Samuel Johnson amid the Christmas lights … he described Lichfield as ‘a city of philosophers’ almost 250 years go (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
Patrick Comerford
The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (13 December) has been commemorating Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), a pious Anglican throughout his life, but is best remembered as a writer of dictionaries and a literary editor.
Johnson, who was known as ‘The Great Moralist’, was a High Church Anglican and deeply committed to the Church of England since his younger days when he read William Law’s A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.
It is almost 250 years since Samuel Johnson took his friend James Boswell to Lichfield in 1776 to show him ‘genuine civilised life in an English provincial town’. Later Johnson would recall: ‘I lately took my friend Boswell and showed him genuine civilised life in an English provincial town. I turned him loose at Lichfield.’
They stayed at the Three Crowns in Breadmarket Street, beside the house on the corner of Market Square where Johnson was born and spent his childhood.
When Bosswell asked Johson why the people of Lichfield seemed to lack industry, Johnson famously replied that the people of Lichfield were philosophers: ‘Sir, (said Johnson,) we are a city of philosophers: we work with our heads, and make the boobies of Birmingham work for us with their hands.’
Lichfield has grown considerably in the two and a half centuries since that visit, from 4,000 people in Samuel Johnson’s days, to almost 35,000 people today. It is one of England’s smallest cities, but retains its civilised charm, and I returned to Johnson’s ‘city of philosophers’ – as I do so often – for a personal, three-day retreat last weekend.
Samuel Johnson was a key figure in shaping the English language as we use it today. Indeed, he has been described as ‘arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history’ and his biography by Boswell has been described as ‘the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature.’
Although Johnson began his literary career as a ‘Grub Street’ journalist, he made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer.
Samuel Johnson’s monument in a corner of the south transept in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
But why did Samuel Johnson describe Lichfield ‘a city of philosophers’?
In the decades before Johnson’s birth, Lichfield had been badly battered in the English Civil War. But the first sign of faith in its future was the decision by Bishop John Hacket to rebuild Lichfield Cathedral immediately after the Caroline Restoration.
Writers and cultural figures associated with Lichfield in the immediate aftermath of the Cromwellian era include: Elias Ashmole (1617-1692), whose legacy lives on in the Asmolean Museum in Oxford; Bishop John Fell (1625-1686), remembered in rhyme that opens ‘I do not like thee Doctor Fell’, and the son of a Dean of Lichfield; and Lancelot Addison (1632-1703), Dean of Lichfield and father of the essayist Joseph Addison (1672-1719).
It is easy to understand how, by the 18th century, Lichfield was a centre of genteel society, so that Daniel Defoe considered it the best town in the area for ‘good conversation and good company.’ There was little industry in Lichfield, but the place prospered thanks to both the wealth of the clergy in the Close, and to its place as coaching city on the main route to the north-west and Ireland.
The 18th century became a period of great intellectual activity, and Lichfield was home to many figures of intellect and culture, including Samuel Johnson, David Garrick, Erasmus Darwin and Anna Seward, prompting Johnson’s observation that Lichfield was ‘a city of philosophers’.
I spent some time on Sunday afternoon browsing the second-hand book stall in the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum, the five-storey house at the west end of the Market Square where Samuel Johnson was born on 18 September 1709.
Samuel Johnson married the widowed Elizabeth Porter in 1735, when he was 25 and she was 46 and the mother of three children. Two years later, Johnson and 20-year-old David Garrick set off for London in 1737 in search of fame and fortune. They survived many difficulties, and eventually Johnson became the leading literary figure of his generation and Garrick the leading actor.
Johnson’s fortunes took a dramatic turn in 1746 when a publisher commissioned him to compile a dictionary of the English language – a contract that was worth 1,500 guineas. Johnson claimed he could finish the project in three years. In comparison, the Académie Française had 40 scholars who would spend 40 years completing its French dictionary. Eventually, it took Johnson nine years to complete his Dictionary of the English Language.
