Look For Me As You Go By

While I feel the Christian interpretation is valid, it's not exclusive. The Christian elements are certainly there, but the song could be sung to a human being. The hope that someone you love completely, someone you need to survive, someone so bright that by comparison you are dim, will recognize you and welcome you into their arms; the fantasy that this unification will deliver you both from adversity -- it's this somewhat obsequious, but very pure (innocent) and powerful declaration of faith. In another human being. OR in Christ. Or in both... because just as every stranger you turn away is for all intents Christ himself, so too is it true that when you truly believe with all your being in the magnanimity of any sort of thing that you know you were meant to believe in -- be it Christ, a person, the fundamental Oneness of the Universe, Animism, Shamanism, whatever -- this faith is the same: pure and indestructable. The Christian elements here thus serve as a signpost for a more general kind of faith, as applied to a person, or what have you.

I just like the idea that it's a person. The idea of that kind of intensity of feeling for a person. That kind of insecurity. It's beautiful, relateable, and intriguing. Oh god, the way it builds.