Waiting for the miracle and hoping for the day when we can say ‘Democracy is coming to the USA’

Leonard Cohen at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham in 2012 … can we say ‘Democracy is coming to the USA’? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

It was a full month yesterday since Donald Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States on 20 January 2025. Throughout the day yesterday, I found it bewildering, a living nightmare, to think back on what has happened not just in the US but throughout the world in the short space of that single month.

Dictators have been appeased, invaders have been rewarded, whole nations have been threatened, democratic leaders have been berated, besmirched and belittled, dictators have been brought in from the cold, public servants are demeaned and dismissed, allies are betrayed, books are banned, geographic truth has been hijacked, a free press has been shackled or banned from the White House, racism is rising, laws are promulgated by diktat while the elected members of Senate and Congress are bypassed and ignored or sit on their hands, the greedy and the super-wealthy have found their rewards on earth and needy and the poor have been seen empty away.

And it simply gets worse with each passing day, worse and worse and worse … Good has been decreed bad, the evil is being hailed as good, the very moral fibre of ethical public behaviour has been smothered to death.

It is more than eight years since the night of 8 November 2016, when I sat up all night in an hotel in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter in Kraków, watching in disbelief when Donald Trump was elected the US president the first time round. I had spent that day visiting many of the synagogues and the remaining Jewish cemeteries in Kazimierz and had spent the previous day in Auschwitz.

I cannot believe now, and I could not believe then, what was happening in the USA. I fall back once again on the dark humour that journalists understand: in another country pretending to be a democracy, where the winning candidate becomes the dictator, they would be waiting for an American invasion to restore democracy.

Leonard Cohen died on 7 November 2016, the day I was visiting Auschwitz and the day before Trump was first elected President. We can never really guess how the great Canadian poet and songwriter might have responded to the election of Trump, first or second time round, but I still find wisdom in the lyrics of his song ‘Democracy’:

It’s coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It’s here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it’s here they got the spiritual thirst.
It’s here the family’s broken
and it’s here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:

Democracy is coming to the USA.

Over the past month, since Trump’s second inauguration, I can identify with Cohen’s expression that

… … the feel
that this ain’t exactly real
or it’s real, but it ain’t exactly there

and after years of a rising tide of

… the wars against disorder
… the sirens night and day
… the fires of the homeless
… the ashes of the gay …

I wonder this Friday night whether I can share an longer in Leonard Cohen’s hope that ‘Democracy is coming to the USA’?

Leonard Cohen was Canadian, yet lived most of his working life in the US. He cared about America, but was horrified and revolted by what was happening to it. At a time when the USA is in more danger of foundering than ever before, Cohen’s words are the perfect anthem for these times:

Sail on, sail on
oh mighty ship of State,
to the shores of need
past the reefs of greed
through the squalls of hate.

As the world watches helplessly at the capricious pronouncements and vulgar rantings of a bigoted bully with fascist tendencies and the ‘best buddy’ who gives fascist salutes, speaks to far-right rallies in Germany andoccupies pride of place in the Oval Office, I think too of the many lines Leonard Cohen cut out of this song, and how relevant they are at this time – lines such as ‘Concentration camp behind a smile’, or,

Who really gets to profit
and who really gets to pay?
Who really rides the slavery ship
right into Charleston Bay?

Over three decades after he completed this song in 1992, Leonard Cohen continues to speak to these times as though he were writing today.

‘Democracy’ is the sixth of nine tracks on The Future, the ninth studio album by Leonard Cohen, released on 24 November 1992. Almost an hour in length, it was his longest album at the time.

Both the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 1992 Los Angeles riots took place while Cohen was writing and recording the album, expressing his sense of the world’s turbulence. The album was recorded with a large cast of musicians and engineers in several studios. It built on the success of his previous album, I’m Your Man, and sold a quarter of a million copies in the US, which until then had not been enthusiastic about Cohen’s albums.

