The world in 2020 is a dark garden of fear and malaise.

Everyone, everywhere, is anxious. Some days it honestly feels like the end of all things.

Or as J.R.R. Tolkien writes, "How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?"

We believe - we are trying to believe - that the core truth at the bottom of the world — the bedrock on which it is built — is not anger and suffering and violence and hate. Not fear and crisis and collapse. We believe the truth behind the universe is love, and the darkness does not have the final word.

Or, as the rest of that Tolkien quote goes on to say: "In the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."

These songs are mostly about that.

Some of them are about fear of the other, and how we are called to defy it.
Others are about our own internal search for something to trust, and a tenacious hope that the morning is coming, despite all evidence to the contrary.
One is an intensely personal document of our own grief.
One is a cover song, one that we've drawn encouragement from over the last decade.

We are not singing these words at you from a position of having all the answers. We're singing them because they're the words that *we* need to hear, too. We hope they can be a comfort, a rest, a flickering candle in the dark.

Be safe, be well, and know that you are loved.