Better than Pop, this is Patty Griffin!

Patty Griffin is by far my absolute favorite singer song writer I have ever come across. She's like a female Bob Dylan that can actually sing. Love her lyrics, love her melodies, love her arrangements...LOVE her!

Today I'm featuring a song off of her first album, Living With Ghosts. This song gripped me the first time I heard it and has never let go. Patty is an incredible story teller in her songs. Here she embodies the child of a "poor man." For me, the song captures hauntingly what it is to be below the poverty level, and in a way it transcends a place, and solely pictures a situation.


"Poor Man's House"

You know you've done enough when every bone is sore
You know you've prayed enough when you don't ask any more
You know you're coming to some kind of understanding
When every dream you've dreamed has passed and you're still standing
Mama says god tends to every little skinny sheep
So count your ribs and say your prayers and get to sleep
Nothing is louder to god's ears than a poor mans sorrow
Daddy is poor today and he will be poor tomorrow

Hey that's the poor man's house
Everybody get a look at the poor man's house
Everywhere they went before must have turned them out
And now they're living in a poor man's house

There's nothing like poverty to get you into heaven
They got a lot of wine and fish up there
And the bread's unleavened
They got a lot of ears that heard a whip go crack
Lots of missing toes and fingers and scars upon their backs
Daddy's been working too much for days and days and doesn't eat
He never says much but I think this time it's got a meaning
It isn't that he isn't strong or kind or clever
Your daddy's poor today And he'll be poor forever

Hey that's the poor man's house
Those kids are living in a poor man's house
They walk to school with the soles of their shoes worn out
And come home in the evening to the poor man's house

What are you chopping that wood for
Why are you growing that corn
Mama's sewing a brand new shirt and
You're wearing the one that's torn
I guess it's for some one else's kid who wasn't born
In a poor man's house

Hey take a look at that house
Everybody we're living in a poor man's house
Seems like everywhere we go they find us out
Find out that we've been living in a poor man's house

I think the reason the songs chills me to the core is the lack of real hope. Part of that is reality, as far as their monetary condition is concerned. But she's right, the sorrow of a poor man is definitely heard by God.

Psalm 31:6
Open your mouth for the mute,
for the rights of all who are destitute.
Open your mouth, judge righteously,
defend the rights of the poor and needy.

James 1:27
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.