Sarah Sparks "Eustace Scrubb"
Lyrics
and I hate who I am.
I've become what I feared and I cried dragon tears
Just to prove I'm a man.
I tried to change my appearance but I am not changed
I'm just tired.
I tried to heal myself long before I met your gaze
at the water.
I'm at Your feet would you tear into the deep of my heart
To heal me?
Ive seen my own reflection, I know the pain I'm in.
I've been a lonely wretch and I can't get out of it.
As he looked through my eyes at the things I despised
I felt pierced by His gaze.
But he pealed off my skin and he threw me into
the water, to save me.
I tried to change my appearance but I am not changed
I'm just tired.
I tried to heal myself long before I met your gaze
at the water.
I'm at Your feet would you tear into the deep of my heart
To heal me?
I wore this bracelet, bright and golden that overnight became a chain.
I was a lonely, wretched soul that, lost in the dark cried out Your name.
You cut me deep, I know I felt it, but it's the sweetest kind of pain.
Oh sweet relief, You took my burdens
Oh I believe, oh I believe.
Discussion
This is a beautiful song... actually the whole album is pretty incredible, and we will probably be revisiting it in the future on this blog. You can but it for whatever price you would like at the link above the lyrics.
Both the album and this song are written about an allegory, and therefore is absolutely understood on two levels, also, the original allegory is written by one of the most powerful Christian thinkers of the last 100 years. So, although captured and retold beautifully by Sarah Sparks, the true genius of this song is an expounding of the weighty words and thoughts of C. S. Lewis.
Possibly many of you are most familiar with his most currently popular work "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe." and indeed this song finds its origin in that story, but his library of works is full and deep and brave. Lewis writes without hesitation about the conflicts and difficulties of living a faith philosophy and allowing that ideology to manifest in the best and worst circumstances that we face as humans. If you haven't explored his works, please, dive in and let his suffering and struggling bolster your faith as you encounter all of the hills and valleys that life may and will throw your way.
So... to understand the song, let's talk about Eustace Scrubb.
"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb... and he almost deserved it." It is the first line of "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" Eustace Scrubb is not a typical hero. Instead, he is a typical person. We see ourselves as the protagonists of our own lives, and therefore the hero. In our best thoughts, we would imagine the thread of our lives to trace similarly to Edmond, Susie, Lucy or Peter, the definitive heroes of the Narnia series. But none of us are really those things. The Christian walk is at its most vital and basic action, an admission and a release. It is ours, and has been ours since nearly the beginning, to simply come back to God, to let our hands fall and to walk toward Love with as much sincerity as we can bear.
This is the story of Eustace Scrubb. He is small, self-centered and petty. He is antagonistic toward all other characters, and just really an unimaginitive and shallow whiner. He, is us. Do you reject that? That admission, that we lack understanding, generosity, kindness, ability and true charity, that is the Christian odyssey. That is what we learn as we venture out with honesty into the mirror that is the gospel and the light of a knowing and loving God. The lessons learned from this revelation are the fertile soil that Jesus tills and plants with honest progressive conversion. We become truly charitable, because of the revelation of how selfish we are, and that even in that selfishness, we are shown grace. As we reveal layer upon layer of how selfish we are at our core, we are shown just how powerful God's grace toward us, and everyone else, is. This is the threshing floor of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
For Eustace Scrubb, his own blindness was so complete (partially due to his parents who had raised him with shallow and unproven, faddish education... Lewis' quick-witted stab at the modern educational system) that he had to become an entirely new creation to be able to see how wretched he truly was. By going and resting on a dragon hoard, tucked into a cave, Eustace Scrubb physically transformed into a dragon. After his transformation, he had his first revelation about just how awful he was and began to want to become something better. The deeper his self-realization went, the more he saw that he wanted to be something better. After his longing became strong enough, Aslan baptized him in a magic pool and he shed his dragon skin.
Lewis' depth of understanding of Christ and how God encounters and moves us continues to show as Eustace's transformation, although outward and obvious, has now only just begun. Eustace Scrubb, once a man again, continues to struggle and change his ways, until in the final novel, "The Last Battle" Scrubb is heroic, and humble. These two traits are a truly rare combination and are the reward of a life lived following Jesus Christ.
Lewis parallels Scrubb's transformation to Christ finding and changing us, not as an end, but as a means to help us learn about what love is, humble, giving and undeniably powerful. Love is both the ends and the means. Everything is God, revelation, transformation, conclusion.
Now I think we should explore Sarah Sparks dive into Scrubb. Her first two lines may be the most powerful lines in this song. She continues in stark honesty as she states that she has tried to change... but has only become tired. It is these circles that twist humanity about. We know that we disapprove of what we do, who we are, but we are unable to make real change. The first verse ends with the most powerful thing we can say to Jesus. I am here, please help.
The chorus continues to spin the wheel of the human condition, the continual realization that we are walking in the circles of our pain and degradation and we are unable to step away from them.
Verse two sees Scrubbs transformation and I really like the way she worded this. Aslan (God) sees our deprivation through our own eyes, not as condescention, but as the reality of our lives, from our perspective, and then pierces through it. After which, Aslan peels off the dragon skin and Scrubb begins his own transformation.
The song ends with a Coda. The first line is about how Scrubb became trapped on the dragon hoard, but also hints that it is our own desires that entangle us. The Coda, and the song, ends with release as God's grace, the safety of knowing that we will never be rejected. Even after layers and layers of our own selfishness and sin are revealed, we are never judged, still loved and are safe. This is the cutting, the threshing floor of Jesus, the sweet pain of our understanding of the depths of our own darkness, and the coinciding understanding of just how big God's love for us is.
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