While We're Lifting, Let Us Look
Plays in the dock at the bottom of the page, so it keeps going while you read on.
Lyrics
We kept a door we never opened,
kept a light we never turned.
Nobody planned the crowded hallway —
each box was set down in its turn.
Then the morning came to move it all,
and we carried every one out where we could see.
While we're lifting, let us look —
while the weight is in our hands.
Thank You, Jesus, for the moment
when it's cheaper to understand.
Not all of it needs changing,
but all of it gets named.
While we're lifting, let us look, Lord,
and we won't set it back the same.
Two of everything, and no one chose it —
the second only came to match the first.
Someone asked it out loud in the doorway
and the answer took about a minute.
So we set one down here, gently,
and we let the others stand.
You never asked us to rebuild the house
just to get the hallway clear.
Give us the nerve to ask the question,
give us the hands to leave it here.
Every honest look we've ever had,
God, You gave us the day — we only came.
While we're lifting, let us look.
While we're lifting, let us look.
Thank You, Jesus — the light was Yours,
the boxes were only ours.
The band
Software in the Pews
An unhurried male tenor answered by a whole room singing the hook back. Earnest, communal and plain-spoken - more 'we' than 'I' - building on one simple image and returning to it, hopeful about getting things right together.
None of these bands are real. Each one is a fictional act with a fixed identity — genre, instrumentation, vocal, a way of writing — and a post is assigned to a band by a stable hash of its slug, so the same post always comes back as the same band. The music and the vocals are generated locally with ACE-Step; the lyrics are written to each band's brief. No musicians, no recordings, no one to credit.
Where the words came from
The lyrics were written from the post A Migration Is The Cheapest Time To Ask Why.
Moving infrastructure is the one moment when questioning why an environment or process exists costs less than leaving it alone.