In an interview with Paul Zollo in Songwriters on Songwriting, Leonard Cohen spoke at length about ‘Democracy.’ He admitted that he wrote 60 verses for the song. As he watched the fall of the Berlin Wall, he recalled, ‘everyone was saying democracy is coming to the east.’ But he thought to himself, ‘I think a lot of suffering will be the consequence of this wall coming down.’

‘But then I asked myself, “Where is democracy really coming?” And it was the USA … So while everyone was rejoicing, I thought it wasn’t going to be like that, euphoric, the honeymoon. So it was these world events that occasioned the song. And also the love of America. Because I think the irony of America is transcendent in the song.

‘It’s not an ironic song. It’s a song of deep intimacy and affirmation of the experiment of democracy in this country. That this is really where the experiment is unfolding. This is really where the races confront one another, where the classes, where the genders, where even the sexual orientations confront one another. This is the real laboratory of democracy.’

According to Ira Nadel’s book Various Positions (1996), the title track, ‘The Future,’ was originally called ‘If You Could See What’s Coming Next.’ I cannot predict the future, I cannot see what is coming next. But for the past month I have been wondering whether the USA is ‘the real laboratory of democracy’ or whether we are watching the end of democracy in the US, perhaps even the beginning of the end of the USA.

Leonard Cohen celebrated on postage stamps issued in Canada (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In ‘Democracy’, Leonard Cohen sings:

It’s coming through a hole in the air
From those nights in Tiananmen Square
It’s coming from the feel
That this ain’t exactly real
Or it’s real, but it ain’t exactly there
From the wars against disorder
From the sirens night and day
From the fires of the homeless
From the ashes of the gay
Democracy is coming to the USA

It’s coming through a crack in the wall
On a visionary flood of alcohol
From the staggering account
Of the Sermon on the Mount
Which I don’t pretend to understand at all
It's coming from the silence
On the dock of the bay,
From the brave, the bold, the battered
Heart of Chevrolet
Democracy is coming to the USA

It’s coming from the sorrow in the street
The holy places where the races meet
From the homicidal bitchin’
That goes down in every kitchen To determine who will serve and who will eat
From the wells of disappointment
Where the women kneel to pray
For the grace of God in the desert here
And the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the USA

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on

It’s coming to America first
The cradle of the best and of the worst
It’s here they got the range
And the machinery for change
And it’s here they got the spiritual thirst
It’s here the family’s broken
And it’s here the lonely say
That the heart has got to open
In a fundamental way
Democracy is coming to the USA

It’s coming from the women and the men
O baby, we’ll be making love again
We’ll be going down so deep
The river’s going to weep,
And the mountain’s going to shout Amen
It’s coming like the tidal flood
Beneath the lunar sway
Imperial, mysterious
In amorous array
Democracy is coming to the USA

Sail on, sail on

I’m sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can’t stand the scene
And I’m neither left or right
I’m just staying home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen
But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags
That Time cannot decay
I’m junk but I’m still holding up
This little wild bouquet
Democracy is coming to the USA

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום‎



Democracy lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Daily prayer in Christmas 2024-2025: 23, Thursday 16 January 2025

‘If it be your will / If there is a choice / Let the rivers fill / Let the hills rejoice’ (Leonard Cohen) … the River Great Ouse at St Neots in Cambridgeshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

The 40-day season of Christmas continues until Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation (2 February). This week began with the First Sunday of Epiphany (Epiphany I, 12 January 2025), with readings that focus on the Baptism of Christ.

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, 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.

Leonard Cohen on stage in Dublin at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 1: 40-45 (NRSVA):

40 A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ 41 Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ 42 Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. 43 After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, 44 saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ 45 But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

Abandoned houses on Spinalónga, off the coast of Crete, Europe’s last ‘leper colony’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

This morning’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist (Mark 1: 40-45) follows yesterday’s story of Christ healing Simon Peter’s mother-in-law with another healing story, the healing of a man with leprosy.

