‘Tea and Oranges’ as I ‘hear the boats go by’ on the canal between Armitage and Rugeley in April sunshine

‘You can hear the boats go by … and she feeds you tea and oranges’ … ‘Tea and Oranges’ on the canal below Hawkesyard Hall in Armitage (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

As I was walking one day last week by the canal towpath between Rugeley and Armitage in the April sunshine, I noticed that one of the boats I saw below the pinnacles and turrets of Hawkesyard Hall is called ‘Tea and Oranges’.

I found myself singing the lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Suzanne’, with its images of lovers walking hand-in-hand by boats and the water and of ‘tea and oranges that come all the way from China’:

Suzanne takes you down
To her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she’s half-crazy
But that’s why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you’ve always been her lover

‘Suzanne’ is a haunting composition and over the years it has become one of the best known works by the Canadian poet singer and songwriter Leonard Cohen, who died almost ten years ago on 7 November 2016.

Like many of Cohen’s songs, ‘Suzanne’ began as poem. He published his first book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956) at the age of 22. This was followed by The Spice-Box of Earth (1961), Flowers for Hitler (1964), and his novels The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966).

‘Suzanne’ was first published 60 years ago in 1966 as the poem ‘Suzanne Takes You Down’ in his third poetry collection, Parasites of Heaven (1966). Judy Collins recorded ‘Suzanne’ for her album In My Life, released in November 1966. A year later, Cohen included the song as the first track on Side A of his debut album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, released on 27 December 1967.

The album’s front cover depicts a sepia tint photo of Leonard Cohen. The back cover is a Mexican religious picture of the Anima Sola depicted as a woman breaking free of her chains surrounded by flames and gazing towards heaven. In a Rolling Stone interview, he described the image as ‘the triumph of the spirit over matter. The spirit being that beautiful woman breaking out of the chains and the fire and prison’.

‘Suzanne’ was released as a single in 1968, but only reached the charts after Cohen died in 2016.


‘You can hear the boats go by’ … 90 seconds on the canal between Armitage and Rugeley (Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Suzanne has become one of the most covered songs in Cohen’s catalogue. Far Out and American Songwriter ranked the song No 4 and No 2, respectively, on their lists of the ten greatest Leonard Cohen songs. In 2021, it was ranked at No 284 on Rolling Stone’s ‘Top 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.’

Leonard Cohen had a lengthy relationship with the Los Angeles artist Suzanne Elrod in the 1970s. But he later said ‘cowardice’ and ‘fear’ prevented him from ever marrying her. They had two children, a son Adam (born 1972) and a daughter Lorca (born 1974) named after the poet Federico García Lorca.

Leonard Cohen and Suzanne Elrod had split up by 1979. But, contrary to popular belief, ‘Suzanne’ in the song is not Suzanne Elrod, but the dancer Suzanne Verdal, the former wife of his friend, the Québécois sculptor Armand Vaillancourt.

The song’s brilliance lies in its pairing of a spare, hypnotic melody with evocative lyrics:

Now Suzanne takes you down
To her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know she’s half crazy.

In Cohen’s version first recorded in 1968, the mood is underscored by a lilting female chorus and Cohen’s own subtle, insistent guitar playing. Cohen recalls ‘Suzanne,’ the enigmatic title figure, who wears ‘rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters.’

‘Suzanne’ was inspired by Cohen’s platonic relationship with Suzanne Verdal and the lyrics describe the rituals that they enjoyed when they met. She would invite him to visit her apartment by the harbour in Montreal, where she would serve him Constant Comment tea, and feed him ‘oranges that come all the way from China’.

Together, they savoured the beautiful view of the St Lawrence River from her waterfront apartment in Montreal, and they would walk around Old Montreal past the Church of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, where sailors were blessed before heading out to sea.

Other details speak of a romantic longing that, seemingly, remained unfulfilled:

And you want to travel with her
and you want to travel blind …
for you’ve touched her perfect body
with your mind.

The hunger these two gifted people had for one another illuminates the lyrics, giving them a spark that seems to resonate from the inside. On a human level, the song is about the mysterious forces that bring people together and, then, just as inexplicably, move them apart. ‘Suzanne’ can be heard or read as a statement of human frailty, representing a special moment in time, created by two people whose mutual attraction was not fulfilled in a physical sense, but still fulfilled in an emotional, deeper, way.

Verdal went on to travel the world, going from Montreal to France to Texas, and, finally, by the early 1990s, to Los Angeles, where she worked as a choreographer. Cohen said in a BBC interview in 1994 that he only imagined having sex with her, as there was neither the opportunity nor inclination to actually go through with it.

