EYE TO EYE

Where does love live
when the world is at war?

Where it has always lived—

In every life that still refuses
to abandon another.

Mm-ah, mm-ah
I see you
You see me

Mm-ah, mm-ah
Common love

Before the morning finds its name
Someone rises, tends a flame
An extra chair, an open door
A little given becomes much more

No cameras turn, no banners wave
But love is how the day gets made
A name is learned, a burden shared
A lamp left burning: You are cared for

One holds tightly to the old
One reaches for a world unknown
One learned to stay, one had to leave
One lives by faith, one struggles to believe

One speaks with certainty, one with doubt
One has been welcomed, one kept out
Different stories, different scars
Different roads beneath the stars

But every heart has someone it would save
Every heart has stood beside a grave
Every life needs somewhere to belong
Every soul needs someone to carry it on

Love transcends our differences
More than differences transcend love
Older than the names between us
Deeper than the lines we draw

We do not have to think alike
To meet each other eye to eye
Equal in the frame
Equal in the light
No one beneath and none above

Love transcends our differences
More than differences transcend love

Across the distance, face to face
A doorway opens into space
The screen becomes a field of doors
And someone distant is distant no more

The color falls, the noise grows still
We see the life that labels conceal
A hand rests gently on a heart
A world away, but not apart

A woman looks into a stranger’s eyes
A man looks back from the other side
They have never spoken, never met
But something in them recognizes

I know that tenderness
I know that pain
I know what it is to lose
And love again

I know the hope
Behind your eyes
I know the heart
No name can divide

Love transcends our differences
More than differences transcend love
Older than the names between us
Deeper than the lines we draw

We do not have to think alike
To meet each other eye to eye
Equal in the frame
Equal in the light
No one beneath and none above

Love transcends our differences
More than differences transcend love

Are we all the same?

No.

Then what brings us together?

The need to be seen.
The need to belong.
The need to protect what we love.
The hope that those who come after us
will have a world to live in.

Must our differences disappear?

No.

Must they have the final word?

No.

What is the common denominator?

Love.

Love is not agreement
Love is not surrender
Love does not ask us to abandon what we know

Love is recognition
Across the contradiction
The choice to see the human being
On the other side

We may never think alike
We may never understand
But I can look into your eyes
And place my heart inside my hand

I will not make a stranger
From the human being I see
I believe in love more than division
I choose our common humanity

Name by name
Face by face
We make a doorway
We make a space

Breath by breath
Beat by beat
One human family
When our eyes meet

Hand to heart
Eye to eye
No one made smaller
No one denied

Across the sea
Across the screen
You become real
And I am seen

Love transcends our differences
More than differences transcend love
Stronger than the fear between us
Wider than the walls we build

We do not have to think alike
To stand together in the light
Equal in the frame
Equal in our lives
Many hearts, but one human blood

Love transcends our differences
More than differences transcend love

From hand to hand
From trust to trust
We carry what has carried us
Older than the names dividing us
The world survives through common love

I see you
You see me

I hear you
You hear me

Your life matters
So does mine

Your heart answers
Across the divide

We belong to one another
Without becoming one another
We can keep what makes us different
And still refuse to make it hatred

Eye to eye
Side by side

Love is the common denominator
Love is the thread between us
Love transcends our differences
More than differences transcend love

Common love
Mirror love
Human love

Common love