Johnson’s Dictionary was not the first, nor was it unique. But it remained the standard, definitive and pre-eminent English dictionary for 150 years, until the Oxford English Dictionary was published in 1928. His Dictionary offers insights into the 18th century, providing ‘a faithful record of the language people used.’ It has been described as ‘one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship.’ As a work of literature, it has had a far-reaching impact on modern English.
The first edition of Johnson’s Dictionary is a huge book. The pages are almost 18 inches tall, and the book is 20 inches wide when opened. It contains 42,773 entries, and sold for £4 10s, the equivalent of about £350 today. An important innovation was his use of around 114,000 literary quotations to illustrate meanings. The authors most frequently cited include Shakespeare, Milton and Dryden.
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) was a generation younger than Johnson. He had a medical practice close to the cathedral, between the Close and Beacon Street, from 1757 until 1781, and was a member of the Lunar Society, which met sometimes in his house in Lichfield, from 1765 to 1813. The inner circle included Darwin, James Watt, Matthew Bolton, Joseph Priestley and Josiah Wedgwood, while others involved included the engineer James Brindley, the botanist Joseph Banks, American polymath Benjamin Franklin, astronomer William Herschel, printer and designer James Baskerville and artist Joseph Wright of Derby.
Johnson’s Willow (centre) with Lichfield Cathedral in the background … it is the fifth willow in this place on the north side of Stowe Pool (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
During the weekend, I also took time to revisit some other Johnson legacies in Lichfield: the Johnson statue in Market Square; his monument in a corner of the south transept of Lichfield Cathedral; John Myatt’s fading mosaic mural on a wall on a corner of Bird Street, opposite New Minster House; and ‘Johnson’s Willow’ on the north shore of Stowe Pool.
I have been familiar with the willow trees at this location for over 50 years, and the present willow tree is the fifth there since Johnson’s days.
The first willow there was probably planted around 1700, and became famous for two reasons: its great size, and its connections with Samuel Johnson.
When Johnson was young, the willow was close to his father’s parchment factory. When he returned to Lichfield in later years, he never failed to visit the tree, passing it on his way to visit his friends the Aston sisters who lived at the two large houses on Stowe Hill. He is said to have described the willow as ‘the delight of his early and waning life’.
The willow also attracted the interest of the Lichfield poet Anna Seward (1742-1809) and the American poet Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson (1737-1801). Fergusson wrote two long ‘Odes on the Litchfield (sic Willow’, in which she celebrated Johnson and other cultural figures who might have walked beneath the willow’s boughs.
Fergusson also used this tree, along with its ancestors and descendants, to symbolise the spread of civilisation from the ancient world to modern Britain and America.
Because of the willow’s association with Johnson, many later visitors to Lichfield came to see it. The original tree eventually became decayed, and in 1829 it was blown down. But it has been replaced by many of its descendants ever since.
A second willow, grown from a cutting of the original, was planted on the same site in 1830. It too was blown down in a great storm in 1881.
The third willow – again a true descendant – was not planted beside Stowe Pool until 1898. In 1956 it was found to be unsafe, and was felled after cuttings had been taken to raise a new tree.
The fourth willow was planted in 1959 during the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of Johnson’s birth.
Because of decay, the fourth willow was pollarded in 2014, 2016 and 2018, and it was finally felled on 8 October 2021. However, cuttings had been taken, and one of these was planted on the same site by Stowe Pool on 2 November 2021 to become the fifth willow. The ceremony included a reading of a poem about Johnson’s Willow by Sarah Dale, the winning entry in the Johnson Society’s Willow poetry competition.
Johnson’s Willow remains a part of Lichfield’s heritage and a much-loved link with Johnson and his age.
John Myatt’s fading mosaic mural of Samuel Johnson on a wall on a corner of Bird Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
On his last visit to church, the walk strained Samuel Johnson. However, while there he wrote a prayer for his friends, the Thrale family: ‘To thy fatherly protection, O Lord, I commend this family. Bless, guide, and defend them, that they may pass through this world, as finally to enjoy in thy presence everlasting happiness, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.’
