I have a thing for Leonard Cohen. I have Karen to thank for this.
So you can imagine how excited I was when Mandy shared with me this post in which you could listen to Leonard’s new album free for a limited time.
My instant favorite song was Come Healing. It’s now on my wish list in iTunes.
Here’s some of the lyrics that moved me:
“Behold the gates of mercy
in arbitrary space
and none of us deserving
the cruelty or the grace.”
Can I just stop right there and say, I have heard a lot of talk in Christianity about how undeserving I am of grace, but I have heard very little talk about how I equally feel undeserving of cruelty. But if I’m honest, I feel both, strongly, succinctly, paradoxically. And it’s just refreshing to have someone just come out and say it (or in this case sing it in a throaty baritone rumble). We don’t deserve the grace, AND we don’t deserve the cruelty that life allows us.
“Oh solitude of longing
while love has been confined
come healing of the body
come healing of the mind.”
Now this, this is what I feel every time I get stuck or I get anxious. This solitude of longing. Here I am sitting with myself and wondering how I could possibly make it, because the fear can blind me from the love. But the one consistency of my solitude of longing, is that if I pose the question, “Do you love me? Are you there oh Big Someone?” That Big Someone always responds with a whispered -”I love you.” And if I pose the question to friends, “Do you see me?” One of them always answers back, “I do, and I love what I see.” And then I say to myself, “And of course, I love you too.” And when love is no longer confined, neither are my art muscles, my dream muscles, my “let’s live life fully” muscles. That’s when my healing feels like it comes.
“Oh see the darkness yielding
that tore the light apart
come healing of the reason
come healing of the heart.”
I love that he mentions darkness tearing light apart. Because it does that, you know? It tears everything apart. Certainty, answers, rules, formulas, illusions. And even though the light never gets put back together quite the same, and we can never withstand the intensity of light like we used to, I love the sense that with our healing comes the power to make darkness yield. We can sit in it, but not be swallowed by it.
When we know we are loved, we know we can tell the darkness how far it can come, which is nice on the days where we’ve had all we can handle. This is when I take a nap, or go to bed early. This is when “Come Healing” is whispered like a blessing to myself. “May you be healed from some source that exists beyond you. And may you be healed from some source that exists within you.”
Sometimes we create opportunity for healing to occur and sometimes healing calls in a throaty baritone rumble, asking us to partake. Either way, there is movement on our behalf. There is a redemption to the parts of us that felt untouchable, unworkable, unloveable.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
oh lovely… i can’t wait to check out this song.
“darkness tearing light apart.” this is a great visual. i also see that, as light is ripped open, little light-shards drip like when a welder takes his torch to iron and all you see for awhile are little sparks bursting like rain and stars. but then he takes his torch away, and you have art.
I can see this so vividly.
Yes, Mandy! And I suggest that Grace is powerful enough to balm the pains of cruelty;–and the subsequent estrangement and resentment. Otherwise I’m going to drink and tune out.
–m
And otherwise I’m going to chain smoke and tune out.
Hey that’s Cadence. I’m there an average of four times a week! Hope to see you there sometime.
I’ve only been there for an art show, which was in the other half of the building, and I snuck over to check out cadence. I don’t have the extra time to commit to doing yoga outside my home right now. Maybe someday. It seems lovely, and several have recommended it to me.
wallowing in this rich buttery goodness
over here…..writing, writing things down,
beautiful bits that you’ve written
and I want to read again
and remember and marinate my soul
until it’s tenderized
and flavored with the salty wonder of it all.
-Jennifer
I am blessed by some of the best blog comments in the world. What a gift to have great writers leave their words here. Thank you.
Thank you for this piece, Mandy, I so needed it, and I love what Jennifer’s written in her comment above! I connected with Leonard Cohen’s “throaty baritone rumble” (you worded that perfectly!) when I was obsessed for some odd reason that still remains unclear with Natural Born Killers, the movie and its soundtrack. He has a couple songs on the soundtrack that I listened to over and over. The part you wrote about darkness tearing light apart and light being put back together differently resonates within me and brings forth prism thoughts. Currently I’m going through the process of journal redemption and I’m on pages that hold definitions and thoughts of prisms and related light reflections. There’s some connection here for me that I don’t yet understand but am thinking through and will continue to. I love the photo of your bowl of collections, collections put things together for me too, and that’s what it seems to do here. Redemption connects with me completely as it’s what I’m going through. Thank you for speaking these things through this piece, and I have to go listen to this song now!
Someone else was talking about prisms recently. Or was it you? Anyway, yes, there’s something there, but I’m not sure I understand it yet either. Ha!
I am so glad you found inspiration in L Cohen, he truly resonates over here too. I feel peace when I hear his ideas, the ideas he expresses that we think, but sometimes can’t say, like that feeling of knowing we deserve nothing, neither grace nor cruelty. And you, beautiful, as usual!
Yes, peace to hear his ideas.
Thanks sweet friend. It’s always a pleasure to see you in this space.
“When we know we are loved, we know we can tell the darkness how far it can come…”
I so really love this observation you’ve made.
Interestingly, it was only late last night that I had a convo with a friend, and I admitted that I’m now at a place where I need to know everyday (through personal experience), that I’m loved; and how even the ordinary things..the subtle beauties have evolved somewhat, for me, as I come to an ever-increasing awareness that Daddy God loves me. It’s astonishing the things I missed, prior to getting to this place; not just in my authority as His son and my approach to spiritual warfare, but just this value in creation. (lol perhaps I’m becoming a Charlotte, in a way hehe)
and well..His love is an entry gate for love through various streams, right? So that’s pretty sweet too!