The Way of the Source

Tag: worship

  • Sleep Token – Euclid: The Perfect Worship Song

    Photo by Josh Sorenson on Pexels.com

    There’s this moment.

    If you’ve ever been in a worship service—like, really been in it—you know the one.

    It’s not the opening song, where people are still settling in, still checking their phones, still thinking about where they’ll eat after. It’s not the big anthem in the middle, the one designed to stir things up, to get people moving and responding.

    No, the moment comes later. Near the end.

    It’s the one where the room feels different. Where the lights are low, and everyone is connected by something more. Where the music swells, not because it has to, but because it can’t do anything but split open the sky.

    It’s the moment where the weight of everything—the doubt, the longing, the unspeakable ache—finds its way into the melody. The guitars shimmer, the drums carry like distant thunder, and the chorus, once whispered, is now belted from the deepest part of the chest.

    And then, just like that, it’s gone.

    That moment?

    That’s Euclid.

    This isn’t just a song. It’s a Benediction.

    Sleep Token has returned with Even in Arcadia, an album that feels like it emerged from the wreckage of a collapsed cathedral, still echoing with unanswered prayers. It opens with the haunting question: “Will you halt this eclipse in me?” That’s not just poetic. That’s liturgical. That’s a soul asking for the sun to rise again inside their own chest. And while the album offers no easy resolution, it does what all sacred art does—it leads us deeper into the ache, and maybe, gently, toward the light.

    And in the context of this new release, Euclid doesn’t just feel like a final track from the previous arc. It feels like an intercession whispered across time. A response to the eclipse.

    Vessel from Sleep Token

    For those unfamiliar with Sleep Token, Euclid is the final track on their previous release Take Me Back to Eden, the last of a three-album arc that has unfolded like some kind of a modern mythos.

    It’s a story of devotion, obsession, of something (or someone) greater-than beckoning from beyond. A love that might not be love. A god that might not be god. A voice that calls and calls until you can no longer tell if it’s leading you home or leading you into the abyss.

    And here, at the end of it all, we get Euclid.

    Not with a bang. Not with fury or vengeance or some grand declaration. But with a soft, fragile acceptance and surrender.

    Like the best worship songs.

    Like the best endings.

    The Worship Song Structure™, Perfected.

    Worship music lives and dies on its ability to create space. Space to feel. Space to ache. Space to let go.

    And Euclid? It builds that space like a sanctuary. Listen along if you want as I break it down.

    • The Opening: A Whispered Prayer
      Soft keys. A voice, hushed, almost afraid to enter the room.
      It’s the vulnerable invocation. The invitation.
      Come and see.
    • The Build: Anticipation & Devotion
      The instrumentation layers build slowly, reverently, like walking into something sacred. Each verse adds weight, each chorus expands, the vocoder gives musical space for tension, the pulse quickens… kinda like a heartbeat in a quiet room. The drums are in complete control of the energy building here.
      And then, everything shifts.
    • The Release: The Spirit Moves
      The final chorus erupts, the guitars crashing like waves, the drums relentless. Voices layered upon voices. A song that was once a whisper is now a flood.
      It’s the “Oceans” moment.
      The “With Everything” moment.
      The moment in every worship set where arms lift, eyes close, and the room isn’t just a room anymore.
      It’s so much bigger than that now.
    • The Benediction: Letting Go
      And then?
      The fade. The sigh. The last note rings out, soft as breath.
      No resolution. No closure. Leaving something stirring within your soul which is now ripe for transformation.
      Like the best worship songs.
      Like the best prayers.

    Why It Works (And Why Worship Leaders Should Take Notes)

    There’s a reason modern worship music thrives on these dynamics. It’s not just about lyrics, or theology, or even belief. It’s about energy. Tension. Release. Surrender.

    The best worship songs aren’t just sung or performed.

    They’re entered into. They’re experienced.

    And Euclid is nothing if not a complete experience.

    It starts in a place of intimacy. Moves through longing. Climbs toward something unspeakably powerful. And then, in one final breathtaking surge, it arrives like a flood—not at certainty, not at resolution, but at the only thing that ever truly remains:

    Love.

