"Who Told Us" -- a song about the human struggle with shame

I wrote this song for my final 'communication event' for a class that I'm taking called Hebrew Bible and Pastoral Practices.. It's about how humans struggle with shame, and it's based on a reading of Genesis 3 in conversation with the work of Dr. Brene Brown. If you want to hear a beautiful sermon that inspired me to take on this particular project, then take a listen to Stan Mitchell at GracePointe Church in Tennessee.

Here's the song -- as usual, just a rough recording on my phone. Someday I'll have the time and money to do some higher quality recordings:





And here's a summary of the project and the lyrics:

In my paper, I tried out a reading of Genesis 2:25-3:24 in conversation with the work of Brené Brown on shame and vulnerability. In her book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead (New York: Gotham, 2012), Brown defines shame as “the fear that something we’ve done or failed to do, an ideal that we’ve not lived up to, or a goal that we’ve not accomplished makes us unworthy of connection….Shame is the intensely personal feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” (68-69). 

What would it mean to understand the story of the man and the woman in the garden, not as a story about “original sin,” but rather as a story about the harmful effects of shame on our human need for connection and belonging? In fact, while motifs of shame and nakedness figure prominently in the story, the Hebrew word for sin is entirely absent. This way of reading the story makes God’s second question to the humans – “Who told you that you were naked?” – just as important as the question about eating the fruit. Who told us that we are naked and need to be ashamed? What voices tell us that we are lacking, deficient, or unworthy of love?

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“Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” (Colossians 3:14).

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                                                      “Who Told Us?” – David Hosey, 2015

Once naked and unashamed
Now hiding from the One who gave us our names
Once not a thing we lacked
Now exposed and not sure there’s any going back

Who told us?
Who told us we should be ashamed?
Who told us?
Who told us we’re naked and afraid?

Once made to be one flesh
Now hopelessly estranged, or else hopelessly enmeshed
Once believing we were enough
The voice whispered, “You could be gods – why settle for just being loved?”

Who told us?
Who told us we should be ashamed?
Who told us?
Who told us we’re naked and afraid?

So let’s clothe ourselves in Love

Try to cover up with leaves
Or with awards and items on our CVs
But all of it just falls apart
We’ll be naked again – we’ve been naked from the start

So let’s clothe ourselves in Love