Mitch McVicker
Album: Canticle of the Plains
Track: Cry For Freedom
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Cry For Freedom Lyrics Rich Mullins, Beaker, and Mitch McVicker
Vocals by Michael Tate
Matthew 20:25-28, Romans 7:5-6, First Peter 4:8-11
I like to pray, out here where there's room to breathe.
Take the air inside of me,
And let the spirit move.
And there's a sea of sage
Where they say a man is made to be
Tough as a young tumbleweed.
Light as cottonwood root.
I want to be that light.
I want to be that tough.
And if this soul of mine could lose
It's weight of pride and take to flight,
I'd rise above and be free, Lord free.
To serve the One who came to be a servant to us all, yeah
And Lord I'm down on my knees
I'm praying for the eyes to see
And ears to hear
This world's cry for freedom
Yeah, Freedom.
And I like to play, out here where there's room to grow.
No fences and no roads.
Everything is new.
And the dawn it breaks,
It heals the hurts that harden me.
So I can stretch and someday reach,
And I may be reached too.
I want to be that broken.
I want to be that strong.
Wake up where the big sky is open,
The wind is blowin',
And my heart sings along.
Singing, Lord I want to be free, Lord free.
To serve the One who came to be
A servant to us all, yeah.
And Lord I'm down on my knees,
And I'm praying for the eyes to see,
And ears to hear
This cry.
Free, Lord free.
Ooh, yeah.
A servant to us all.
He cried for freedom.
He died for freedom.
Yeah, oh.
I cry for freedom
I'd die for freedom
Yeah, freedom.
Yeah, freedom.
Yeah.
Buzz has a pet calf that they take with them, and the calf's name is Luke. And Frank explains as they're taking off that the calf is ... about the four evangelists in the Bible and how ... the four creatures around the throne of God in the book of Revelation, and how medieval theologians took those to be the four gospels, and that the calf represents Luke, which is the priestly or the servant gospel. And that jives with Buzz's character, because Buzz is the character in the musical that is the most servant-like and ... priestly. Buzz is based on Bernard di Quintavalle, who is I think Francis' first disciple. They don't know exactly where they're going. Buzz was planning on going to Texas on a cattle drive, so he just kind of starts heading that way, they get near to Wichita, Kansas, so they drop by to see some old friends of Frank's, and they visit a saloon that Ivory, who is the next important character, is a piano player in the saloon. And he's a childhood friend of Frank's. And Clare happens to be in the saloon there also, and she is also a childhood friend of Frank's. The piano player is not a convert at this point. And when Frank arrives, he's very skeptical about Frank, because when Frank came back from the war, everyone thought that he was crazy, that the war had snapped him. But now he's becoming a little bit of a celebrity, because he's so quirky, and he does talk with animals, and he does live in utter poverty. And Clare is very ... kind of excited and attracted to this, but at this point, Ivory is sort of hostile, at least very skeptical of it, and when Frank and Buzz come in to visit, they begin talking about what they had dreamed of being when they were kids. Ivory had dreamt of being a cowboy, but he never really had the courage to be a cowboy, and he became a piano player in a bar where cowboys come in to drink. And this song is just sort of his looking at his own life and going, "Wow, my life really doesn't amount to as much as I had hoped it would, and I'm not really doing what I dreamed of doing. What I'm really doing is playing piano for guys who do what I dream of doing."
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