A fall and injury ended her career as a dancer. By 2006, she was living in a converted truck in Venice Beach, California. That year she told a CBC interview that she had ‘put the boundaries’ on the relationship with Cohen. She said then that they never had a sexual relationship, contrary to what some interpretations of the song suggest: ‘Somehow, I didn’t want to spoil that preciousness, that infinite respect that I had for him … I felt that a sexual encounter might demean it somehow.’

‘She is wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters’ … the Salvation Army shop on Market Street in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Despite beginning as a story of love and infatuation, Suzanne turns to a religious theme in the second verse:

And Jesus was a sailor
when he walked upon the water …

His ‘lonely wooden tower’ is, of course, the cross. Cohen is so fascinated by Jesus that he writes:

And you want to travel with him
you want to travel blind
and you think maybe you’ll trust him
for he’s touched your perfect body
with his mind.

The stanza ends in the most tragic and cryptic lines of the poem, as the voice returns to a third person of Jesus:

But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

This must refer to the crucifixion and the burial. He was ‘forsaken almost human.’ Despite being divine he is also human.

‘And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China’ … oranges in the Tua Pek Kong Chinese temple in Kuching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford,)

Leonard Cohen, Suzanne:

Suzanne takes you down
To her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she’s half-crazy
But that’s why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you’ve always been her lover

And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind

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 men could 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

And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you’ll trust him
For he’s touched your perfect body with his mind

Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror

And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know you can trust her
For she’s touched your perfect body with her mind.

Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 20, Friday 24 April 2026

‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me’ (John 6: 56) … an icon of Christ the Great High Priest, in a shop window in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Easter is a 50-day season that continues until the Day of Pentecost, and this week began with the Third Sunday of Easter (Easter III, 19 April 2026). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Mellitus (624), Bishop of London and first Bishop at Saint Paul’s; and the Seven Martyrs of the Melanesian Brotherhood, Solomon Islands (2003).

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

The Visitation of Abraham or the ‘Old Testament Trinity’ … a new icon by the iconographer Alexandra Kaouki in Rethymnon interprets a Trinitarian and Eucharistic theme (Photograph © Alexandra Kaouki, 2026)

John 6: 52-59 (NRSVA):

52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ 53 So Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live for ever.’ 59 He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.

‘This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate’ (John 6: 58) … bread in the Avoca shop in Kilmacanogue, Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

With this morning’s Gospel reading, we are coming to the end of this week’s series of readings in the ‘Bread of Life’ discourse in Saint John’s Gospel. This series would normally conclude tomorrow (John 6: 60-69), although this is going to missed by most as tomorrow is also the Feast of Saint Mark the Evengelist.

This morning’s reading is one of the most explicit Trinitarian passages in the New Testament. Christ speaks to us of the Trinity in terms of the inter-relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, explaining how the Father, Son and Holy Spirit work together, dance together, and are inseparable.

We owe our understandings of the Trinity, in terms of doctrine and social understanding, and how we express these understandings to the Cappadocian Fathers. I spent some time in Cappadocia in south-central Turkey one because of my interest in sites associated with the three Cappadocian Fathers. These are three key Patristic writers and saints: Saint Basil the Great (329-379), Bishop of Caesarea; his brother Saint Gregory (335-395), Bishop of Nyssa; and Saint Gregory Nazianzus (329-390), who became Patriarch of Constantinople.

They challenged heresies such as Arianism, which denied the divinity of Christ, and their thinking was instrumental in formulating the phrases that shaped the Nicene Creed – the Church celebrated the 1,700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed last year.

But their thinking was not about doctrine alone; it was also about living the Christian life. Without the Cappadocian Fathers, would we have turned away from the difficult teachings of Christ, as we find them in this Gospel passage? Would we too have dismissed this passage as a ‘hard saying’?

Although Christ’s words ‘I am the Bread of Life’ are familiar to many Christians, in this passage the disciples declare ‘this teaching is difficult’ (verse 60), as we shall read tomorrow.

Christ is teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum, where he is interpreting a passage of scripture that has already been introduced by the crowd (see verse 31). They want a sign similar to the one of manna given to their ancestors in the wilderness in Sinai.

In response, he declares he is the manna, the ‘bread of life’ (verse 35), just as he has told the Samaritan woman at the well that he is the living water (see John 4: 5-26), and just as he tells the disciples later that he is the true vine (see John 15: 1).

Moses could provide this miraculous bread, but he is not the bread of life. Moses could strike the rock and bring forth water, but he is not the living water. How can Christ himself be bread and wine?

These are such difficult conundrums that they turn many of his listeners away.

Verse 56 says: ὁ τρώγων μου τὴν σάρκα καὶ πίνων μου τὸ αἷμα ἐν ἐμοὶ μένει κἀγὼ ἐν αὐτῷ. We translate this and similar passages into English so politely. For example, the NRSV says: ‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I them.’ But a more direct translation might say something: ‘Whoever is gnawing on my flesh and drinking my blood remains in me and I in him.’

