Jesus came to know for certain according to Leonard Cohen, that only drowning men could see him.
I was among those drowning back in 2009. As that year began I was diagnosed with a life-threatening tumour. An overwhelming tsunami of paralysing darkness invaded my life. I had experienced darkness before, but this was darker still.
Family, friends and colleagues carried me with their kindness. For a time, prayer was difficult, virtually impossible, and I understood what it was to be supported and held by the prayers of others. I also understood what St Paul means when he says that the Spirit helps us in our weakness and intercedes for us when we ourselves do not know how to pray as we ought (Romans 8: 26).
Glenstal Abbey was a place of great healing sacramentally. Yet a drowning man will grasp at anything and I found myself turning to poetry, literature and music to try to exorcise the pain that had at its root the fear of extinction, while still, as I saw it, so much in my life was still undone.
It was around then I came across Leonard Cohen’s If it be your will.
If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will
If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well
And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will
These words, listened to repeatedly, softly cried through, occasionally shouted out loud, became my psalm of lament, my feeble attempt at a prayer of surrender and acceptance of God’s will. They have remained an important part of my prayer life.
Leonard Cohen died last week at the age of 82 and it’s hard not to see some divine synchronicity in his death within the same 24 hours that saw the election of Donald Trump as US President.
The Prophet Isaiah comes to mind: “See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples” (60:2).
This is not meant as a judgment on Mr Trump as such, or not only. Rather it is acknowledgment of the extraordinary uncertainty, insecurity, fear and despair that seem to have taken grip in the lives of so many people in one of the world’s so-called most developed countries and that have surfaced in the course of Mr Trump’s campaign.
Darkness
Leonard Cohen was no stranger to darkness, and only two weeks before he died he released his final album aptly entitled You Want it Darker. It’s difficult to listen to it and not to think how Leonard’s poetic sensitivity meant he felt not only his own personal darkness but also our communal darkness more painfully and intensely than most.
He must have been horrified by what is currently happening in the Middle East. In the title track of his final album he writes:
They’re lining up the prisoners
And the guards are taking aim
I struggled with some demons
They were middle class and tame
I didn’t know I had permission to murder and to maim…
His last testament is searing in how it voices the desperation and despair of our age. In this he is in continuity with the Psalms of Lament and Jewish penitential hymns that were so much a part of his heritage. But only in part, because these psalms and hymns not only express the tragic plight of people praying them but also lead them to voice trust in God and surrender to his will.
Ultimately even the most plaintive psalm of lament eventually sounds a note of praise, however, shaky, halting and begrudging. Does Leonard Cohen quite reach there? Not sure.
His poetry is littered with reference to altar and sacrifice, and also to the cross. As we draw the Year of Mercy to a close, his hymn Come Healing is worth reciting in full:
O gather up the brokenness
And bring it to me now
The fragrance of those promises
You never dared to vow
The splinters that you carry
The cross you left behind
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind
And let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb
Behold the gates of mercy
In arbitrary space
And none of us deserving
The cruelty or the grace
O solitude of longing
Where love has been confined
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind
O see the darkness yielding
That tore the light apart
Come healing of the reason
Come healing of the heart
O troubled dust concealing
An undivided love
The Heart beneath is teaching
To the broken Heart above
O let the heavens falter
And let the earth proclaim:
Come healing of the Altar
Come healing of the Name
O longing of the branches
To lift the little bud
O longing of the arteries
To purify the blood
And let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb
My favourite line here – one to ponder – is And none of us deserving/ The cruelty or the grace. That sums up the mystery of life rather well.
Promises made, broken, unfulfilled; fragility of mind, body and spirit; this is the enduring reality of people’s lives despite all our sophisticated attempts at self-protection and insulation.
And yet the fragility and vulnerability we all have but usually mask and hide can be the key to unlocking our true selves and the mystery of God abiding within. Cohen knew this: Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in (Anthem).
Pope Francis knows this too. In his version of the parable of the 99 sheep he writes “a small step, in the midst of great human limitations, can be more pleasing to God than a life which appears outwardly in order, but moves through the day without confronting great difficulties” (Amoris Laetitia n. 305).
Promises
Cohen’s poetry stops short of a full confession of Christian faith, and maybe that’s why people today, characteristically shy when it comes to accepting or making promises, find that he resonates with them. Sincere and heartfelt Hallelujahs are more difficult to proclaim today than we might wish to admit.
Cohen clearly longs for a Saviour. His lyrics freely admit that we are sunk without one. He knows we cannot save ourselves. While so many people today profess to want to be self-sufficient and earn their own eternal keep, whatever that might be, Cohen’s popularity is an indication that we know in our heart of hearts that mostly we are building our lives on sand and dross.
But not any kind of saviour will do. Cohen, while still a Jew, seems to know in his heart that a Messiah who does not embrace the cross, meaning by that the totality of human wretchedness, often self-inflicted, is not worth his salt.
Cohen’s last words on this are in Treaty, also from his final album. At first the lyrics might seem mocking but they are not really so. This is clearer from the music more than from the words.
I’ve seen you change the water into wine
I’ve seen you change it back to water too
I sit at your table every night
I try but I just don’t get high with you
I wish there was a treaty we could sign
I do not care who takes this bloody hill
I’m angry and I’m tired all the time
I wish there was a treaty
Between your love and mine
Cohen wished there was a treaty he could sign. For treaty, I read covenant. God has, and is, keeping his side of the covenant, though it mightn’t always seem so, and I suspect that when given the opportunity Leonard for his part joyfully signed on the dotted line, rejoicing, stepping lightly across heaven’s threshold as he used to so gracefully on stage, free and fulfilled in a way he never was before.
That moment awaits us all.
But for now, whether we wanted it darker or not it seems to be that way, and from the many broken hills across so many borders but mostly in our own minds and hearts mercy needs to spill. May we play our part, if it be your will.
Prof. Eamonn Conway is a priest and theologian.