Jesus stretches, out his hand and touches the man, who is made clean and restored to health and his place in his community, socially, economically and religiously. We heard a similar story on Saturday (Luke 5: 12-16, 11 January 2025).

In both readings, Jesus tells the man to stay quiet, to ‘say nothing to anyone’ (Mark 1: 43), ‘to tell no one’ (Luke 5: 14). But why?

I have often said with humour, but with 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.’

So often I want to be in control. I want to control the agenda, I want to control conversations, I want to control discussions. And I particularly want to control the words I use, the words others are going to hear me say.

And so, I am humbled at times when I listen to Leonard Cohen’s song, ‘If it be your will.’

I was at most of Leonard Cohen’s concerts in Ireland. He ended many of those concerts singing this poem, which for me is about submission to God’s will, accepting God’s will, leaving God in control of my spirit:

Leonard Cohen sings of his nearly complete subjection to the divine will.

If he is told to be silent, he will be silent; if he is told to sing, he will sing.

If he is allowed to express his true voice (‘if a voice be true’), he will sing in praise of God from ‘this broken hill’ … from Calvary?

The mercy of God, the compassion of God, the love of God, redeems the burning hearts in hell … if it is God’s will.

Leonard Cohen’s great hope in this will leads to prayer, to the one who can ‘make us well’ if we devote ourselves to God, pray to God, sing to God.

But he still prays to God to act on behalf of the suffering.

Cajoling God in song and poetry, Cohen says God has the power to ‘end this night’ of the darkness of the human condition, in which people are dressed in only dirty ‘rags of light’ that are fragmented, that are not fully whole and illuminated.

In this song, I imagine Christ on the cross as he speaks to God the Father as his agony comes to its close:

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before.

The broken hill is Golgotha where he has been crucified, the rugged and rocky Mount of Calvary.

‘Let the rivers fill’ may refer to the water of his thirst, the water of his sweat, the water that streams from his side, the waters of baptism, the Living Water that will never leave us to thirst.

If it be your will
To make us well
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell.

Advent is a time of waiting. The Dominican theologian Timothy Radcliffe says: ‘We must wait for the resurrection to break the silence of the tomb.’ We must speak up when it is necessary, and to have the courage to speak is ‘ultimately founded upon the courage to listen.’

But at the grave, at times of desolation, at times when there is no answer, we may also be called to be silent.

Leonard Cohen, If it be your will:

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will

If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.

‘From this broken hill / All your praises they shall ring / If it be your will’ (Leonard Cohen) … in the mountains in Siburan, near Kuching in Sarawak (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 16 January 2025):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘A Bag of Flour’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 16 January 2025) invites us to pray:

Pray that we remember that all people are made in God’s image and that our hearts should break when we see people suffering. May we not disconnect from injustices happening in other countries just because they are far away or long-lasting.

The Collect:

Eternal Father,
who at the baptism of Jesus
revealed him to be your Son,
anointing him with the Holy Spirit:
grant to us, who are born again by water and the Spirit,
that we may be faithful to our calling as your adopted children;
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:

Lord of all time and eternity,
you opened the heavens and revealed yourself as Father
in the baptism of Jesus your beloved Son:
by the power of your Spirit
complete the heavenly work of our rebirth
through the waters of the new creation;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Heavenly Father,
at the Jordan you revealed Jesus as your Son:
may we recognize him as our Lord
and know ourselves to be your beloved children;
through Jesus Christ our Saviour.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow


‘If It Be Your Will’ … Leonard Cohen and The Webb Sisters, Live in London

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

Desmond Verdon Murphy, police officer from Dublin murdered in Japanese massacre in Sarawak

Desmond Verdon Murphy (1894-1942) from Dublin … he was murdered in the Long Nawang Massacre, as one of the worst brutalities of the Japanese occupation of Borneo (Photograph courtesy Melissa Murphy)

Patrick Comerford

I was writing a few days ago (9 November 2024) about the Japanese Building in Kuching, the Japanese prisoner of war camp and cemetery at Batu Litang, and about the Japanese occupation of Sarawak from 1941 to 1945 during World War II.