There are three interesting verbs in this verse: the verb τρώγων (trógon) means to gnaw, crunch, or chew, as in chewing on raw vegetables or fruits, and is subtly different in meaning than the verb ‘eat’ (ἐσθίω, esthío); the verb πίνων (pínon) means to drink; and the verb μένει (ménei) means to remain or abide, yet some of his disciples or about to leave Christ and eleven of the twelve are to continue to walk with him.

Verse 57 says: καθὼς ἀπέστειλέν με ὁ ζῶν πατὴρ κἀγὼ ζῶ διὰ τὸν πατέρα, καὶ ὁ τρώγων με κἀκεῖνος ζήσει δι' ἐμέ. ‘Just as the living Father sent me, and I live through the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.’ But, again, we could translate this: ‘As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so also the one gnawing on me also will live because of me.’

Christ is not merely claiming to give the bread: he is the life-giving bread that the Father gives, and, lest his hearers dismiss this as a metaphor, he insists that this bread is his own flesh.

The Greek word here, ἀπέστειλέν (apésteilén) speaks of being sent to or going to an appointed place. The words ζῶν (zon), ζῶ (zo) and ζήσει (zései) speak of living, breathing, and being among the living. Once again, we hear the word τρώγων (trógon), from the verb τρώγω (trógo) to gnaw, crunch or chew.

Verse 58 says: οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ ἄρτος ὁ ἐξ οὐρανοῦ καταβάς, οὐ καθὼς ἔφαγον οἱ πατέρες καὶ ἀπέθανον: ὁ τρώγων τοῦτον τὸν ἄρτον ζήσει εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα. ‘This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live for ever.’

Again, how would you respond if this had been translated more explicitly as ‘This one is the bread that has come down out of heaven, not as the fathers ate and died; whoever gnaws on this bread will live into the age-long.’

We have the contrast between καταβὰς (katavas), from καταβαίνω (katavaíno) to go down, come down, or descend, which contrasts with the later reference in verse 62 to ascending to where the Son of Man was before.

In the first part of this verse, Christ uses the word ἔφαγον (ephagon) to describe eating, rather than the verb used again in the second part, τρώγων (trógon), to gnaw, crunch or chew.

This verse brings us back to the earlier discussion in the Gospel reading (John 6: 44-51, see verses 49-51) that we missed in the lectionary yesterday because we were celebrating Saint George’s Day. That reading compares the temporal nature of the manna in the wilderness with the everlasting nature of Christ’s own bread or flesh. It is a reminder that this chapter begins with the feeding of the 5,000 near the time of the Passover, an explicit echo of the Manna story from the Exodus journey through the wilderness to the Promised Land.

They murmur and mutter, and the word used here is the same word used in the Exodus story (see, for examples, Exodus 15: 24; 16: 2) for the murmuring, muttering and grumbling of the people who have just experienced being liberated from slavery yet are not willing to accept the consequences of staying on the journey. They do not trust God to take care of them. Over and over, with questions of water, food, and physical safety, the Israelites play out the same drama of whether they will trust God to care for them.

Once again, people who are on a journey with God turn away. This turning away is the very opposite to the metanoia (μετάνοια), the turning around of conversion.

They are no longer willing to stay the course, they turn away from journeying with Christ, journeying with him to Jerusalem, journeying with him to the Cross, journeying with him to the promise of new life. They are scandalised.

The phrase here reminds me of the common phrase, the Scandal of the Cross or the Scandal of the Gospel, although the phrase as such appears nowhere in the New Testament.

Some of Christ’s disciples have only understood his words in a literal way.

There are many today who hold up a literal interpretation of some obscure and contended passages of scripture, including, for example, some on sexuality, but who reject a literal interpretation of the passages in this ‘Bread of Life’ discourse in Saint John’s Gospel.

They cannot, will not, and refuse to accept Christ’s corporal presence, body and blood, in the Eucharist, however we may come to understand that. It sometimes seems this is the one passage whose literal interpretation is a stumbling block, a scandal, to them.

When they ask whether you have invited Christ into your life, they would be scandalised were you to answer you do that every time you pray the Prayer of Humble Access, every time you receive him in the Eucharist, asking that ‘we may evermore dwell in him and he in us’.

There is little point in arguing that people at the time had no understanding of this Gospel passage as looking forward to the Last Supper and beyond that to the Eucharistic celebrations of the Early Church.

It was written not for the people who were present at the time, but written 50 or 60 years later and would have been first heard by people dealing with the divisions in the Pauline and Johannine communities that came together in the Church in Ephesus. In a lectionary reflection in the Church Times [14 August 2015], Dr Bridget Nicholas pointed out that the ‘Bread of Life’ discourse is the Fourth Gospel’s counterpart to the narrative of the institution of the Lord’s Supper in the Synoptic Gospels.

