This Is Not the End (cont'd)
A Reflection On The Gray Havens' Latest Album, Pt. 2
On September 5th, The Gray Havens (a Christian narrative-pop music band from Nashville) released their album This Is Not the End. Just a few days ago, I wrote a newsletter reflecting on the first five songs of that album:
Track #1: “Anywhere”
Track #2: “Loop Cycle”
Track #3: “The Magic”
Track #4: “Shine”
and finally Track #5: “Where the Living Is Deep”
If you missed the first part, you can catch up here:
In today’s post, I’ll be finishing up the reflection with the last five songs. The second part if This Is Not the End takes a bit of a different turn in it’s narrative. While the first half resonates with the to live part of “real”, so to speak, the second half (for me, anyway) is laced with the keep living. Both are hard. Yet both are also full of hope.
Track #6: “Ordinary Miracle”
I love this song because, for me, it’s about growing up and missing your childhood. It’s about forgetting how to see wonder in the world and realizing what beautiful mysteries you can see through the eyes of a child.
“Blue kite, butterfly, high up in the breezes
Best friends, let’s pretend, we could climb and reach it
It was just an ordinary miracle
When heaven came down close I could feel it
Wide-eyed, why did I ever want to leave it?”
In retrospect, reality is much simpler yet simultaneously so much more magical when you’re young.
“Cause if I could fly
Back to the dream
Just for the night
Nowhere to be
King of the clouds
A kid in a tree
Could I still believe
In miracles?”
It takes a keen eye to see the all the ordinary miracles God has crafted into His world.
Track #7: “Give Me Rest”
This song, more than any on This Is Not the End, flows like a meditative prayer. It’s the sort of poem you’d find yourself murmuring late at night when you’re too tired to fall asleep. It’s the sort of prayer you’d whisper when life’s ups and downs seem to come one after another without letting up.
“Painful sorrow, sad regrets
They’ve become a wilderness
And my heart can’t heal in this loneliness
Jesus, find me, and once again
Be my rest.”
While I personally didn’t love this song as much as the rest of the tracks, I really appreciated it as part of the album (which definitely wouldn’t be complete without it).
Track #8: “Hold Me Close”
Similar to Loop Cycle and Anywhere, this song touches on anxiety, but rather than focus on the inner thought process it explores an emotional and physical energy drain.
“There’s this feeling in my chest
That travels straight down to my fingers
And if I feel it then I know I’m not alright
And I tried my best to control it
But it only makes it worse if I notice
And all I know is I can’t sleep like this tonight.”
Similar to Loop Cycle, my affinity for this song originally stemmed from how well it fit one of my characters (incidentally, the same one I referred to with Loop Cycle - this poor guy, I know). The placement of this song is really well done, as it’s directly after Give Me Rest. The two tracks compliment each other - one being a prayer addressed directly to God, and the second being more of a plea.
“I know it’s late
I know I’m tired
Anxious thoughts in my mind
Keep running ovеr
I know You’re there
I know You know
Just pull mе in
And hold me close.”
One other thing I really like is how this particular song doesn’t explore a resolution to the songwriter’s pleas. (Spoiler: that won’t come until the final track - but it’s worth the wait, I promise.) This song, similar to Loop Cycle and Give Me Rest, don’t directly tell the answer to the presented problem. But they do show and promise that there is one.
Track #9: “Over & Over”
This is my number one favorite song from the album. It’s close to my heart, and close to the songwriter’s as well. He [David Radford] said about it:
“I half wish I could take this song down, pull it back from the world. Maybe just keep it for me and my family. But I’m releasing it in hopes that it will reach someone somewhere that really needs to hear it.”
Well, it did.
Me. *raises hand*
This song is about missing. It’s about missing someone you love - someone you lost. I can’t quite say what exactly it is about this song…perhaps the simplest of lyrics hit the hardest…but I’ve listened to it on repeat, a lot.
“There’s a song that you played I remember
Can’t get it out of my head
And I’ve played it over and over
And over and over again
”Heart of my own heart
Oh, why’d you have to go away
All of me was for you
I just wish you’d stayed”
It’s at the end of this song that the hope hinted at throughout this album is finally shown in full.
“There is a promise I cling to
It’s all that I have left
That the darkness that took you can’t finally win
If the last to die is death
And one day we will finally see
Everything made right
We will rise again and find
A song that never dies
And we’ll sing it over and over again.”
A lot of really hard things have happened this past year. I’ve touched on one of them in a past newsletter - and between the newscast and your own lives, I’m sure you understand what I mean.
This is one of the reasons I love being a Christian. We have hope, guys! Suffering isn’t forever. Death doesn’t get the final word.
This world - ‘what we see with our eyeballs’, as my writing instructor puts it, - is not the end.
Track #10: “This Is Not the End”
We made it to the title track! Let us delight in the irony of this song being the very last one in the album.
This Is Not the End tells a story in metaphorical form using the imagery of two fighters in a ring. The songwriter opens by looking back on all the precious songs for a moment, recalling his fears and anxieties, and the dark times when he just wanted to give up.
“It’s the end of the line
Words that I said to myself so many times
I’ve been so low, found myself going down
Sinking like, sinking like stone
Tried to fight
I have stepped in the ring
With a darkness in my mind
You can lose sight…”
But, just as in Over & Over the song - and, consequentially, the album - doesn’t have an open ending. To the contrary, it concludes with quite the definitive statement.
“Might be back on the ropes
Might be down in the ring
Oh, Death, you’re a fighter
But you’ve lost all your sting
So the more that you hit me
The more you can’t win
You can knock me down, drag me out
But ring the bell for one more round
I’ll get up again, ‘cause this is not the end.”
In Part One of this mini-series, I mentioned that the one word which could summarize this album was ‘real.’ After writing these two posts, I stand by my statement more firmly than before. This album explores the ups & downs of life and the turmoil of emotions that whirl along with everything else.
Yes, the struggle is real (to steal the oh-so-colloquial slogan), but so is our hope in Christ. The things of this world may prick and sting, but they can’t hurt us anymore.
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” — C S Lewis
I love this. You put into words very well what each song is about. To me, “Ordinary Miracle” is the song embodiment of Sam’s quote from The Two Towers (movie) when he says “There’s some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”
Love these thoughts! Maybe I’m too hasty to call it, but I think this album is the best from The Gray Havens yet! “Anywhere” in particular has stuck with me recently