One of the many horrific stories from that era is the story of the Long Nawang Massacre, which has been described as one of the worst brutalities of the Japanese occupation of Borneo.

One of the heroes in that event is Desmond Verdon Murphy (1894-1942), a senior police officer from Dublin with strong family roots in Limerick. The stories of his extraordinary career and his final days have been put together in recent years by his granddaughter Melissa Murphy. It is a story worth retelling on Remembrance Day

Although Sarawak was a British protectorate, it was a separate kingdom under the Brooke Rajahs. But Sarawak was unable to resist the Japanese invasion, and the capital Kuching fell undefended to the Japanese invaders on Christmas Eve, 24 December 1941.

On Christmas morning, 25 December, 1941, nine Japanese bombers attacked the inland town of Sibu, creating mayhem and panic among the residents. Soon, Japanese troops were marching off a large group of Europeans, many of them officers from the defeated Brooke administration.

The majority of the expatriates were interned, but a small group managed to escape Sibu hours before the Japanese advanced from Kuching. They included the British Resident, John Andrew McPherson, nine of his staff, his wife Clare who was eight months pregnant, Sally Bomphrey, her nine-month-old baby and five-year-old son, and two visitors.

They began the journey to Belaga on the upper Rajang on the night of 26 December 1941. From there, they planned to travel up the Balui River to the remote village of Long Nawang, a Dutch army post in the highlands, 300 miles inside Dutch-controlled Borneo, now known as Kalimantan.

Before leaving, McPherson radioed the British Governor of the Straits Settlements, Sir Shenton Thomas (1879-1962), who was based in Singapore. Thomas advised McPherson, ‘Do whatever you think best’, and contacted the Dutch government, asking them to expect and assist the group.

The perilous post-Christmas trek took 28 days and ended on 22 January 1942

The perilous journey took 28 days, during which they crossed one river 36 times one morning, through ‘a raging mountain torrent sometimes knee deep, sometimes armpit deep and particularly powerful’.

Their ordeal ended on 22 January when they reached the military outpost they hoped would provide a safe hideaway. It was in a mountainous area in a pleasant, temperate climate, with sufficient provisions for a year. Some of the men considered returning to Sibu to be interned, but they changed their minds when they heard about the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942.

Local Dutch forces surrendered in March 1942. One group then headed back to Kuching, but were never heard of again. Another small group of five men left Long Nawang: three of them met a Dutch army launch that took them downstream to a secluded Dutch army airfield, and from there they were flown to Bandung in Central Java; two eventually reached Perth, Australia, while the third man is believed to have joined a merchant vessel in Java. The other two were captured by Japanese marines and interned in Java.

The remaining group stayed at Long Nawang, where they were joined in April by a Dutch army group of 40 men. A number of missionaries from the US and a priest, Father Joseph Feldbrugge, also sought refuge there in August. On 19 August, news arrived of a Japanese raiding party hacking its way through the jungle and getting closer to Long Nawang.

The commander of the post dismissed the news, thinking the approaching group was actually a retreating Dutch unit, and took no further action. His decision was fatal. Soon after, 70 Japanese soldiers reached Long Nawang and took control of the post. By midday, the surviving men had been executed.

A month later, the women were dragged to a nearby location and bayoneted to death, including Mrs McPherson and her infant child. Investigators later heard the children were made to climb nearby trees, then allowed to drop from exhaustion onto upturned bayonets.

The Long Nawang massacre has been described as one of the worst brutalities of the Japanese occupation of Borneo. But, despite post-war investigations, the Japanese officers who were responsible for this atrocity were never identified, nor was there any war trial.

The story has been put together by Melissa Murphy, whose grandfather, Desmond Verdon Murphy (1894-1942), was among those killed. For more than 60 years, the circumstances of his death remained a mystery. The last anyone had heard of him was when he was on duty in Sarawak with the Brooke police. His tragic story became known to his family only after Melissa started to investigate the disappearance of her grandfather.

