Brother moon
Shine down your light on us tonight
Show us the love of God
Sister sun you bring out the day
You’re shining the light of God on your face today

Maker of it all
You provide it all
In You we live
In You we move
In You we have our being
You’re glorious
You’re holding us together all together

Brother wind your clouds and your storms
You’re breathing the breath of God in your lungs for us
Mother earth, you’re giving us life with God’s open hand you always provide
For us
Maker of it all
You provide it all
In You we live
In You we move
In You we have our being
You’re glorious
You’re holding us together all together

You are everything good, you are everything beautiful
You are everything, you’re everything




Behind the Song:
As the final notes of “Let There Be” have reached the end of their sforzando, the flutes enter with a new mood. Dark, epic explosions of rock and heat give way to the tiny flutterings of new life.

The inspiration for this song was born on my trip to Assisi, Italy last year. I took a week of silent meditation in the hills where St. Francis lived. In St. Francis’ Canticles of the Creatures, he speaks in wonder of the created order and his understanding of the creator’s face shining through it. Much of the “Brother Moon” verse lyric is lifted straight from Assisi’s words, even though some poetic license is taken. (For instance, “brother sun” felt more cumbersome to sing than the alliteration of “sister sun”, so the gender was switched there)

The chorus is simply an exclamation from the poetry of Epimenides that it is in “Him that we live and move and have our being.” This gives way to the outro of the song that continues that exclamation by claiming that this creator is the essence of everything good and beautiful. More than just a claim that “the guy in the sky” is good or beautiful, this is attributing that which is good and seen to part of a greater whole. Rather than attributing characteristics to a god that we already have a concept of, it is the praise of a wonder-filled creature, seeing that the reality in which we live and move and have our being is in essence good and beautiful. This Reality can be seen and experienced all around us.

These are not simply the philosophical musings of a mystic, but something that I experienced very personally and truly in Assisi. In the silence, I discovered a freedom as I drank in the beauty of Reality. At one point, I even found myself on top of a hill dancing like a child (or perhaps some sort of lunatic). I was free from the concerns of pleasing others in an attempt to keep my ego from being injured, so free that my normal anxieties and fears could not overpower the joy that I was finding in my heart. This song is an attempt to put a sound to that joy and freedom.

Musically, it would have been easy to fill this upbeat song with normal instrumentation like electric guitars that would easily “drive” the energy. But I tried not to go in that direction. In fact, as I recall, there are no electric tracks on this song, but there are well over a hundred tracks of other instruments, from piccolo flutes to giant bass drums, representing the endless variety of the universe around us. As the various vocal parts circle the listener’s head when the band’s last chord fades out, one can imagine hearing the voices of all of these elements of creation (moon, sun, earth, wind, etc.) singing the praises of their creator.

-- Gungor