Same Song

On his “Beyond the Frame” album, Andy Gullahorn wrote a track called “The Same Song.” The song echos a continual reframe: “We’re all singing the same song.” Gullahorn seems to have looked out the window of his house and taken notice of everyone going about their day; humming a tune they feel is all their own. But Andy wants them(us) to hear how the song is the same. It’s not merely an idea that we are connected through some cosmic force. It’s not even the idea that we all have lungs that need the same air. Instead, Gullahorn is helping us to see how we share a brokenness and longing that finds deeper waters than our different professions and status in life.

This shared song sounds beautiful to us when it seems others come close enough to become our backup singers. We are glad they came to join us on “our” track. But it’s difficult to hear the beauty of this shared song when those who come close aren’t singing in key and refuse your harmony and tempo. In fact, it becomes difficult to hear it as the same song at all. And we begin to see them as crowding us and drowning out the beauty of our song with their own. It becomes easy to be frustrated and combative when we feel someone is “stealing our solo.”

Most of our relationship troubles come from feeling someone is taking the spotlight away from us and our song. Before we get lost in the metaphor, simply said, we have difficulty seeing other people’s story and need as important as our own. And the closer our relationship with someone grows, the more contact their story and brokenness has with ours. And a greater chance both parties will eventually, in their own way, demand the importance of their story over and above each other. All the while forgetting how both are caught up in and given meaning by a greater story of Jesus being abandoned, suffering, and dying for the sake of those who are downcast, weak, and unable to fix themselves.

We all need a constant reminder that we sing the same song when it comes to living in a world full of suffering and decay amidst the beauty and redemption that is slowly growing back around us. It’s not easy to perform a duet when convinced you should be singing lead. The remedy isn’t just in the confessing of your inability to sing flawlessly or share the stage with others. The ultimate remedy is found when we finally notice the genius of the songwriter himself. When we see how we are given the chance to join in the song despite our ability to hit all the notes. We begin to see how others are singing the same song, and actually sing our weak parts better than us, and vice-versa.

Instead of trying to prove the importance of our song against others, we begin to see how we all sing this same song off tune and with inconsistent rhythm. None of us entirely know how to read the sheet music of the songwriter. And perhaps the beauty of the song lies in the songwriter allowing all our imperfections to be swallowed up by his perfect work.