    Not the easy kind. Not the simple Hallmark all-smiles kind.

    But the real kind. The aching kind. The kind that knows loss, and still chooses to give. The kind that breaks, and still finds a way to hold on.

    So maybe Sleep Token didn’t write Euclid as a “worship” song.

    Maybe they did.

    But either way, if you’ve ever stood in a room filled with voices that were bigger than those in the room, if you’ve ever let a melody carry you beyond yourself, if you’ve ever felt something break and build and become—

    Then you know.

    This song belongs there.

    A Quick Word on Sleep Token

    For the uninitiated, Sleep Token is more than just a band—it’s a ritual. An anonymous collective led by the enigmatic Vessel, they blend genres and spiritual archetypes with reckless grace, weaving metal, R&B, ambient, and pop into something altogether sacred. Their live shows are called “Rituals.” Their lyrics read like confessions. And their music often feels less like performance and more like invocation.

    To those of us exploring the Way of the Source—a path rooted in oneness, mysticism, and sacred resonance—Sleep Token doesn’t just entertain. They echo. Their work hums with that same divine ache: the desire to be known, to be transformed, to belong to something greater.

    It’s not doctrine. It’s devotion. And in a world drowning in noise and algorithms, that matters.

    Let those with ears to hear, listen.

    If this stirred something in you, make sure to subscribe and join the conversation—I’m building a community of seekers, skeptics, and mystics who see beyond the surface and hear the sacred in unexpected places.

    Also, keep an eye out for my upcoming field guide: How Not to Lose Your Family While Losing Your Religion. It’s a resource for navigating the beautiful, brutal path of deconstruction without burning every bridge along the way.

    🖤JD

  • “Hallelujah!”

    The Wild Unstoppable Cry of the Soul

    Growing up in a charismatic Pentecostal church and family, I heard the word Hallelujah a lot. Sure, it was shouted during sermons, whispered fervently in prayer, and sung with hands raised high. Usually, it was said as a trivial celebration when my mom found her keys or that thing she’d been looking for for weeks. I often hear it used sarcastically. When I was touring with Settle The Sky, my Christian metal band, Hallelujah was screamed into microphones, echoing through sweaty clubs and church basements, sometimes from the voices of kids who weren’t even sure what they believed—but something about that word felt powerful. And while everyone used this word, I felt like most people didn’t seem to be able to articulate what it really meant.

    Hallelujah isn’t just a word. It’s a cry. A defiant, unrelenting, soul-shaking exclamation that transcends language, genre, and even belief systems. It’s one of the few Hebrew words that has made its way, unchanged, into nearly every language on earth. My wife, Ariel, walked down the aisle to an acoustic version of this song whose only lyric was just the word Hallelujah.

    But what does Hallelujah actually mean? And why does it hold so much weight—whether whispered in worship, shouted in ecstatic praise, or screamed over a hardcore caveman riff in a Sleeping Giant song?

    The Etymology of Hallelujah:

    The word Hallelujah (הַלְלוּיָהּ) is made up of two parts:

    • Hallelu (הַלְלוּ) – A command meaning “praise” (from halal, meaning to shine, boast, or act wildly celebratory).

    • Yah (יָהּ) – A shortened form of YHWH, the divine name of God.

    So Hallelujah literally means “Praise God!” But not in a quiet, reserved, or passive way.

    The root word halal is wild. It comes from the exclamation of freedom. In Islam, if a food is “halal”, then it is praised by the divine and they are “free” to eat it. It means to boast, to rave, to shine, to act clamorously foolish in celebration. It’s the kind of word that doesn’t fit neatly into the stoic, buttoned-up version of faith so many of us were handed. Halal is loud. It’s undignified. It’s messy.

    It’s the kind of word that makes most religious people uncomfortable.

    Dance Dance Revolution

    One of the most unrestrained biblical pictures of true Hallelujah comes from 2 Samuel. King David, who was a warrior and poet, brings the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem. And how does he celebrate?

    He dances.

    Furiously.

