Sanctuary (2020)

After all the damage I’ve done to unlearn what I learned
All those refugees fleeing the bridges I burned
Every deal that I cut with the world cut right down to the bone
Cut my lifeline to everything I once called home

But I see a light at your door
Behind it, delight and surprise
Welcome is burning like candleflame in your eyes
“Come on inside, it’s so cold”
The weight of the world lying on my shoulders
You lift it off and you hang it on your coatrack
Sanctuary

I grew up in Sophia’s embrace, safe and sheltering arms
Unsuspecting what waited ahead in the dark
And I was raised to think people are kind
It was the air that I breathed
‘Til experience flattened the wind out of me

Now I feel new breath fill my lungs
And I feel you help me to stand
Drawing me back into life as you offer your hand
I step into the light at your door
Behind it, delight and surprise
Welcome is burning like candleflame in your eyes
Sanctuary
Sanctuary

Composed: Begun in North Manchester, Indiana, January 2002; completed in Fairland Heights, Maryland, August 2020

Notes: Life-changes are incubators for songs, and sometimes it takes awhile. This hymn of gratitude began as a thank-you to a particular friend, and the lyric wended its way through various versions about different friends over 18 years, until it gradually became a song about all of them. Sheltering in place during the COVID-19 pandemic was the perfect setting in which to finish it.

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