The Cross and Crow

Art by Bre McDaniel

For a long while, I have had the image of a cross and crow in my mind. It first came from walking down Campbell Street in East Vancouver and seeing a crow perched on top of the cross that adorns the Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church. This image stayed with me and rose again a few years ago as I was preparing to enter into the task of songwriting again. As I set out to write the songs for this album I felt drawn to the image as a metaphor for a place of tension that I often inhabit, the tension between the grit of the world and the ascendant of the spiritual. While my theological mind rejects this sort of sacred/secular split (it is all holy! every square inch is claimed!) it is a tension that I feel in my day to day. This is a tension that I am pulled into deeper when I read the gospels and I as I continue to attempt to navigate my life in a fully conscious way taking seriously the life, words, and ongoing influence of Jesus the Christ, the man and also the mystical Messiah. This song speaks of my own journey. It speaks to the fact that I both know what I am oriented to and am completely lost. It speaks to the prayer that returns to me at times, praying that the Christ would lead me, confessing how lost I get when I navigate on my own. It also speaks to how much I love this world, the grit of it, and of the deep hope I hold for the world while also of the way I feel complicit in the forces that seem intent on the destruction of this world. 

The cross and the crow

You lead the way
I’ll follow quick behind
Right on your neck
I’m ready to abscond
The cross and crow
together in the sky
The lost and found
They need eachothers touch

You lead the way
I give up all control
I lost the path
Markers long ago
The cross and crow
together keep me here
hope for the world
the fear that I’m killing it

You lead the way
I’ll close my eyes and trust
I think You know
That I have said too much
The cross and crow
They burn into my arms
I’m marked for life
lost if you lead me wrong

You lead the way
I’ll follow quick behind
Right on your neck
I’m ready to abscond

Words and Music by Peter La Grand