North Strand Church, Dublin, where Desmond Murphy’s parents were married in 1893 and he was baptised in 1894 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Desmond Verdon Murphy was born in Dublin in 1894. His father, Major John Murphy (1866-1933), was born in Catherine Street, Limerick, on 10 November 1866, and was baptised in Saint John’s Church, Limerick. is mother, Frances Amelia Spearman (1866-1948), was born at 8 Guildford Place, off North Strand Road, Dublin, on 30 December 1866. They were married in North Strand Church, Dublin, on 22 June 1893, when they were then living at 154 North Strand Road, and the witnesses at the wedding were James Lewis and Dorinda Jones.

Frances and John Murphy were the parents of one son, Desmond Murphy, and three daughters, Moya, Nina and Erris. Desmond was born at 75 Clonliffe Road, Dublin, on 2 May 1894, when he was resigistered as Desmond Vernon Murphy, and baptised in North Strand Church, Dublin, on 10 June 1894, when he was resigistered as Desmond Verdon Murphy. Frances Murphy’s sister Mary had married Julian Verdon in 1880, and so Verdon rather than Vernon appears to be his correct middle name.

At the time, John Murphy was a colour sergeant and staff clerk in the army at the Royal Military Hospital in Kilmainham. By 1899, the Murphy family was living in Clontarf. John was promoted from the ranks to an assistant commissary and honorary lieutenant in the Army Ordnance Department in 1906. His records from World War I have not survived, but he retired as a major in 1920 and died in Bath in 1933; Frances Murphy died in 1948.

Major John Murphy (1866-1933) was born in Catherine Street, Limerick (Photograph courtesy Melissa Murphy)

Desmond Murphy was educated at Hutton Grammar School, Preston, and then studied electrical engineering. He joined the army at the outbreak of World War I in 1914, and was commissioned in December. He was sent to France with the Scottish Rifles in 1916, but was later sent home from due to sickness.

Family sources say that after World War I, Desmond Murphy joined the police in South Africa and then Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), although this has not been confirmed.

Murphy arrived in Sarawak in the mid-1920s, and joined the Brooke constabulary. He was promoted first to Superintendent of Police (1929), and then to Commissioner and Superintendent of Prisons (1933), before becoming Superintendent of Police at Sibu.

The Central Police Station, Kuching, built in 1931 … Desmond Verdon Murphy was Superintendent of Police, Commissioner and Superintendent of Prisons and then Superintendent of Police (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Local people recognised Murphy as a Tuan or respected person, and he married a local woman, Siti Sulastry binti Sulaiman, who was born in Java. They were the parents of three sons: two son died as infants, but the middle child, Michael Murphy, who was born in 1937, survived and was Melissa Murphy’s father.

When World War II broke out, Desmond and Siti were advised to blend in with the local people. But his family never hear again from Desmond, and he was officially listed as ‘missing in action’ after World War II. As an impoverished war widow, Siti raised her young son Michael in their humble stilted wooden home in Kampung Jawa, now Jalan P Ramlee, in Kuching, probably unaware that her mother-in-law, Frances Murphy, was still living until 1948.

Melissa Murphy had pieced together a few details of his final days. With the help of Roger Nixon, a London-based researcher, she located the death entry for Desmond Murphy in a Colonial Office register and found his other files.

The Colonial Office records showed Desmond Murphy was killed by the Japanese in September 1942 in Long Nawang. Sadly, the news came too late for his widow Siti, who died in 2001 without knowing what happened to her husband.

Their research also showed that all the casualties were originally buried at Long Nawang in two mass graves. They were reburied in 1950 on Tarakan Island in east Borneo in a cemetery called ‘Field of Honour’. That cemetery later fell into disuse and they were reinterred yet again in 1967 when they were moved to Kembang Kuning War Cemetery in Surabaya, Java.

