing the song rising from the underground... from slave victims... from emancipated slaves... from abolitionists...

Then some young Canadian artists came together to raise money for Haiti after the eartquake. K'naan's song was the theme. Again, like soccer chants, not a fan of all the artists indvidually, but when they came together and sang these words -- more about freedom than about sport -- a chord was again struck in me.

To all the wavin' flags out there, unseen but not unsung, unknown but not unheard, you are our wavin' flags. Without you, we wouldn't know to listen to the songs risin' from the underground. We wouldn't know the hope and joy and laughter amidst poverty and violence. We wouldn't know the wonderful, immeasurable lives who make us all who are. Without your voices, we would cease to be.

You have not waited until you're older to sing out; you have not waited to be stronger before speaking out; you are our lights and our graces; you are our beauty in the mess and the wonder; you're out laughter when the dark is too much.

Your song brings a smiling hope. Yeah, you! Woohoo! 

So, readers, I hope you wake up in the morning (like I did today), with the refrain in your heads: "When I get older, I will be stronger; they'll call me freedom just like a wavin' flag..."

 Wavin' Flag - Artists for Haiti Version
(music video at the bottom)
Songwriters: Lawrence, Phillip; Mars, Bruno; Warsame, Keinan;

Young Artists For Haiti – Wavin’ Flag Lyrics

[All]
When I get older
I will be stronger
They’ll call me freedom
Just like a wavin flag

[K'naan]
Born from a throne
Older than Rome
But violent prone
Poor people zone

[Nelly Furtado]
But it’s my home
All I have known

[Sam Roberts]
Where I got grown
but now its gone

[Avril Lavigne]
Out of the darkness
in came the carnage
threatening my very survival

[Pierre Bouvier of Simple Plan]
Fractured my streets
and broke all my dreams

[Tyler Connolly of Theory of a Deadman]
Feels like defeat to wretched retreat

[All]
So we strugglin’

[Kardinal Offishall]
Fighting to eat

[All]
And we wonderin’

[Kardinal Offishall]
If we’ll be free

[Jully Black]
We cannot wait for some faithful day
it’s too far away so right I’ll say

[All - Chorus]
When I get older
I will be stronger
They’ll call me freedom
Just like a waving flag
(And then it goes back x3)

Ahhho ahhho ahhho

[Lights]
So many wars, settling scores
[Deryck Whibley of Sum 41]
All that we’ve been through
and now there is more
[Serena Ryder]
I hear them say love is the way
[Jacob Hoggard of Hedley]
Love is the answer that’s what they say
[Emily Haines]
But were not just dreamers
of broken down grievers
[Hawksley Workman]
A hand will reach us
And will not forsake us
[Drake]
This can’t control us
no it can’t hold us down
[Chin Injeti]
We gon pick it up even though we still struggling
[Pierre Lapointe]
Au nom de la survie (In the name of survival)
[all]
and we wondering
[Pierre Lapointe]
Battant pour nos vie (Fighting for our lives)

[All]
We patiently wait
for some other day
[Fefe Dobson and Esthero]
thats too far away so right now we say

[All - Chorus]

[Drake - Rapping]
Uhh – well alright
How come when the media stops covering
and there’s a little help from the government
we forget about the people still struggling
and assume that its really all love again, nahh
see we don’t have to wait for things to break apart
if you weren’t involved before it’s never too late to start
you probably think that it’s too far to even have to care
well take a look at where you live what if it happened there?
you have to know the urge to make a change lies within
and we can be the reason that they see their flag rise again

[Nikki Yanofsky & Drake]
When I get older
I will be stronger
They’ll call me freedom
Just like a wavin’ flag

[Matt Mays]
and then it goes back
[Justin Nozuka]
and then it goes back
[Nikki Yanofsky]
Then it goes back

[Chorus - All]

[Justin Bieber]
When I get older
When I get older
I will be stronger
just like a waving flag.

