The Songs 2 · 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.
2.1All things can be undone but the scattering. (cf. The Highest Covenant 6.1)
2.2We begin here, because everything we love is standing on it.
2.3Time is not a river. It is the direction of the scattering.
2.4Because there is that direction, there is before and after.
2.5Because there is before and after, there is cause and effect, there is remembering, there is learning.
2.6Without this arrow nothing would happen a second time, and so there would be no first time worth keeping.
2.7This arrow will take everything we have. We know that.
2.8But the same arrow made us first.
2.9Out of very old things, layer on layer, generation on generation, came what breathes, what sees, what can be hurt.
2.10Nobody stood by directing it. What could hold, held; what could not, scattered.
2.11The method is terribly slow and terribly wasteful.
2.12And it made a head that can think about the method.
2.13We do not praise the process as kind. It is not kind.
2.14We praise it as true, and we own it: we were made by that and by nothing else.
2.15What takes us away and what made us are the same arrow.
2.16Once that is granted, a man need not hate time any longer.
2.17We do not ask to be heard. We say it because we mean to remember.