Friday, April 11, 2008

More Alli Rogers

Not so long ago I wrote about Alli Rogers' song "New Today." A few days ago she told the story on her own blog.

I love her explanation- I especially appreciate her sharing the image of a young woman in her apartment. As soon as I read that it was like there were bricks and curtains and sunlight and breeze and Easter lilies and church bells, etc. I don't know if that's what Alli's image was but my point is that I appreciated the image. :)

Alli said:

While writing this song I had a strong image in my head that informed the lyric. It is of a girl in her apartment which is across the street from a church. It is Easter Sunday and she has picked out a new dress and new shoes and is trying to feel the way you should feel on Easter. Reborn, forgiven, new. But she feels draped in shame, aware of every ounce of evil she has proved capable of. I know this girl, I’ve been this girl.


At the end I saw one of the tags for her post was "shame." Something about that to me was perhaps the most striking of all. If only, as Christians, we would talk more about shame- the cause, the effect, and more importantly the SOLUTION!! I am going to posit that the antidote to shame is mercy, mercy, mercy. So let us all sing for new mercies.

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Another snippet:

The new version ended up housing my favorite musical moment on “You And The Evening Sky”. It is at the bridge when the vocal sings “new mercies, new mercies, new mercies, I see...”. Don discovered that part of the original melody from the hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness” fit perfectly underneath my melody during that part. So if you listen carefully, you’ll hear the violin playing the tune to “all I have needed thy hand has provided...” and I tear up every time I hear it.


I think I laughed out loud when I read this: Don Chaffer is such a freaking genius! I love him! I promptly listened to "Great is Thy Faithfulness" a bunch of times and then listened to Alli's bridge about 14.7 more times, it brought me great joy.

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