Roll Away Your Stone
My current favorite band is Mumford & Sons… I’m doing my best to share them with a couple of my all-time favorite peeps, every chance I get.
And my all-time best, most introspective of their songs is “Roll Away Your Stone”:
Roll away your stone, I’ll roll away mine.
Together we can see what we will find.
Don’t leave me alone at this time,
For I am afraid of what I will discover inside.
You told me that I would find a home,
Within the fragile substance of my soul.
And I have filled this void with things unreal,
And all the while my character it steals.
I love this imagery. The song title alone brings to mind the Resurrection and new life through following Jesus’ teachings. For me, at least. For all I know this was written as a bitter love song about broken hearts or some such piddly thing: “a fabulous hoedown about a man unsuccessfully filling the hole in his soul.” (http://www.mumfordandsons.
Pfft.
But we’re never alone. Our friends, our teachers, our Guiding Angels are always with us in some form. Especially at our most trying times. Remember the “Footprints” poem?
This is also a reminder to me that there are more important things than cars, clothes, gadgets (tho’ I do so love my Apple toys!!)… and I’m not gonna get any happier by spending money. The *things* are nice, and they often make the daily toil easier to take, but they’re not what I’m really looking for.
The darkness is a harsh term don’t you think?
And yet it dominates the things I seek.
It seems as if all my bridges have been burned.
You say that’s exactly how this grace thing works.
It’s not the long walk home that will change this heart,
But the welcome I receive at the restart.
I’m on the fence about what the “restart” here is referring to. Is it the arrival Home, or the next cycle of life? And the next cycle is another life… but how, and where? One thing is for sure, though: no matter what we do here, it’s never too late to make amends. (note, I didn’t say ‘easy’!)
Stars hide your fires,
And these here are my desires,
And I will give them up to you this time around.
And so, I’ll be found with my stake stuck in this ground
Marking its territory of this newly impassioned soul.
But you, you’ve come too far this time.
You have neither reason nor rhyme
With which to take this soul that is so rightfully mine.
“Roll Away Your Stone” by Mumford & Sons: lyrics