by Brian Walsh
On Sunday, October 14, the Wine Before Breakfast community came together with the Church of the Redeemer in Toronto for an evening of wine, bread and prayer with the music and poetry of Leonard Cohen.
The church was full of folks from various places and communities, all drawn to the spiritual depth of Cohen’s art. The WBB Band, co-directed by Dave Krause and Deb Whalen performed “Dance me to the End of Love,” “Show me the Place,” “Everybody Knows,” “Ain’t no Cure for Love,” “If it be your Will,” “Coming Back to You,” “Come Healing,” and “Lover Lover Lover.”
The texts for the evening were Amos 5.6-15 and Mark 10.17-31. This is the meditation that I offered in response to the poetic and prophetic visions of Amos, Jesus and Leonard Cohen)
I.
They seem to go together.
Delight and devastation.
They seem to go together.
An artistic richness that strips you to your very soul.
The poet brings together words and rhythms that are so compelling,
so beautiful and so alluring,
and yet, these words disclose our deepest failures,
betrayals and delusions.
I knew that this was such a poet.
I knew from the first time I heard him that here was a man
who had dwelt in the traditions of our people,
who had drunk deeply at the well of the great poets of Israel,
who had sat with the wise men and learned their wisdom,
who had meditated upon Torah,
who had taken on the mantle of the prophet.
I knew it from the way his words conformed to the forms of the wise,
and I knew it from the way in which he would bend and break those forms,
often to mirror the very brokenness that he was portraying
… again, with words that would delight and devastate.
And I didn’t have to line up for good seats to hear this poet.
You see, my name is Amaziah.
I am the priest of Bethel,
the sanctuary of the King,
the gate to heaven where our father Jacob met the Lord.
Bethel, a place of meeting,
a place of revelation,
a holy place,
… a place that this poet says will be devoured by fire.
I didn’t have to line up for seats to hear this poet,
because he pretty much walked into my house,
my sacred space,
to perform his poetry,
to deliver his prophecy.
An ominous prophecy against all that I hold dear.
An offensive prophecy against all that I believe.
The poet knows that justice and righteousness
are at the heart of the covenant.
So he goes for the jugular.
We have turned justice into wormwood,
and we bring righteousness to the ground.
That sweet taste of justice,
a drink of which will give you a vision so clear that it will hurt,
is made into a draught of wormwood,
a drink of absinthe that will cloud your mind.
Absinthe, a drink used by so many artists for inspiration
is dismissed here as an intoxication of injustice.
And while the psalmist imagines righteousness
springing up from the ground,
this poet turns it on its head and says that we
grind righteousness into the ground.
How does he know?
What evidence does the poet offer to justify this offensive judgement?
We trample the poor.
We take bribes to oppress the righteous ones.
We provide no space for justice in the courts for the vulnerable.
And so it is that the poet reaches back to Moses, the father of all such poets
and reverses his language of promise into oracles of judgement.
You will build houses of stone but will not live in them,
you will plant pleasant vineyards but you shall not drink their wine.
The house of Bethel will fall,
and with it will fall all the houses of the rich.
God will no longer be at home in Bethel,
and God’s homelessness will render us all homeless.
Of course, this is all pernicious nonsense.
II.
They seem to go together.
Delight and devastation.
They seem to go together.
An artistic richness that strips you to your very soul.
The poet brings together words and rhythms that are so compelling,
so beautiful and so alluring,
and yet, these words disclose our deepest failures,
betrayals and delusions.
I knew that this was such a poet.
I knew from the first time I heard him that here was a man
who had dwelt in the traditions of our people,
who had drunk deeply at the well of the great poets of Israel,
who had sat with the wise men and learned their wisdom,
who had meditated upon Torah,
who had taken on the mantle of the prophet.
I knew it from the way his words conformed to the forms of the wise,
and I knew it from the way in which he would bend and break those forms,
often to mirror the very brokenness that he was portraying
… again, with words that would delight and devastate.
My children knew the delight,
I had premonitions about the devastation.
You see my children had been with him,
he had blessed them,
he had said that his kingdom were for such as these.
So when my son and daughter pleaded that I go with them to see him off on his journey,
I consented.
But I’ll tell you something else.
It didn’t take much pleading.
As a daughter of Israel I had the same longing as my husband.
I longed for the redemption of Israel,
I longed for the kingdom to arrive.
And I longed for justice.
Like so many others, our family lived in bonded servitude to a rich land owner.
Cut off from our own inheritance we now served another man at slave wages.
And there was something about the stories of this poet and storyteller from Galilee
that awakened in me a hope for justice,
a hope for the kingdom.
And so it was that we had a front roll seat when it happened.
The men had given in to the pushing and shoving of the children
and the children were at the front with their mothers close behind.
And there, kneeling in front of the Rabbi,
was our landlord.
I had never seen him kneel before any man before.
I had never seen him speak with such deference.
“Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
I confess that my blood began to boil.
Eternal life? Isn’t wealth and power in this life good enough for you?
And the teacher used the forms of Israel to reply.
“You know the commandments,” he said,
and then he listed six of the ten commandments.
But you know these poets, they always bend the form to their purpose.
So instead of saying, “you shall not covet”
the teacher reached to another place in Torah
where it says, “You shall not defraud.”
Well the landlord’s response to this caused me to gasp.
“I have kept all these from my youth.”
That lying bastard!
Kept all these from his youth?
Then why the hell is he my landlord?
Why the hell do we serve him on land that he had taken from others?
“You shall not defraud” the teacher said,
but this man’s whole life is based on such exploitation!