 

"Lay the Monster Low" - Music of Carl Thomas Gladstone

We know that many people involved in the emancipation of slaves during eras gone by used song not only as encouragement to one another in times of trial, but as codes: directions towards freedom, landmarks, and names of way stations along the Underground Railroad. While the modern slave trade has changed faces, the Hydra is still the poisonous creature it has always been.

And people are still created in the image of God, designed with a wondrous capacity to respond to music, as well as use music to move mountains. Carl Thomas Gladstone is just such a musician, poet, and sojourning soul walking the rocky path in the desert like the rest of us. According to Gladstone (from his bio): 

“If I were to be remembered as anything I'd hope it would be a poet. Whenever I put a song together I want the lyrics to be as subtly complex as any of the poems or scripture passages that inspired it. At the same time, it’s the music that finally energizes those same words beyond what they could do alone. I want to be Otis Redding singing Seamus Heaney or Steve Earle singing Maya Angelou. Beyond this, I hope that every finite thing I create contains some marker, some image, some reconfiguration of words that points listeners toward the infinite and amazing nature of God and the new community of Jesus.” From www.carlthomasgladstone.com

His album, The Abolitionist Hymnal, contains modern interpretations of such anthems as I Am An Abolitionist, and Spirit of Freedom, Wake! I appreciate the poetic social commentary, more acoustic than k roothless, but spiritual and deeply embedded in the richness of God's freedom all the same. I pray more artists use their voices to speak, sing, dance, move, or draw the Truth and the Love we are set free by.

The following is the Kickstart Video to the album is shown below:

 

Magic Sticks

So when I went to San Francisco in 2009 for the first ever Abolitionist Investigators' Training Academy with Not For Sale, I met this groovy minstrel named Scott McDonald (that's him leading us in song while we all froze in the wind at our crazy beach bonfire... can't be too hard on anyone. It was my idea to have a beach bonfire, after all. Silly Canadian...). He had developed the first mapping system for Not For Sale sowe could learn how to document and observe patterns of human trafficking in our own communities. Beyond being an amazing musician, he has superhero powers of rescuing tech-ignorant peasants in distress as we all peppered him with a ten thousand questions.

At the end of our 2 weeks, Scott shared an original song with us that spoke of longing, hope, chances of freedom, and plans to escape the world of slavery. Have a listen... buy the music... proceeds will go to helping efforts to end the child slave trade in Ghana, Africa. You won't regret it. Kudos, Scott! The music's awesome and the band has a tremendous sound. Thanks for your heart and soul being poured into your art!

Things You Should Know - buttonjaw

"Magic Sticks" - Scott McDonald

There lived a girl with magic sticks 
A portion of her plan to go away 
She keeps them on the bedroom floor 
The door unlocks, then she begins to play 

They're going to take her far away 
To come on back another day 
She didn't know what the love was for 
She didn't know that there's something more 

But the magic went away... 

She met a boy just out of school 
White horses and a plan to get away 
Had yet to drown the golden rule 
And he let her ride his horses for a day 

They're going to take her far away 
To come on back another day 
She didn't know what the love was for 
She didn’t know that there's something more 

But the horses ran away... 

She loves him now and then 
She loves him now and again 
She loves him now and then 

I met a girl with magic sticks 
A portion of her plan to go away

 

 

Raise Their Voice Conference - April 15,16 in Red Deer

Hey all... small and intimate, the Raise Their Voice Conference was a beautiful, tragic, real and wondrous time filled with artistic expression, networking, calls for help, and messages of hope. Here are some of the highlights posted by Raise Their Voice (from Vimeo). Check out their other bytes... it was a weekend well spent.

The song is a choral piece sung by 'Harmony through Harmony' -- an old Negro spiritual, it will haunt you as it will move you. The second video is Glendene Grant's story. Mother to Jessie Foster, a young Canadian human trafficking victim, listen to her testimony of the need in our country, the capacity to change circumstances, and God's continuing grace.

 

"My Child is Gone" – Harmony through Harmony from Raise Their Voice on Vimeo.

Glendene Grant - Keynote Address from Raise Their Voice on Vimeo.