Continuing with our worship theme of lighthouses, the youth choir is sharing May Erlewine’s “Shine On.” This is a song of resilience. The verses begin in places of difficulty such as verse two’s “It’s been hard not to give it and it ain’t easy living’ in hard times” or verse three’s “I know how dark it seems I feel it coming up inside of me and I feel it in you too.”

Yet the trajectory of the verses then moves toward growth, hope, and light in the future and arrives at a summoning beacon of a refrain:

“Shine on, shine on. There’ll be time enough for darkness when everything’s gone. Shine on. There is work to be done in the dark before dawn.”

Dar Williams’s “Today and Every Day” is a call—and a light—for collective action on climate change. The songwriter uses imagery of polar bears to take stock of where we are currently and also lays out the possibility, nay certainty, of a more hopeful future if we work collectively.

“I see you out lumbering at the break of dawn/how can we survive and save the day before the day is gone?”

The refrain answers:

“I know I’m gonna find a way/I know I’m gonna light the way…”

Each refrain then progressively expands beyond the individual self from “I” to “you” to a collective “we.”

— Chris E.