**You can listen to the full song at www.erinanneweston.com or download the album for free at www.noisetrade.com/erinanneweston**

Little Idols is one of my favorite songs from my most recent project, Felicities of Expression.

I wrote the song lyrics after reflecting on a talk given by Tim Keller on idols. His basic argument is that an idol is anything you make "eternal" or "irreplaceable" that is actually "temporal" or "replaceable." He claimed even a person can be temporally replaced.

At first I hated this argument--why can't a person be eternal? Why do people have to leave or die or move on? Isn't this a half-assed way of looking at relationships or friendships?

I was angry at my life constantly changing and people moving forward without my permission. After some time of reflection though, I recognized that the most eternal thing we have for each other is love. That love for someone will last beyond all of the small things, allow you to forgive and to move on at the same time.

But many of the things/people I put a lot of hope in to never change or never leave had changed, fallen apart or left. And for awhile, I thought my spirit was broken and I might never recover.

In realizing I had several "little idols" in my life, I wrote about them...probably the most important part of this song being the bridge:

"I'm exhausted by religion, hate, intolerance and greed; I'm beleaguered by the atheists who claim superiority; I'm tired of all the politics that just won't fix our lives, and neither will the sex"

All of these things were my surroundings in one way or another. I had made each of them ends in themselves that I had to work through or conquer, but realized the next line as I thought through it:

"because LOVE is where the sidewalk ends. It's a secret that's been kept. It's all about choosing to love somebody else, and it's a humbling realization that can't be taught unfelt."

I am still interested in the intellectual and political debates of the day. I still want to be challenged and reminded that I don't know or understand everything, but my desire to know more should not harden me as a person wanting to fall on the correct side of every debate.

My idols should fall away when it comes to love, even though a small part of me will always crave acceptance in the places I cannot actually receive it.