Michael Murphy had long dreamt of visiting his father’s grave in Surabaya, but died in February 2012. Since then, his daughter Melissa has made extraordinary efforts to erect the Long Nawang Memorial at the Batu Litang Teachers’ Training College in Kuching. It was finally unveiled two years ago, on 21 July 2022.

Melissa Murphy laying a wreath at the Long Nawang Memorial at Batu Litang in Kuching (Photograph courtesy Melissa Murphy)

Skeffington House in Leicester recalls family feuds, Comberford links and a lost Lichfield estate

Skeffington House, the only surviving Elizabethan urban gentry house in Leicester … built by Thomas Skeffington in 1560-1583 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

During my visits to Leicester last month, I went twice to see Skeffington House, the only surviving Elizabethan urban gentry house in Leicestershire. It was built between 1560 and 1583 by Thomas Skeffington (1550-1600), who was MP for Leicestershire in 1593 and the Sheriff of Leicestershire on four occasions: 1576-1577, 1588-1589, 1596 and 1599-1600.

The survival of Skeffington House in Leicester over the past 450 or more years was a reminder of the close connections that once linked the Skeffington family and the Comberford family in Staffordshire, and of how the Skeffington family of Fisherwick were once – albeit briefly – a powerful political family in Lichfield and Tamworth in the 17th century.

The Skeffington family took their name from Skeffington, a village 15 km (10 miles) east of Leicester, where they lived from the mid-13th century. In the early 16th century, Sir William Skeffington was the Lord Deputy of Ireland during the reign of Henry VIII. It was he who battered down the walls of Maynooth Castle with cannon, and he devised a contraption of torture known as the ‘Skevington maiden.’ When he died in Kilmainham in 1534, he was buried in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.

Fisherwick Hall, the long lost home of the Skeffington family near Lichfield

His son, Sir John Skeffington, was the founder of the Staffordshire branch of the family. This John Skeffington was a London alderman and wool merchant. He was the Sheriff of London in 1521, and in that same year he bought the Manor of Fisherwick, about 6 km (4 miles) east of Lichfield, between Whittington and Elford and immediately north of Comberford. Fisherwick was in Saint Michael’s Parish, Lichfield, and many members of the Skeffington family of Fisherwick were baptised, married and buried at Saint Michael’s Church – the same church where the parents of Samuel Johnson were buried later.

John Skeffington married Elizabeth Pecke, and Fisherwick was inherited by their son, Sir William Skeffington of Fisherwick. This William married Isa or Joan (Elizabeth) Leveson, a daughter of James Leveson of Liilleshall, Shropshire, and Trentham, Staffordshire. When Sir William died in 1637, he too was buried at Saint Michael’s Church, Lichfield.

William Skeffington’s daughter Mary married her neighbour, William Comberford (1551-1625) of Comberford Hall and the Moat House, Tamworth, in 1567, probably in Saint Michael’s Church, Lichfield, while his son Sir John Skeffington (1534-1604) inherited Fisherwick.

Comberford Hall … Mary Skeffington married Thomas Comberford of Comberford Hall and the Moat House, Tamworth, in 1567 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mary Comberford’s brother Sir John Skeffington was educated at Queens’ College, Cambridge, and was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1556. He married Alice Cave, daughter of Sir Thomas Cave, and when he died on 7 November 1604 he too was buried at Saint Michael’s Church, Lichfield.

Sir John Skeffington’s son and Mary Comberford’s nephew, Sir William Skeffington of Fisherwick, was a prominent figure in Staffordshire life. Sir William Skeffington was twice Sheriff of Staffordshire, in 1601 and again in 1623, when he succeeded his uncle by marriage, William Comberford, and he was given the title of baronet in 1627. He married Elizabeth Dering and died on 13 September 1635. He was buried on 16 September 1635.