In his last prayer, on 5 December 1784, before receiving Holy Communion and eight days before he died, Samuel Johnson prayed:
Almighty and most merciful Father, I am now, as to human eyes it seems, about to commemorate, for the last time, the death of thy Son Jesus Christ our Saviour and Redeemer. Grant, O Lord, that my whole hope and confidence may be in his merits, and his mercy; enforce and accept my imperfect repentance; make this commemoration available to the confirmation of my faith, the establishment of my hope, and the enlargement of my charity; and make the death of thy Son Jesus Christ effectual to my redemption. Have mercy on me, and pardon the multitude of my offences. Bless my friends; have mercy upon all men. Support me, by the grace of thy Holy Spirit, in the days of weakness, and at the hour of death; and receive me, at my death, to everlasting happiness, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.
As he lay dying, Samuel Johnson’s final words were: ‘Iam Moriturus’ (‘I who am about to die’). He fell into a coma and died at 7 p.m. on 13 December 1784 at the age of 75. He was buried at Westminster Abbey a week later.
Johnson’s life and work are celebrated in a stained glass window in Southwark Cathedral, he has monuments in Westminster Abbey, Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, and Lichfield Cathedral, and he is named in the calendar of the Church of England on this day as a modern Anglican saint.
The Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum in Lichfield where Samuel Johnson was born on 18 September 1709 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
13 December 2023
Daily prayers in Advent with
Leonard Cohen and USPG:
(11) 13 December 2023
‘For you / I will be a ghetto jew’ (Leonard Cohen) … stereotype figurines in a shopfront in the Jewish Quarter of Josefov in Prague (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
Patrick Comerford
We are in the countdown to Christmas in the Church, with just 12 days to go to Christmas. Sunday was the Second Sunday of Advent (10 December 2023), and we are almost half-way through Advent.
Today (13 December), the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship remembers the lives of Saint Lucy (304), Martyr at Syracuse, and Samuel Johnson (1784), Moralist. Later today, I have a meeting at Saint Mary’s Church, Church Green End, Bletchley, and I hope to be part of a choir carols rehearsal in the evening in All Saints’ Church, Calverton. But, before the day begins, I am taking some time for prayer and reflection this morning.
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.
‘For you / I will be a banker jew’ (Leonard Cohen) … a statue of Salomon Mayer von Rothschild (1774-1855) in the Jewish Museum in Vienna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Songs and Poems of Leonard Cohen: 11, ‘The Genius’:
Leonard Cohen’s second book, The Spice-Box of Earth, was published in 1961, when he was 27. It became the most popular and commercially successful of his early books, established his reputation as a poet in Canada, and brought him early literary acclaim.
I was recalling on Monday morning that my copy of this book, to paraphrase a line in another Leonard Cohen song, ‘has grown old and weary.’ Or, rather, it is long battered, stained and dog-eared. As I read through it, I still 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.’
On Monday, I was discussing ‘I have not lingered in European monasteries.’ That other poem, ‘The Genius,’ is often misread yet is both enigmatic and disturbing.
There are some echoes in ‘The Genius’ of Leonard Cohen’s later ‘I’m Your Man’, written and first recorded in 1987 as the title track for his eight album. In that song, the singer pleads he is willing to be a lover, a partner, a boxer, a doctor, a river, to be struck down in anger, to crawl, fall, howl, steer, disappear, to wear a mask, to ‘claw at your heart, and … tear at your sheet’ and to ‘walk … a while across the sand.’
But ‘The Genius’ is a poem not about how Cohen is willing to do almost anything imaginable for the love he seeks of a woman, or perhaps even to realise the love of God.
Instead, this is a poem about the stereotypes projected in antisemitic hatred and racist vitriol down through time, belittling Jews across the centuries – even his use of the lower case ‘j’ for the word ‘jew’ rather a capital ‘J’ for ‘Jew’ indicates that this poem is about belittling and demeaning projections.
In six stanzas, Cohen repeats are six tropes that have been used to confront and debase Jews for generations. The first five are: the ghetto Jew who dresses differently and poisons the town wells; the ‘converso’ Jew who secretly maintains his religious beliefs but is confronted by the Inquisition and accused of ‘blood libel’; the banker Jew who secretly seeks to make and break world powers; the entertainer Jew who is basically dishonest; and the doctor Jew who is a danger to children.