    He strips off his royal linen robes and dances before the Lord with all his might, completely unbothered by how ridiculous he looks. His wife, Michal, watches in disgust, embarrassed by his lack of dignity. That’s a striking image for Michal’s attitude toward David. She wasn’t just upset; she was cutting him off in her heart, separating herself from his joy and his deep, intimate worship before Yahweh. But David doesn’t care.

    “I will become even more undignified than this!” he tells her. “I will be humiliated in my own eyes!” -2 Samuel 6:22

    That is Hallelujah—the kind of unrestrained, all-consuming celebration that doesn’t care about appearances or what kind of societal consequences or judgment it brings up in others. The kind that doesn’t hold back. The kind that shakes the ground.

    Hallelujah in Metal, Hardcore, and Charismatic Worship

    When I look back, I realize that my time in the charismatic church and my time in metal and hardcore were deeply connected by this same reckless, passionate spirit.

    In charismatic churches, worship wasn’t just singing songs… it was warfare. It was an outpouring of emotion. People danced, shouted, wept, fell to their knees. Some spoke in tongues. Some shook under the weight of something they couldn’t explain. The band played loud, but not for performance or recognition, but because the Spirit was moving, and nothing about that moment should be tame.

    Then I stepped into the world of metal and alternative music, and I felt something eerily familiar. The intensity. The passion. The catharsis of screaming from the depths of your soul, of pushing your body to the limit, of letting go of self-consciousness and giving everything you have to something bigger than yourself. To the energy that was stirring up between everyone in the room.

    In the pit at a hardcore show, I saw people swinging fists, jumping off stages, pile-driving toward a moment that felt transcendent. When we played, I saw kids who wouldn’t set foot in a church scream their lungs out to lyrics about redemption, about sacrifice, about love, about hope. The church might not have understood our art form, but it was never really about playing music or getting fame or being a rock star. It was about uniting the broken in a moment of raw transcendence.

    To me, that is Hallelujah.

    Hallelujah and the Illusion of Separation

    There’s something about raw, undignified presence and unity that breaks through the illusion that we are separate from something greater. Not the polished, performance-driven kind that is trying to impress to satisfy an egoic need—but the kind that throws off every weight, every inhibition, and lets the soul truly cry out.

    Hallelujah is not about conformity. It’s about connection. It’s about that deep, undeniable pull that every mystic, every artist, every seeker has felt—the pull toward something vast, luminous, and overwhelmingly real. Whether you call it God, the Tao, the Divine, the Source, the Universe, or simply Love, there is something in all of us that knows:

    There is more.

    And we are all a part of it. We are all invited to leave our egos at the door so our truest self can be free.

    Hallelujah is the moment the wave crashes and you feel one with the ocean.

    It’s the lump in your throat when a song wrecks you in the best way.

    It’s the dancer lost in flow state movement, the poet captivated in words, the mother holding her child, the breath that catches in awe.

    It’s in the scream of a metalhead in the pit, in the whispered prayer of the doubter, in the sigh of the atheist staring up at the stars, feeling something too beautiful for words.

    Hallelujah isn’t just for “believers”. It isn’t just for “church”. It isn’t just for those who understand. It’s for whoever breathes.

    Psalm 150:6 – Let everything that has breath praise Yah.

    And Yah means YHWH

    The Invitation to Live Hallelujah

    Maybe you’ve been taught that spiritual connection had to look a certain way—had to fit into a religious mold that never quite felt right. Maybe, like me, you felt more of something divine in the roar of a crowd than in a pew. Maybe you were outcast by a church more focused on everyone believing and behaving the same way than having a real encounter with an untamed spirit. Maybe you’ve been waiting for permission to show up fully as you are, to throw off self-consciousness, to stop filtering your presence and just be—raw, honest, unrestrained.

    Here it is.

    Let your Hallelujah be loud. Let it be messy. Let it be real.

    Not because you have to worship a deity, or a god out there somewhere else, not because you need to fit into any system of belief, or any organized religion.

    But simply because you are alive.

    Because you are part of something bigger than yourself. Because your voice, your body, your breath, your existence—it all matters.

    Because to be fully alive, fully present, fully surrendered to this eternal moment—that is the cry of Hallelujah.