Three Hits

This song is actually about poet - nothing to do with Jesus. Sorry.

On the Saturday evening of June 3, 1978, Stanford committed suicide in his home in Fayetteville.[33][1][34] In her essay, "Death In The Cool Evening," widow Ginny Stanford notes that, having discovered her husband's infidelity, they argued about the matter;[26] subsequently, Stanford retreated to his bedroom, and moments later, gunshots were heard: on the morning of June 5, Deputy Coroner Hugh Huppert ruled the death a suicide, declaring that Stanford had thrice shot himself in the heart with a .22-caliber target pistol.[33][1][26][35] Both Ginny Stanford and C. D. Wright were in the house at the time of his death.[33][36] Stanford's funeral was held on June 6. He was buried in St. Benedict's Cemetery at Subiaco beneath a stand of yellow pines, five miles (eight km) from the Arkansas River.[33]

Father Fuhrmann, who had met with Stanford shortly before his death, feels that the poet had "a lot on his mind,"[19] and Wright and Ginny Stanford reported that he was depressed and withdrawn on the day of his suicide.[33] Stanford had also spent time at the Arkansas State Hospital (the state psychiatric hospital) in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1972[1] and may have had prior suicide attempts.[1] - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Stanford

"A music friend of mine sent me a book of his poetry, 'The Light the Dead See,' and I went crazy over it-- it changed my life a little. I was reading some biographical notes on Stanford and learned that he'd committed suicide in the early 80's at age 30-- he shot himself three times in the heart. That image really stuck with me. So I used images from his poems and his life: that he was adopted, that he left his wife behind..." - Amy Ray

I've read a poem by Frank Standford called 'The Battlefield where the Moon Says I Love You'. It's a fifteen thousand line behemoth with no breaks and no punctuation, and it's probably the darkest stuff I've ever read. The exerpt on the back of the tome reads:

im not going anywhere ill just bleed so the stars have something dark to shine in

The poem, along with Stanford's other work, is riddled with allusions to death and loss; I would suggest anyone to read any of his writings if you can find it

I think everyone really needs to start remembering that this site is not for LITERAL translation or even about the intent of the artists; it's about what the song personally means to you, and how you percieve and dissect it.

Anyway, I agree that this song is beautiful, and one of my favorite by the indigo girls. To me, it's about freedom, crime, and free will.

I think this is an incredibly beautiful song about Jesus. The humanity it brings to him and the questions it asks are very thought provoking.