This language begins with low-level hate speech that eventually reaches its climax. When society turns a blind eye to these libels, the inevitable consequence is reached in the sixth stanza: the deportations, the concentration camps and the ovens of the Holocaust.
These antisemitic tropes continue to be used on the far-right today: they target George Soros and his ‘networks’, the ‘Elders of Zion’ have been replaced by ‘globalists’ and ‘cultural Marxists, blood libel has been replaced with QAnon, and instead of accusations of deicide there are accusations of ‘white genocide.’
‘Cultural Marxism’ was used earlier this year as a term of abuse in a speech by the Conservative MP Miriam Cates. The phrase has its origins in a conspiracy theory that Marxist scholars of the Frankfurt school in interwar Germany, many of whom were Jewish, devised a programme of progressive politics intended to undermine western democracies.
Suella Braverman, who resigned recently as Home Secretary, used the phrase in 2019, and 26 Tory MPs signed a joint letter to the Daily Telegraph in 2020 accusing the National Trust of being beset by ‘cultural Marxist dogma’.
‘Globalist’ is used as cheap shorthand to allege left-leaning institutions and banks are seeking to take over the world. The phrase is often connected to antisemitic conspiracy theories, especially when tied to people such as the Jewish financier George Soros. The former Ukip leader Nigel Farage has pioneered the use of much of the populist-nationalist language now being employed by some Conservatives, and has been criticised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, among others, for using Soros as a central trope in theories about globalists.
But some people on the left too fall into the trap of using similar tropes. On marches protesting about the present violence in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank, some of the slogans and placards have projected the policies of the present Netanyahu government onto every Israeli and even onto every Jew.
The New Stateman spoke last month of ‘the return of the longest hatred’ (24 November 2023), reporting that antisemitism is surging across the world and that Jewish people are once again living in fear. The following edition took as its cover theme ‘Being Jewish now’ (1 December 2023). With antisemitism rising and divisions on the left over the Gaza war, several writers reflected on being Jewish now.
In this poem, Leonard Cohen deals with ‘the longest hatred’ and in each stanza dramatically presents a different Jewish stereotype, a role projected onto Jews in antisemitic attacks that reach their eventual climax with the deportation of Jews to the concentration camps and the Holocaust.
Perhaps Leonard Cohen is addressing everyone, challenging hidden antisemitism throughout the world. But the ‘you’ he addresses may also be God. Perhaps the poet is also saying that no matter how others in the world find him or belittle him, no matter what the consequences are of the belittlement and hatred he meets in the world, no matter how heavy the burden or the yoke is, he remains a Jew, and he remains faithful to God.
‘For you /> I will be a Dachau jew / and lie down in lime’ (Leonard Cohen) … ‘Arbeit Mach Frei’ the slogan on the gates of Dachau
Leonard Cohen, The Genius:
For you
I will be a ghetto jew
and dance
and put white stockings
on my twisted limbs
and poison wells
across the town
For you
I will be an apostate jew
and tell the Spanish priest
of the blood vow
in the Talmud
and where the bones
of the child are hid
For you
I will be a banker jew
and bring to ruin
a proud old hunting king
and end his line
For you
I will be a Broadway jew
and cry in theatres
for my mother
and sell bargain goods
beneath the counter
For you
I will be a doctor jew
and search
in all the garbage cans for foreskins
to sew back again
For you
I will be a Dachau jew
and lie down in lime
with twisted limbs
and bloated pain
no mind can understand
‘For you / I will be a Broadway jew / and cry in theatres’ (Leonard Cohen) … ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ first opened on Broadway in 1964
Matthew 11: 28-30 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 28 ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’
‘For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light’(Matthew 11: 30) … Station 3 in the Stations of the Cross in the Church of the Annunciation, Clonard, Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)
Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 13 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 on Sunday.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (13 December 2023) invites us to pray in these words:
Heavenly Father, as we prepare our hearts to celebrate the birth of your Son joyfully, we thank you for the example of faith we have in Mary.
