Every Road Home
Plays in the dock at the bottom of the page, so it keeps going while you read on.
Lyrics
We drew the map on the back of a door
Every hallway numbered, every room a chore
But we forgot the ones who'd walk it every day
We built the halls and lost the reason on the way
So we walked it backwards, hand on the wall
Found the ones it's for, remembered why we build at all
Every beam and wire tracing to a face
Every road we're building leads somewhere, to someone's place
Jesus, thank you, you never lost the thread
You see the whole road while we just see what's ahead
Every road leads home, every road leads home
You were walking with us before we knew the way
Now the map and the mission hang as one
We can trace the journey back to where it begun
And when the road gets tangled, when the signs are gone
We follow it back to you, and you lead us on
You don't just build the walls, Lord, you walk the halls
You know the ones who need us before the whole thing falls
Teach us to remember every step's a soul
Teach us every part we build is serving the whole
Jesus, thank you, you never lost the thread
You see the whole road while we just see what's ahead
Every road leads home, every road leads home
You were walking with us before we knew the way
Every road leads home
We'll follow you, we'll follow you
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 The Hidden Value of Mapping Technical Stories Back to Business Workflows.
Technical stories become far more valuable when they're connected to the business workflows they support. Traceability improves planning, communication and long-term maintainability.