I guess it’s ’80s pop week here—more than a little odd for someone who never listened to the stuff at the time. Still, there were a few songs from that era I really liked anyway; “We Didn’t Start the Fire” was one of them, and this was another one.
For those who don’t know, kyrie eleison means “Lord, have mercy.” Many don’t; I’ve seen people write that it means “God go with me,” and I’d always assumed that the songwriter thought that’s what it meant. In fact, though, John Lang (who wrote the lyrics) grew up singing the Kyrie in an Episcopal church in Phoenix, and knew the meaning of the words. In a lot of ways, that makes the song more interesting, I think; it’s still a prayer for God’s presence as we go through life, but Lang knew when he wrote it that it’s also a prayer for his mercy on that road, which we certainly need, both in the bright days and when our path leads us through “the darkness of the night.”
I appreciate Lang’s almost mystical sense of life in this song; in the context of an ancient Christian prayer, with the imagery of wind and fire which has been used of the Spirit of God going all the way back to the time of Moses, one can certainly understand it to refer to the work of the Spirit in our hearts, and the song as a prayer for his mercy as we seek to follow where he leads us.
My one quarrel here is the third line of the chorus: “Kyrie eleison—where I’m going will you follow?” I don’t think that really fits with the first line (“Kyrie eleison down the road that I must travel”), and taken by itself it gets matters exactly backwards; actually, when we start looking at things that way—”God, I’m going this way; are you coming?”—tends to be when we get into trouble (and thus need his mercy the most, of course). I suspect it was most likely meant to ask, “Are you going with me down this road you’re sending me on?” but that misses the fact that God doesn’t send us, he leads us. There have been times when I’ve sung this song, privately, as a prayer, but when I do, I reverse that third line: “where you lead me, I will follow.”That’s the orientation we need to have if we’re seeking to live under the mercy of God; his mercy isn’t simply something to which we appeal when we go wrong, but is in fact the light that guides us to go right.
Kyrie
Kyrie eleison
Kyrie eleison
Kyrie . . .The wind blows hard against this mountainside,
Across the sea into my soul;
It reaches into where I cannot hide,
Setting my feet upon the road.My heart is old, it holds my memories;
My body burns, a gemlike flame.
Somewhere between the soul and soft machine
Is where I find myself again.Chorus:
Kyrie eleison down the road that I must travel;
Kyrie eleison through the darkness of the night.
Kyrie eleison—where I’m going will you follow?
Kyrie eleison on a highway in the light.When I was young I thought of growing old—
Of what my life would mean to me;
Would I have followed down my chosen road,
Or only waste what I could be?Chorus out
Words: John Lang; music: Richard Page and Steve George
© 1985 Ali-Aja Music/Indolent Sloth Music/Panola Park Music/WB Music Corp.
From the album Welcome to the Real World, by Mr. Mister