A Better Place

Everyone is mighty, and everyone is weak;

Everyone is an artist, and everyone’s a bureaucrat;

Everyone is a good guy, and everybody is a rat;

Everyone is beautiful, and everyone is base;

But you made this a better place.

Everyone is sacred, and everyone is just a bag of flesh;

Everyone is a star, and everyone is just second best;

Everyone lives forever, and disappears without a trace;

But you made this a better place.

Everyone thinks they’ll live fovever, and their sure they’re gonna die next week;

Everyone is damned, and everyone is graced;

But you, made this a better place, yea you, made this a better place.

I first heard this song on disc 2 of the Sound Theology albums by Jonathan Rundman (2000). According to the album info it was written by Michael Hall about the loss of a friend. Jonathan notes, and I agree with him, “It captures perfectly the dual nature of humankind. I appreciate the paradoxical Lutheran idea of people as ‘sinner and saint’ at the same time.”