An Army of Paper Saints

At lunchtime on Thursday, I was skimming on facebook when I IM’d Eva, a cowriter of mine in Houston. We recently started working on a song, and I’ve been pretty remiss in working on it. I wanted to tell her I’ve been thinking about it, which I have, but to be honest, not that much.

In the process of the conversation, I told her I had another idea for a worship song. No title, not even a hook; Only an idea.

The idea is coming together in authenticity. Real with one another in the Church. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a new idea, but I’ve been feeling led to write it.

I love working with Eva. She’s a walking, talking, emailing vessel of the Holy Spirit. We bounced a few ideas back and forth and she said she’d pray about it and write down some ideas.

At that moment I had a thought and typed two words in the box and hit send “Paper Saints”.

She replied, “tell me about that. I replied something like, ”not real saints, just 2 dimensional cut-outs of what a saint is supposed to look like“.

She started a file and just before I went back to work, I typed this into the file:

We come with needs unspoken
for fear of being exposed
And though the circle be unbroken
we unfold into an army of paper saints.

That evening, I sat at he piano and started playing around.. 5 minutes later I had a chorus. I went online and opened the file. She had copied my im onto the page and had started a verse.

I started typing.. she came online and she started praying.. then the words flowed, and by Friday morning, most of the lyric was done. I went in the studio on Saturday morning.. and by the next day we had a work tape done.

I gotta tell you, when the Holy Spirit is on board, writing the song’s just a matter of holding the pen, laying your hand on the keyboard, and most importantly, getting out of the way.

If you’d like to give it a listen, you can check it out here.