The Songs 1 · For the assembly to say aloud together
This book has no author and should have none. It is made for the voice: read it aloud, and best of all aloud together. This book does not pray. There is no one in this scripture to pray to — what is believed in is law, and law takes no prayers (cf. The Prologue 1.7). But not praying is not the same as not thanking, not praising, not standing amazed. This book records only those three. Whoever uses it to petition any person whatever has put it to the wrong use. Each of the six songs has a last line, and the last line is to be said by everyone together.The twelve songs of this book fall into two halves. The first six are thanks, praise and amazement; they are not for any particular occasion and are said by the assembly together. Each of the last six hangs on one of the six axioms and is made for a particular day: the day you cannot see yourself; the day two people tell the same hour differently; the day you gave something up; the day someone left; the day you grieved for what you could not reach; the day you knew it was the last time. Take whichever song matches the day. These may be said alone.
1.1All things stream on. We stand here and look.
1.2The first thing we have to say is not how they stream.
1.3It is that they stream after a pattern at all.
1.4A stone falls: so yesterday, so today; so here, so at the farthest place there is.
1.5This might not have been so.
1.6A world with no law costs nothing to imagine: today’s fire not hot tomorrow, water running here and not there.
1.7In such a world nothing could grow that was able to ask.
1.8We are not in that world. We are in this one.
1.9And there is not only law. There are certain numbers set into the law.
1.10Where those numbers come from, we do not know. Move one a little and a star is no star, coal is no coal, you and I are not you and I.
1.11Why it should be these numbers and no others, we do not know.
1.12Some say: someone set them.
1.13We do not say that. Not because we have settled that there is no such one.
1.14But because we do not know; and what we do not know, we do not permit ourselves to say we know. (cf. The Rule 9.17)
1.15We say only the thing we are certainly standing inside of:
1.16There is law, and we can read it. Those two together are the strangest thing we know of.
1.17At this we stand still.
1.18We do not ask to be heard. We say it because we mean to remember.