Sir William Skeffington’s two sons found themselves on opposing sides in the English Civil War: Sir John Skeffington (1584-1651), who inherited Fisherwick and the family title as the second baronet, was a faint-hearted royalist, while his younger brother, Sir Richard Skeffington (1590-1647), was an MP for Tamworth in 1627 and later an MP for Staffordshire in the Long Parliament of 1646.

The Moat House, Tamworth … Sir Richard Skeffington, MP for Tamworth, was a grandson of Mary Comberford’s brother (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The elder son, Sir John Skeffington, spent more than two years at the Middle Temple, but may not have been a diligent student: he was twice fined for missing readings and once for being absent at Christmas. Sir John became entangled in the affairs of the Skeffington family in Leicester when he married his distant cousin Ursula (or Cicely) Skeffington, one of the four daughters of Thomas Skeffington who built Skeffington House in Leicester.

At the time of their marriage, the Leicestershire branch of the Skeffington family was threatened with extinction. Ursula’s father had died in 1605, leaving his estates between his two sons, Sir William Skeffington and John Skeffington. The elder brother William was in an unhappy childless marriage, and shortly after he died in 1605 his widow, Lady Katherine Skeffington, married her groom, Michael Bray.

John Skeffington resented his widowed sister-in-law marrying the groom. The family arguments ended up in court of Westminster in 1613 and a settlement seemed near when the case was adjourned. During the adjournment, John Skeffington and Michael Bray ran into each other in the Hoop Tavern in 1613. They fought and brawled, swords were drawn, and each man ran his sword through the other at the same time, murdering each other in one swift moment.

The Skeffington estates in Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Lincolnshire, said to be worth £1,500 a year, were now divided between the four surviving sisters of William and John: Mary, Catherine, Elizabeth and Ursula. The youngest sister, Ursula, became engaged to a man named Palmer, but she returned his ring and instead married her distant cousin, Sir John Skeffington of Fisherwick, a grandson of Mary Comberford’s brother.

Sir John Skeffington moved to Leicestershire, and when he was knighted in 1624 he was described as living at Skeffington. However, his bride did not make him especially wealthy, as the twice widowed Katherine Bray continued to draw an income from her first husband’s Leicestershire estates.

It seems, though, that John Skeffington exaggerated his poverty. For example, he claimed in 1623 that he was unable to provide a light horse for the militia because he was living on less than £100 a year. Yet in 1627 he told Chancery that his estate was worth around £300 a year.

Skeffington was knighted in 1624 and in 1626 he was elected MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme – a constituency represented almost 200 years earlier by William Comberford in 1442. Skeffington was elected with the support of his brother-in-law Sir William Bowyer and of the Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire, the 3rd Earl of Essex, who may also have been responsible for the election of Skeffington’s brother, Sir Richard, as MP for Tamworth the previous year.

Saint Mary’s Church, Lichfield … Sir John Skeffington was involved in the legislation to make Saint Mary’s a parish church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

As one of the MPs for Staffordshire, Sir John Skeffington was involved in the legislation to annex Freeford prebend to the vicarage of Saint Mary’s in Lichfield and make Saint Mary’s a parish church. But he seems to have become disillusioned with Parliament, and in a letter he described the House of Commons as a place ‘to please none, to displease all and bear all his own charges’.

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, may have been involved in securing the title of baronet for Skeffington’s father in 1627, a title John Skeffington would eventually inherit himself.

Sir John Skeffington inherited his father’s title and his estates in Staffordshire in 1635. He returned to live at Fisherwick, and was appointed Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1637, although his enthusiasm for this office seems to have waned. His portion of the family’s Leicestershire estate increased when one of his sisters-in-law, Elizabeth Jeter, died childless in 1637. By the early 1650s, he was able to put the income from his wife’s estate at £700 a year, out of which £140 continued to be paid to Lady Katherine Bray.

