‘Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on’ (Leonard Cohen) … toasting the bride and groom at a wedding (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
We are in the countdown to Christmas in the Church since Sunday, which was Advent Sunday or the First Sunday of Advent (3 December 2023), the first day in a new Church Year.
The Church Calendar today (6 December) celebrates Saint Nicholas (
ca 326), Bishop of Myra, the role model for the real Santa Claus.
Before this day begins, I am taking time early this morning for prayer and reflection.
Throughout Advent this year, my reflections each day include a poem or song by Leonard Cohen. My 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.
‘Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin’ (Leonard Cohen) … violins in a the window of a music shop in Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Songs and Poems of Leonard Cohen: 4, ‘Dance Me to the End of Love’:
I have said with humour and full sincerity that when my coffin is being taken into the church at my funeral (later than sooner, I hope), that I want to hear Leonard Cohen’s ‘If it be your will’ … and when my coffin is being carried out I want to hear his ‘Dance me to the end of love’ (1984). It was also one of the songs Charlotte and I chose for our wedding last month.
Leonard Cohen’s poetry and songs were marked by the scars of the Holocaust and reflected with intensity the spirituality of Central European Jewish spirituality. The rhythms of his music and his imagery also drew on the time he spent over many years in Greece.
I love the Greek chords I hear in ‘Dance me to the end of love.’ But, more importantly, I am moved by the spirituality in this song that speaks tenderly, lyrically and poetically about a love that is eternal, that goes beyond human love, that transcends human suffering and that is consumed in the Love of God.
The song was first performed by Leonard Cohen on his 1984 album
Various Positions. Although on first hearing, this song sounds like a love song, perhaps about a newly-married couple dancing at their wedding. But ‘Dance Me to the End Of Love’ is about the horrors of the Holocaust.
In an interview, Leonard Cohen said the song recalls how in Auschwitz and other death camps, ‘a string quartet was pressed into performance while this horror was going on, those were the people whose fate was this horror also. And they would be playing classical music while their fellow prisoners were being killed and burnt.’
The members of the string quartet were going to be killed afterwards in the crematorium but were allowed to play music. This playing of music is joy and happiness to the members of the quartet, the last piece of love and joy they will experience before their own end.
The words ‘Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin’ refer to the string quartet’s instruments that are going to be burned in crematorium.
The words ‘Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon’ compares the sufferings of the exiled Jewish people on Babylon with the sufferings of the Holocaust, and the words of the Psalmist ‘How shall we sign the Lord’s song in a strange land?’ (Psalm 137: 4).
When the Jewish Czech composer Viktor Ullmann was deported to the concentration camp in Theresienstadt in 1942, he decided to remain active musically. There he became a piano accompanist, organised concerts, wrote critiques of musical events, and composed, as part of a cultural circle that included Karel Ančerl, Rafael Schachter, Gideon Klein, Hans Krása, and other prominent musicians there. He wrote: ‘By no means did we sit weeping on the banks of the waters of Babylon. Our endeavour with respect to arts was commensurate with our will to live.’
On 16 October 1944, he was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and there he was killed in the gas chambers two days later on 18 October 1944.
In his interview, Leonard Cohen spoke of the music and the words ‘Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin … meaning the beauty there of being the consummation of life, the end of this existence and of the passionate element in that consummation.’
But he conceded that ‘it is the same language that we use for surrender to the beloved, so that the song – it’s not important that anybody knows the genesis of it, because if the language comes from that passionate resource, it will be able to embrace all passionate activity.’
However,
The Irish Times once said: ‘When Leonard Cohen takes to the stage, it’s no less than a cultural event of Biblical dimensions.’
When I listen to this song as a prayer, then the song too talks about being ‘gathered safely in’ and talks to me of being able to trust in the love of God despite the greatest horrors that can be faced in life. While our knowledge of this love is limited by our capacity to imagine it, it has, in fact, no limits at all:
Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone …
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in.
And when I am dying, I hope no matter how and when that happens (hopefully many, many and many more years from now), I hope I am consumed in the love of God, and that the dance goes on.
Leonard Cohen was a generous artist, generous in his tributes to his musicians on stage and generous to his audiences, staying on stage for four or five hours at each concert. ‘May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life, for us.’
Leonard Cohen, Dance Me To The End Of Love:
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We’re both of us beneath our love, we’re both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
‘Dance me to the end of love’ … Leonard Cohen on stage at Lissadell House, Co Sligo, in 2010 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Matthew 15: 29-37 (NRSVA):
29 After Jesus had left that place, he passed along the Sea of Galilee, and he went up the mountain, where he sat down. 30 Great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the maimed, the blind, the mute, and many others. They put them at his feet, and he cured them, 31 so that the crowd was amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel.
32 Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, ‘I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way.’ 33 The disciples said to him, ‘Where are we to get enough bread in the desert to feed so great a crowd?’ 34 Jesus asked them, ‘How many loaves have you?’ They said, ‘Seven, and a few small fish.’ 35 Then ordering the crowd to sit down on the ground, 36 he took the seven loaves and the fish; and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 37 And all of them ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full.
‘Where are we to get enough bread in the desert to feed so great a crowd?’ (Matthew 15: 33) … bread in the window of Hindley’s Bakery in Lichfield (Photograph: Parick Comerford, 2023)
Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 6 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 Hope of Advent.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (6 December 2023, Saint Nicholas of Myra) invites us to pray in these words:
We pray for the work of our Anglican partner churches across the world – for the hope that they can bring to individuals and communities.
An icon of Saint Nicholas, the role model for Santa Claus, in a mosaic in the Monastery of Saint John the Baptist, Tolleshunt Knights … his feast day is 6 November (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Collect:
Almighty Father, lover of souls,
who chose your servant Nicholas
to be a bishop in the Church,
that he might give freely out of the treasures of your grace:
make us mindful of the needs of others
and, as we have received, so teach us also to give;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God, shepherd of your people,
whose servant Nicholas revealed the loving service of Christ
in his ministry as a pastor of your people:
by this eucharist in which we share
awaken within us the love of Christ
and keep us faithful to our Christian calling;
through him who laid down his life for us,
but is alive and reigns with you, now and for ever.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
‘Dance Me to the End of Love’ … Leonard Cohen
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