12 Christmas wreaths on front doors in Beacon Street, Lichfield … there are 12 days to go to Christmas (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
The Collect:
God our redeemer,
who gave light to the world that was in darkness
by the healing power of the Saviour’s cross:
shed that light on us, we pray,
that with your martyr Lucy
we may, by the purity of our lives,
reflect the light of Christ
and, by the merits of his passion,
come to the light of everlasting life;
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 our redeemer,
whose Church was strengthened by the blood of your martyr Lucy:
so bind us, in life and death, to Christ’s sacrifice
that our lives, broken and offered with his,
may carry his death and proclaim his resurrection in the world;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Reading ‘The Genius’ by Leonard Cohen (The Spice-Box of Earth)
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
Recent editions of the New Statesman have discussed ‘the return of the longest hatred’ and ‘Being Jewish Now’
Patrick Comerford
We are in the countdown to Christmas in the Church, with just 12 days to go to Christmas. Sunday was the Second Sunday of Advent (10 December 2023), and we are almost half-way through Advent.
Today (13 December), the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship remembers the lives of Saint Lucy (304), Martyr at Syracuse, and Samuel Johnson (1784), Moralist. Later today, I have a meeting at Saint Mary’s Church, Church Green End, Bletchley, and I hope to be part of a choir carols rehearsal in the evening in All Saints’ Church, Calverton. But, before the day begins, I am taking some time for prayer and reflection this morning.
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.
‘For you / I will be a banker jew’ (Leonard Cohen) … a statue of Salomon Mayer von Rothschild (1774-1855) in the Jewish Museum in Vienna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Songs and Poems of Leonard Cohen: 11, ‘The Genius’:
Leonard Cohen’s second book, The Spice-Box of Earth, was published in 1961, when he was 27. It became the most popular and commercially successful of his early books, established his reputation as a poet in Canada, and brought him early literary acclaim.
I was recalling on Monday morning that my copy of this book, to paraphrase a line in another Leonard Cohen song, ‘has grown old and weary.’ Or, rather, it is long battered, stained and dog-eared. As I read through it, I still 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.’
On Monday, I was discussing ‘I have not lingered in European monasteries.’ That other poem, ‘The Genius,’ is often misread yet is both enigmatic and disturbing.
There are some echoes in ‘The Genius’ of Leonard Cohen’s later ‘I’m Your Man’, written and first recorded in 1987 as the title track for his eight album. In that song, the singer pleads he is willing to be a lover, a partner, a boxer, a doctor, a river, to be struck down in anger, to crawl, fall, howl, steer, disappear, to wear a mask, to ‘claw at your heart, and … tear at your sheet’ and to ‘walk … a while across the sand.’
But ‘The Genius’ is a poem not about how Cohen is willing to do almost anything imaginable for the love he seeks of a woman, or perhaps even to realise the love of God.
Instead, this is a poem about the stereotypes projected in antisemitic hatred and racist vitriol down through time, belittling Jews across the centuries – even his use of the lower case ‘j’ for the word ‘jew’ rather a capital ‘J’ for ‘Jew’ indicates that this poem is about belittling and demeaning projections.
In six stanzas, Cohen repeats are six tropes that have been used to confront and debase Jews for generations. The first five are: the ghetto Jew who dresses differently and poisons the town wells; the ‘converso’ Jew who secretly maintains his religious beliefs but is confronted by the Inquisition and accused of ‘blood libel’; the banker Jew who secretly seeks to make and break world powers; the entertainer Jew who is basically dishonest; and the doctor Jew who is a danger to children.
This language begins with low-level hate speech that eventually reaches its climax. When society turns a blind eye to these libels, the inevitable consequence is reached in the sixth stanza: the deportations, the concentration camps and the ovens of the Holocaust.
These antisemitic tropes continue to be used on the far-right today: they target George Soros and his ‘networks’, the ‘Elders of Zion’ have been replaced by ‘globalists’ and ‘cultural Marxists, blood libel has been replaced with QAnon, and instead of accusations of deicide there are accusations of ‘white genocide.’
‘Cultural Marxism’ was used earlier this year as a term of abuse in a speech by the Conservative MP Miriam Cates. The phrase has its origins in a conspiracy theory that Marxist scholars of the Frankfurt school in interwar Germany, many of whom were Jewish, devised a programme of progressive politics intended to undermine western democracies.