And in a moment of either outright deception,
or deep self-delusion,
he says that he has kept these commandments from his youth!
My rising rage, however, was not matched by the look on the teacher’s face.
No, the teacher had a look of such tenderness, care and love on his face.
Almost as if he was more sad then angry.
Almost as if we could see that this landlord’s question was as sincere
as his answer was so totally false.
So he said something that no one would have expected;
not this rich man, nor any of us in the crowd, nor even his own disciples.
With a voice rich in love, and devoid of anger or condemnation,
the Teacher said:
“One thing you lack; go, sell what you own, and give the proceeds to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
Well, this turned everything on its head – for our landlord, and for everyone of us.
You want eternal life?
Then abandon your wealth and embrace justice.
You want eternal life?
Then abandon false wealth and embrace what is true wealth.
You want eternal life?
Then leave your house, your fields, your status, and your wealth behind,
and come and follow me.
Our landlord had much property.
And this word from the Rabbi was devastating.
So with a grief on his face that was palpable,
a grief on his face that even awakened sympathy in me,
he walked away.
And the rest of us?
Well, we were perplexed, confused and, truth be known, astounded.
III.
They seem to go together.
Delight and devastation.
They seem to go together.
An artistic richness that strips you to your very soul.
The poet brings together words and rhythms that are so compelling,
so beautiful and so alluring,
and yet, these words disclose our deepest failures,
betrayals and delusions.
I knew that this was such a poet.
I knew from the first time I heard him that here was a man
who had dwelt in the traditions of our people,
who had drunk deeply at the well of the great poets of Israel,
who had sat with the wise men and learned their wisdom,
who had meditated upon Torah,
who had taken on the mantle of the prophet.
I knew it from the way his words conformed to the forms of the wise,
and I knew it from the way in which he would bend and break those forms,
often to mirror the very brokenness that he was portraying
… again, with words that would delight and devastate.
And so there we were,
just to stage left, about five rolls back,
when the poet began to perform.
“You don’t know me from the wind,
you never will you never did,
I’m the little Jew who wrote the Bible.
I’ve seen the nations rise and fall,
I’ve heard their stories, heard them all,
But love’s the only engine of survival.”
The poet makes bold to stand in a prophetic tradition.
He makes bold to stand with Amos and Ezekiel.
“And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil’s riding crop,
get ready for the future,
it is murder.”
The Holy One has gone into exile,
and without the Holy One in our midst,
we are all in exile,
we are homeless.
“And things are going to slide,
slide in all directions,
there won’t be nothing,
nothing you can measure anymore.
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it’s overturned the order of the soul.
When they said “Repent”
I wondered what they meant.”
And we are only one song into the concert!
On the one hand, the poet names our malaise in ways that none of had imagined,
and yet, he is also telling us what everybody knows.
“Everybody knows that the Plague is coming
everybody knows that its moving fast”
But this is not a prophet of arrogant self-righteous pronouncement.
As Amos wrote that “the prudent will keep silent in such a time,
for it is an evil time,”
so does our poet sing:
“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.”
But tonight it is not time for silence.
Tonight is a night for speech,
and more importantly, for song.
“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.”
And so does our poet sing,
in devastating clarity what everybody knows …
but not without hope.
You see, love’s the only engine of survival.
And so, while the houses of stone are demolished,
while we all find ourselves in homeless exile,
while it is all coming apart,
the poet will call us to
“raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn,
and dance me to the end of love.”
As Amos called ancient Israel back,
“Seek the Lord and live …
seek good and not evil,,
that you may live …”
so does our poet sing songs of return,
songs of coming back to the Holy One.
And he can call us back home
because the Holy One with whom we are dealing
is an incurable lover.
The Holy One has a song that is always on the divine lips:
“You may come to me in happiness,
or you may come to me in grief.
You may come to me in deepest faith,
or you may come in disbelief.
But lover, lover, lover, lover, lover,
lover, lover, come back to me.”
Having glimpsed the depths of such love,
the poet can sing:
“Well I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair
with a love so vast and so shattered,
it can reach you anywhere.”
And somehow, this love is bound up with Jesus.
He is simply everywhere in this poet’s imagination.
Jesus is woven in to the very fabric of his art.
From “Suzanne” on the earliest album …
“And Jesus was a sailor
when he walked upon the water
and he spent a long time watching
from his lonely wooden tower
and when he knew for certain
only drowning me would see him
he said, “All men will be sailors then,
until the sea shall free them.”
But he himself was broken,
long before the sky would open,
forsaken, almost human,
he sank beneath your wisdom
like a stone.”
to … his most recent album …
“Show me the place, help me roll away the stone
Show me the place, I can’t move this thing alone
Show me the place where the word became a man
Show me the place where the suffering began”
the poet has been dealing with Jesus,
and, indeed, praying to this Jesus:
“The splinters that you carry
the cross you left behind
come healing of the body
come healing of the mind”
And so we invited this poet to church tonight.
We invited the poetry and music to come to a little wine after dinner party,
we invited him to come and help us to dance to the end of love.
And it isn’t so strange, really.
You see, Leonard Cohen is no stranger to Jesus,
nor, it would appear, is he a stranger to the church:
“I walked into this empty church
I had no place else to go
When the sweetest voice I ever heard,
whispered to my soul
I don’t need to be forgiven for loving you so much
It’s written in the scriptures
It’s written there in blood
I’ve even heard the angels declare it from above
There ain’t no cure,
There ain’t no cure,
There ain’t no cure for love”
To which we can only quietly and humbly say, Amen. Amen. Amen.
Thank you, Mr. Cohen.
