Marker in the Sand.

I really like this song, the lyrics are great. Love when an artist makes us think about what he's saying.

Since the first time I've heard, it seemed like Eddie's thinking about the war and the role of religion on it, and in our world nowadays.

The first verses: "There is a marker... no one sees it cause the sand / Has covered over... All the messages it kept / Misunderstanding... What original truth was / And out expanding... In faith, but not in love" ; seems to me that they summarize this basic idea.
The sand makes me think about Christianism (but I don't know if there are other religious meanings to sand, if there are, I hope you excuse me for ignoring them), because it's said in the Bible that Jesus Christ used to write in the sand and that He left nothing registered in parchment (or whatever they used at that time). His message was transmitted by others, and so, as the years go by, might have been changed and importants aspects of it may have been lost. So, as someone that grew up in a Christian home and knows this aspect of the transmission of His message, it made me relate this to Christianism.

To expand in faith, but not in love, might mean that the religions (specially Islamism) are expanding their domains and the number of believers in the world, but we have to reason about what kind of message are they carrying on. Both religions - Christianism and Islamism - have their roots in the middle East, the muslins also believe in Jesus as a prophet, the message is very similar when it comes to the moral and love... but we see a dangerous fundamentalism arising. There are people killing others and dying because they were taught to believe they would be praising Alah (God) and their Prophet Mohamed by doing that (note: not all the muslins do that! We should not confuse their religion w/ terrorism!). And on the other hand, we have our Christian-Jewish Civilization killing thousands in wars, although we all share the precept that we should not kill .

For a long time now, people use faith and religion to make war or to obtain power ("Now you got both sides Claiming killing in God's name"). Those are dangerous times... We have fundamendalism in both sides: once we think governments would prohibit the Darwinism and the Evolution in schools to please religious groups that support them, it's really extraordinary (and not in the good way). I have watched a documentary in tv some time ago that showed some people in US who doens't let their kids go to school so they wouldn't learn about the scientific theory of the origin of life. What if those people gain the power to rule a nation (not necessarily the US, but some smaller country or Brazil, that's a country with a significative number of protestants?). In the name of that faith they would probably do things as worse as those the Catolic Church has promoted during the years that the Inquisition was in force, just to preserve their power. And this freedom he sings ("Like watching freedom,. Being sucked straight out to sea") , is the freedom that every single person loses once their government becomes too powerful and gives up democracy, or once a religion becomes too strong and violates the liberty of the others (to believe or to disbelieve).

Every single time in that song that Eddie asks God : "what do you say?", I think he wants us to make those questions too. It's up to us to find those answers and to look into the problem. And most of all, Eddie's inquiring about human nature, because every human has his own beliefs and knows what he would live or die for, what's worth in life. And that's huge deal: to find out what's worth without being led by others into that kind of madness. It's about finding out the truth behind it all, the real message.

Well, that's what I think about this song...

damned dup posts!

Fuck God

A lot of interesting takes, but imo, I don't think the song is much referring to religion in these times. I think the entire song is actually "calling out" the current administration for all the b.s. they're trying to pass by us in the name of the "moral Christian right." I am a Christian, and I cannot say how much it disturbs me to hear certain groups in my government try to tell me that I'm not--Most especially when they claim to walk this High Moral Ground but display absolutely no quailities of morality, truthfulness or forgiveness. Ed sees through all their crap and like many of us observing and being affected by this farce of a leadership, he wants to know what God thinks of how He's being represented. He's calling them out, if people would only see.

armanHammer wrote:

Ed is not a religious man. The song is sarcastic. Ed is asking God "If you exist, why is the world so fucked up?"

An easy question to ask, a very difficult one to answer.

It's definitely about the role religion has played in the war we find ourselves in today, how religious truths -- even beautiful ones -- have been bent and twisted to serve an evil agenda.

Americans believe God is on their side. Islamists believe by killing infidels, they get a free pass to heaven.

Lots of good stuff in the verses.

I really, really like how the chorus is arranged.

The first time I heard it, going by how the words are printed in the liner notes, it was hard to understand.

"With the living let
What is living love" -- what the hell does that mean? they are just sentence fragments. It took me a day or two to figure out it should be written:

"Do come down with the living
Let what is living love"

Makes perfect sense.

I also like how this song kind of toggles back and forth between a desperate prayer and a challenge. Some of the time he's asking God for help ... Please come down here and fix this mess people are making in your name. Straighten them out.

And sometimes he's challenging God. If you really exist you'll do something about these people killing in your name.

There's a big difference between "I'm calling out" and "I'm calling you out." -- and this song does both.

In conclusion, I think this is one of ed's best jobs ever, as far as lyrics go.

This one has way too much imagery-the title in itself-anyone remember Bush 41's "line in the sand"?

Did anyone think of Frederich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra the first time they heard this song?

armanHammer wrote:

Ed is not a religious man. The song is sarcastic. Ed is asking God "If you exist, why is the world so fucked up?"

You don't have to be "religious" to be spiritual, and there are SO many songs that touch on spirituality and his thoughts about it. Saying he's not religious is pointless imho.

i've been a mega froot loop for this song all week. love the 'there's a sickness' part of it, ed's voice sounds awesome. live versions of this tune kick ass as well