It All Comes Down to Lost Causes

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Jars of Clay is one of my very, very favorite bands. But every time I have given a sample of their music to someone, the lucky recipient has failed to grasp their brilliance. Here's a sample of their lyrics . . . to a beautiful song called "Surprise" (from the album Good Monsters). You have to imagine the melody, a quiet, swinging, haunting sound:

Surprise

Shoot a dream in your arm and sleep away,
It’s not the stuff that kills you that keeps your life at bay
Every crash pulls you in reach,
Of a watershed of signal flares that cover your beach,

These are just placebos to make us feel all right,
Illusions in our pockets make our feathers float us high,
For a second I thought I saw your eyelids rise,
For a moment something restless caught you by surprise,
Surprise, surprise, surprise.

We are so beautiful when we sleep,
Hearts of gold and eyes so . . . deep, deep, deep.
But love won’t cure the chaos, and hope won’t hide the loss,
And peace is not the heroine that shouts above the cause.
And love is wild for reasons, and hope though short in sight,
Might be the only thing that wakes you by surprise
surprise, surprise, surprise.

Dream, little ones . . .
See the world that’s just begun.

Love is wild for reasons, and hope though short in sight,
Might be the only thing that wakes you by surprise,
for a moment I thought I saw your eyelids rise . . .

Surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise.
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