Patrick Comerford
We are in the countdown to Christmas in the Church since the beginning of Advent, and yesterday was the Second Sunday of Advent (10 December 2023).
Throughout Advent this year, my reflections each day include a poem or song by Leonard Cohen. These Advent reflections are following this pattern:
1, A reflection on a poem or song by Leonard Cohen;
2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
The Songs and Poems of Leonard Cohen: 9, I Have Not Lingered in European Monasteries:
Leonard Cohen’s second book, The Spice-Box of Earth, was published in 1961, when he was 27, and became the most popular and commercially successful of his early books, established his poetic reputation in Canada, and brought him a measure of early literary acclaim.
My copy of this book, to paraphrase words in another Leonard Cohen song, ‘has grown old and weary,’ or, rather, it is battered, stained and dog-eared. As I read through it, I recall the poems I selected for poetry readings in Wexford in the early and mid-1970s, including ‘I have not lingered in European monasteries’ and ‘The Genius.’
Soon after The Spice-Box of Earth was published, Leonard Cohen retreated for several years to the island of Hydra in Greece, where worked on the sharper, darker poems published in Flowers for Hitler published in 1964.
Thirty years later, Leonard Cohen retreated yet again, when he interrupted his career in 1994 and entered Mount Baldy Zen Centre near Los Angeles for what became five years of solitude and study.
But his immersion in Zen Buddhism did not mean Cohen had abandoned his Jewish faith. Rather, he remained an observant Jew. He pointed out that there were neither petitionary prayer nor a god figure in Zen practice and said the two were not incompatible.
After leaving the monastery, Cohen returned to writing poetry, sending new material to be posted on a fan website. By 2001 he was back in the studio recording Ten New Songs, which became an international hit.
In this poem, the narrator the many things he has not done: he has not lingered in European monasteries, a metaphor for not heeding centuries-old religious traditions; he has not engaged in practices of meditation that would allow his mind to wander and wait; he has not ‘held my breath so that I might hear the breathing of God’; and he has not engaged in traditional religious practices that he dismisses as the worship of ‘wounds and relics. Instead, he claims, he is content and sees himself as being self-contained:
During the day I laugh and during the night I sleep.
My favourite cooks prepare my meals,
my body cleans and repairs itself,
and all my work goes well.
These final four lines are, on first reading, supposedly positive in their outlook, contrasting sharply with the negative dismissals earlier in the poem. The narrator claims a self-generating mastery over his own reading of the world. But the reader is left with a sense of emptiness and loneliness.
The speaker unintentionally exposes his own self-conscious obsession with the past traditions that he claims to reject. In this rejection itself there is another kind of ‘lingering’, despite the poem’s opening claims. Perhaps the narrator really needs to hold his breath so that he may hear the breathing of God.
The narrator is speaking ironically when he concludes that he has not been unhappy for 10,000 years. The poem laments both the loss of a right and proper way and a life lived superficially. None of his accomplishments amount to anything, really. What is gained by merely meeting my bodily needs and doing my work well?
Indeed, the tone of the closing stanza is so ironic that the poem comes to mean the opposite of what it seems to say on first reading, and exposes the deficiency and failings of the narrator’s claims to being the master of himself.
Many years after returning to terra firma following his five years as a recluse on Mount Baldy, Leonard Cohen gave an interview in 2007, in which he said he had ‘always resisted the claim for the unique truth of one particular model, and, growing up in Montreal, one had powerful versions of Catholicism, Protestantism and Judaism. It didn’t involve a real stretch to be affected by those traditions. It was natural.’
When he was a secretary to his teacher, Roshi, there was ‘a kind of rapprochement between Zen and the Roman Catholic church,’ through people like Thomas Merton and the Trappists in Massachusetts. Cohen would accompany him to these monasteries, setting-up the meetings and dialogue while Roshi was leading meditations.
His interviewer asked, ‘So you lingered in North American monasteries but not in European ones?’
Cohen replied: ‘That’s right. I did linger in a number of them and I would talk to the monks and get a feel for things apart from what I was reading, like Simone Weil. I remember an older monk with whom I became friendly. I said to him one day, “How’s it going?” and he said, “I’ve been here 12 years and every morning when I wake up I have to decide whether or not to stay.” It’s a rough life.’
He spent many years with Roshi and explained: ‘People have very romantic ideas but a monastery is a kind of hospital where people end up because they can’t make it in any other circumstances.’
Leonard Cohen, I Have Not Lingered in European Monasteries:
I have not lingered in European monasteries
and discovered among the tall grasses tombs of knights
who fell as beautifully as their ballads tell;
I have not parted the grasses
or purposefully left them thatched.
I have not released my mind to wander and wait
in those great distances
between the snowy mountains and the fishermen,
like a moon,
or a shell beneath the moving water.
I have not held my breath
so that I might hear the breathing of God,
or tamed my heartbeat with an exercise,
or starved for visions.
Although I have watched him often
I have not become the heron,
leaving my body on the shore,
and I have not become the luminous trout,
leaving my body in the air.
I have not worshipped wounds and relics,
or combs of iron,
or bodies wrapped and burnt in scrolls.
I have not been unhappy for ten thousand years.
During the day I laugh and during the night I sleep.
My favourite cooks prepare my meals,
my body cleans and repairs itself,
and all my work goes well.
Luke 5: 17-26 (NRSVA):
17 One day, while he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting nearby (they had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem); and the power of the Lord was with him to heal. 18 Just then some men came, carrying a paralysed man on a bed. They were trying to bring him in and lay him before Jesus; 19 but finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the middle of the crowd in front of Jesus. 20 When he saw their faith, he said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven you.’ 21 Then the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, ‘Who is this who is speaking blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ 22 When Jesus perceived their questionings, he answered them, ‘Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? 23 Which is easier, to say, “Your sins are forgiven you”, or to say, “Stand up and walk”? 24 But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’ – he said to the one who was paralysed – ‘I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go to your home.’ 25 Immediately he stood up before them, took what he had been lying on, and went to his home, glorifying God. 26 Amazement seized all of them, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen strange things today.’
Today’s Prayers (Monday 11 December 2023):
The theme this week in the new edition of ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘The Faith of Advent.’ This theme was introduced yesterday.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (11 December 2023) invites us to pray as we reflect on these words:
As yesterday was Human Rights Day, let us celebrate the fundamental rights we share and safeguard the rights of our fellow human beings.
The Collect:
O Lord, raise up, we pray, your power
and come among us,
and with great might succour us;
that whereas, through our sins and wickedness
we are grievously hindered
in running the race that is set before us,
your bountiful grace and mercy
may speedily help and deliver us;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
to whom with you and the Holy Spirit,
be honour and glory, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Father in heaven,
who sent your Son to redeem the world
and will send him again to be our judge:
give us grace so to imitate him
in the humility and purity of his first coming
that, when he comes again,
we may be ready to greet him
with joyful love and firm faith;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Almighty God,
purify our hearts and minds,
that when your Son Jesus Christ comes again
as judge and saviour
we may be ready to receive him,
who is our Lord and our God.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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