Suella Braverman, who resigned recently as Home Secretary, used the phrase in 2019, and 26 Tory MPs signed a joint letter to the Daily Telegraph in 2020 accusing the National Trust of being beset by ‘cultural Marxist dogma’.
‘Globalist’ is used as cheap shorthand to allege left-leaning institutions and banks are seeking to take over the world. The phrase is often connected to antisemitic conspiracy theories, especially when tied to people such as the Jewish financier George Soros. The former Ukip leader Nigel Farage has pioneered the use of much of the populist-nationalist language now being employed by some Conservatives, and has been criticised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, among others, for using Soros as a central trope in theories about globalists.
But some people on the left too fall into the trap of using similar tropes. On marches protesting about the present violence in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank, some of the slogans and placards have projected the policies of the present Netanyahu government onto every Israeli and even onto every Jew.
The New Stateman spoke last month of ‘the return of the longest hatred’ (24 November 2023), reporting that antisemitism is surging across the world and that Jewish people are once again living in fear. The following edition took as its cover theme ‘Being Jewish now’ (1 December 2023). With antisemitism rising and divisions on the left over the Gaza war, several writers reflected on being Jewish now.
In this poem, Leonard Cohen deals with ‘the longest hatred’ and in each stanza dramatically presents a different Jewish stereotype, a role projected onto Jews in antisemitic attacks that reach their eventual climax with the deportation of Jews to the concentration camps and the Holocaust.
Perhaps Leonard Cohen is addressing everyone, challenging hidden antisemitism throughout the world. But the ‘you’ he addresses may also be God. Perhaps the poet is also saying that no matter how others in the world find him or belittle him, no matter what the consequences are of the belittlement and hatred he meets in the world, no matter how heavy the burden or the yoke is, he remains a Jew, and he remains faithful to God.
‘For you /> I will be a Dachau jew / and lie down in lime’ (Leonard Cohen) … ‘Arbeit Mach Frei’ the slogan on the gates of Dachau
Leonard Cohen, The Genius:
For you
I will be a ghetto jew
and dance
and put white stockings
on my twisted limbs
and poison wells
across the town
For you
I will be an apostate jew
and tell the Spanish priest
of the blood vow
in the Talmud
and where the bones
of the child are hid
For you
I will be a banker jew
and bring to ruin
a proud old hunting king
and end his line
For you
I will be a Broadway jew
and cry in theatres
for my mother
and sell bargain goods
beneath the counter
For you
I will be a doctor jew
and search
in all the garbage cans for foreskins
to sew back again
For you
I will be a Dachau jew
and lie down in lime
with twisted limbs
and bloated pain
no mind can understand
‘For you / I will be a Broadway jew / and cry in theatres’ (Leonard Cohen) … ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ first opened on Broadway in 1964
Matthew 11: 28-30 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 28 ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’
‘For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light’(Matthew 11: 30) … Station 3 in the Stations of the Cross in the Church of the Annunciation, Clonard, Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)
Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 13 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 on Sunday.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (13 December 2023) invites us to pray in these words:
Heavenly Father, as we prepare our hearts to celebrate the birth of your Son joyfully, we thank you for the example of faith we have in Mary.
12 Christmas wreaths on front doors in Beacon Street, Lichfield … there are 12 days to go to Christmas (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)
The Collect:
God our redeemer,
who gave light to the world that was in darkness
by the healing power of the Saviour’s cross:
shed that light on us, we pray,
that with your martyr Lucy
we may, by the purity of our lives,
reflect the light of Christ
and, by the merits of his passion,
come to the light of everlasting life;
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 our redeemer,
whose Church was strengthened by the blood of your martyr Lucy:
so bind us, in life and death, to Christ’s sacrifice
that our lives, broken and offered with his,
may carry his death and proclaim his resurrection in the world;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Reading ‘The Genius’ by Leonard Cohen (The Spice-Box of Earth)
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
Recent editions of the New Statesman have discussed ‘the return of the longest hatred’ and ‘Being Jewish Now’
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