Shine

Oh, let your little light shine
Let your little light shine

Shine on Vegas and Wall Street, place your bets
Shine on all the fishermen with nothing in their nets
Shine on rising oceans and evaporating seas
Shine on our Frankenstein technologies
Shine on science with its tunnel vision, tunnel vision
Shine on fertile farmlands buried under subdivisions

Oh, let your little light shine
Oh, let your little light shine

Shine on the dazzling darkness that restores us in deep sleep
Shine on what we throw away and what we keep
Shine on Reverend Pearson, who threw away the vain old God
And kept Dickens, and Rembrandt, and Beethoven and fresh-plowed sod
Shine on good earth, good air, good water
And a safe place for kids to play
Shine on bombs exploding half a mile away

Oh, let your little light shine
Let your little light shine, shine, shine

Shine on worldwide traffic jams honking day and night
Shine on another asshole passing on the right
Shine on all the red-light runners, busy talking on their cell phones
Shine on the Catholic Church and the prisons that it owns
Shine on all the churches, they all love less and less
Shine on a hopeful girl in a dreamy dress

Oh, let your little light shine
Shine, shine, shine, let your little light shine

Shine on good humour, shine on good will
Shine on lousy leadership licensed to kill
Shine on dying soldiers in patriotic pain
Shine on mass destruction in some God's name
Shine on the pioneers, those seekers of mental health
Craving simplicity, they travelled inward past themselves

Let their little lights shine
May all their little lights shine