Daily Worship

Mercy Street

Dr Iain Jamieson November 04, 2016 0 0

Psalm 46:10

Be still and know that I am God

I'm a GP and the great privilege and great burden of my life is to be privy to the deepest and most personal of human interaction and experience. It truly changes you.

Peter Gabriel wrote Mercy Street when I was a medical student, just starting on the wards, just getting what the reality of my life was to be.

This wasn't going to be a "job for Christmas" this would turn my life around forever.

The whole lyric opens up the "skyline view" - what alcoholics and all folk at the end their rope refer to as the moment of clarity.

He wrote the song based (in part) around the Poetry of Anne Sexton.

Anne was haunted woman, very plugged in to her feelings and her world, who tragically committed suicide way to young and way to soon (but aren't they all).

I think though, it's the stillness and redemption at the end of the song that has always moved me and given hope.

I think the prayer (at the end) clarifies my thinking.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYw9UrsFJa4

 

Lyrics

Looking down on empty streets, all she can see

Are the dreams all made solid

Are the dreams all made real

All of the buildings, all of those cars

Were once just a dream

In somebody's head

She pictures the broken glass, she pictures the steam

She pictures a soul

With no leak at the seam

Let's take the boat out

Wait until darkness

Let's take the boat out

Wait until darkness comes

Nowhere in the corridors of pale green and grey

Nowhere in the suburbs

In the cold light of day

There in the midst of it so alive and alone

Words support like bone

Dreaming of Mercy Street

Wear your inside out

Looking for mercy

In your daddy's arms again

Dreaming of Mercy Street

'Swear they moved that sign

Looking for mercy

In your daddy's arms

Pulling out the papers from drawers that slide smooth

Tugging at the darkness, word upon word

Confessing all the secret things in the warm velvet box

To the priest, he's the doctor

He can handle the shocks

Dreaming of the tenderness, the tremble in the hips

Of kissing Mary's lips

Dreaming of Mercy Street

Wear your inside out

Dreaming of mercy

In your daddy's arms again

Dreaming of Mercy Street

'Swear they moved that sign

Looking for mercy

In your daddy's arms

Looking for mercy

Looking for mercy

Looking for mercy

Mercy, mercy

Anne, with her father is out in the boat

Riding the water

Riding the waves on the sea

 

 

Lord.

Sometimes it's just mercy.

And you and I riding the waves on the sea.