“Oh Dear Lord
Three things I pray
To see thee more clearly
Love thee more dearly
Follow thee more nearly
Day by day.”—“Day by Day,” from the
Godspell soundtrack (1971), music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz
Several weeks ago, driving in my car, I heard “Day by Day” for the first time in what seemed like decades, and suddenly I wasn’t traveling to a place but to a point in time—the early Seventies, with all the requisite bell bottoms, long hair, wide sideburns, love beads, and debates about how to make the message of the Gospel relevant to youth.
Listening to the song, I was struck, in a way I hadn’t been four decades ago, by “Day by Day”'s repetitiousness. There's not much beyond the refrain. But it didn’t matter. It moved something deep inside, like a stream surging beneath a frozen surface.
I still haven’t seen the stage or film versions of the musical of which this wildly joyful song forms only a part,
Godspell. But in the early Seventies, when the tune became a hit, I swear that I heard it everywhere I turned—and each time, it lifted my heart.
Both of my brothers, a few years older than myself, must have heard it even more than I did. Theirs was the time when the Catholic coffeehouse culture really came into their own, complete with youth outreach by priests and guitar-driven folk masses. I’m sure somebody must have picked up a guitar at one of these settings and started to harmonize on this song.
Stephen Schwartz’s musical arrived on the scene within the same year as Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s
Jesus Christ Superstar. Though there were some angry murmurs about the clown makeup and other cultural accouterments employed to retell incidents in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, Schwartz’s creation never excited the controversy that
JCS did.
Part of it might have had something to do with the message of songs like “Day by Day.” After all, aren’t the “three things I pray” at the heart of the Lenten journey so many of us take?