The writer of this Gospel is addressing a small community of Christians in Ephesus, for whom linear time is displaced by the fact that they already know the divine identity of Christ. And the life that Christ offers to his own people is being worked out in practical ways by the recipients of the Letter to the Ephesians.

In this Gospel story, as in the Exodus story, this murmuring, muttering and grumbling shows a complete lack of trust, belief and faith in God. And this is not just intellectual assent, but a willingness to make life-changing decisions.

In this week’s Gospel readings, the twelve are the ones who ‘abide’ with Christ. They stick with him even though his teaching is difficult. They stay with him at the Last Supper, and even though they will scatter during his trial and crucifixion, their faith is strengthened, returns in full vigour with the Resurrection and is fortified at Pentecost.

But the people who desert Christ in this week’s Gospel reading, who turn away, are not ‘the crowds’ – they are ‘disciples.’ They had followed Christ and believed in him, but now they leave.

Abandoning the Eucharistic faith and practice of the Church is often the first step in abandoning the Church, abandoning Christ, and turning backs on the call to love God and love one another.

If we take part regularly and with spiritual discipline in the Eucharist, we realise that it is not all about me at all. This bread is broken and this cup is poured out not just for us but also for the many.

It is interesting that the parishes with infrequent celebrations of the Eucharist are often the most closed, the ones most turned in on themselves, unwilling to open their doors to those who are different in social and ethnic background, with irregular relationships and lifestyles, and the parishes that err on the side of judgmentalism.

Regular reception of this Sacrament is a reminder that the Church exists not for you and for me but for the world, and that the Church is not for those who decide subjectively they are the ‘called’ and the ‘saved,’ but is there to call the world into the Kingdom.

In the Eucharistic prayers, we use words such as: ‘this is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins’. In two Gospel passages we read: ‘for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins’ (Matthew 26: 28); and ‘this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many’ (Mark 14: 24).

It is clear that the Eucharist, while celebrated among the disciples or within the community, is for the benefit of ‘the many.’ The Eucharist is the shape of ‘the mission-shaped Church.’

Knowing and belief come together, knowledge is meaningless without wisdom, faith goes beyond accepting facts.

As Canon Patrick Whitworth points out in one of his books, for the Cappadocian Fathers, doctrine, prayer and pastoral ministry are inseparable from care for the poor [Patrick Whitworth, Three Wise men from the East: the Cappadocian Fathers and the Struggle for Orthodoxy (Durham: Sacristy Press, 2015)].

The profession of faith by Simon Peter in tomorrow’s reading is followed immediately by a cautious and disturbing remark by Christ about betrayal (verses 70-71), although the compilers of the Revised Common Lectionary have omitted them. Judas is going to walk out at the Last Supper. Is a regular refusal to eat this bread and to drink this cup a betrayal of Christ and of the Christian faith?

The word sacrament is derived from the Latin sacrāmentum, which is an attempt to render the Greek word μυστήριον (mysterion). Saint Paul asks the people of Ephesus to pray that he may be given a gift of the right words in telling of the ‘mystery of the Gospel’ (τὸ μυστήριον τοῦ εὐαγγελίου, to mysterion tou evangeliou) (Ephesians 6: 19).

What if this Gospel reading is a reminder of the heart of the Gospel, the mystery of the Gospel?

Yes, it would affirm, the Eucharist is the shape of ‘the mission-shaped Church.’

Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

‘But the one who eats this bread will live for ever’ (John 6: 58) … bread on display in a bakery in Frankfurt (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 24 April 2026):

‘Turning Waste into Wonder’ provides the theme this week (19-25 April 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), pp 48-49. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update from Linet Musasa, team member of the Partners in the Gospel Comprehensive Climate Change initiative of the Anglican Council of Zimbabwe.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 24 April 2026) invites us to pray:

Lord, bless USPG's partnership with the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe. Strengthen our joint commitment to justice and healing.

The Collect:

Almighty Father,
who in your great mercy gladdened the disciples
with the sight of the risen Lord:
give us such knowledge of his presence with us,
that we may be strengthened and sustained by his risen life
and serve you continually in righteousness and truth;
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:

Living God,
your Son made himself known to his disciples
in the breaking of bread:
open the eyes of our faith,
that we may see him in all his redeeming work;
who is alive and reigns, now and for ever.

Additional Collect:

Risen Christ,
you filled your disciples with boldness and fresh hope:
strengthen us to proclaim your risen life
and fill us with your peace,
to the glory of God the Father.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

The Gate of Persecution leading into the site of the Basilica of Saint John the Divine in Ephesus (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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