When the English Civil War broke out, he initially supported the king, agreeing to contribute six horsemen to the royalist army. However, by October 1642 he was beginning to have second thoughts and he was negotiating with his Roundhead brother, Sir Richard, to defect. Sir Richard Skeffington (1597-1647) was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and was knighted in 1624. He was MP for Tamworth in 1625 and for Staffordshire in 1646-1647. When he died on 2 June 1647, he was buried at Broxbourne, Hertfordshire.

In the event, John Skeffington never switched sides. The parliamentarians sequestered his estates, and in March 1650 he was allowed to compound for his Staffordshire properties at a sixth of their value. In July 1651, his fine was fixed at £1,616 18s 8d, but there is no evidence he ever paid that sum.

Generations of the Skeffington family were married and buried at Saint Michael’s Church, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Sir John Skeffington died in November 1651 and was buried on 20 November in Skeffington, Leicestershire, rather than in Saint Michael’s, Lichfield. Despite his behaviour and fines as a student, his funeral monument says was learned and was skilled in English, Latin, Greek, French, Italian and Spanish. Towards the end of his life, Skeffington translated El Héroe (1637), by the Spanish Jesuit Baltasar Gracián Morales, which was published after his death with a preface by Izaak Walton.

Sir John Skeffington’s son, Sir William Skeffington, who succeeded as the third baronet and inherited the estate at Fisherwick, died unmarried in April 1652. The title of baronet then passed first to the son of Sir Richard Skeffington of Tamworth, Sir John Skeffington (1632-1695), who was elected to Richard Cromwell’s 1659 Parliament for counties Antrim, Down and Armagh. He later inherited the title of Viscount Massereene through his father-in-law and died in 1695.

His descendants acquired Comberford Hall in the decades that followed, although the descendants of the Comberford family seem to have continued to lived there as tenants of the Skeffington family until the mid-18th century, when they found themselves unable to redeem the mortgages once raised on the Comberford estates.

Capability Brown’s landscape at Fisherwick Hall, a painting by John Spyers (1786) … Fisherwick Hall was inherited along with Comberford Hall by the Chichester family, but was demolished in 1805

Fisherwick Hall, in time, passed from the Skeffington family to the Chichester family, later Earls and Marquesses of Donegall, who also acquired neighbouring Comberford Hall, acquiring the ancestral homes of both the Comberford and the Skeffington families between Lichfield and Tamworth.

Like neighbouring Fisherwick Hall, Comberford Hall descended with the title of Viscount Massereene, until 1755, when Clotworthy Skeffington, 5th Viscount Massereene, sold his mortgaged estates – perhaps to pay the debts of his gambling son, Clotworthy Skeffington – to Samuel Swinfen of Swinfen Hall, in Weeford, near Lichfield, as the trustee of his neighbour Samuel Hill of Shenstone Park.

When Comberford and Fisherwick passed to Hill’s nephew, Samuel Egerton (1711-1780), he told them to their former trustee, Samuel Swinfen. The estate were later sold to Thomas Thynne (1734-1796), 3rd Viscount Weymouth and 1st Marquis of Bath, and then to Arthur Chichester (1739-1799), 5th Earl of Donegall, who rebuilt Fisherwick Hall in 1766-1774 to designs by Capability Brown.

Eventually, the Chichester family, crippled by the gambling debts of a profligate son, was forced to sell Fisherwick Hall and Comberford Hall. Fisherwick Hall was demolished by the Howard family in 1805, although some of its ruins may still be seen. But the Fisherwick name survives in street names in parts of Belfast once owned by the Chichester family.

Skeffington House, Leicester … a reminder of jealousy, feuds and links with Lichfield and the Comberford family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Daily prayers in Advent with Leonard Cohen and USPG: (14) 16 December 2023

‘Here It Is’ was first recorded on ‘Ten New Songs’ (2001), Leonard Cohen’s tenth studio album

Patrick Comerford

We are in the countdown to Christmas in the Church, with just nine days to go to Christmas Day. Tomorrow is the Third Sunday of Advent or Gaudete Sunday (17 December 2023), bringing us two-thirds of the way through what is a very short Advent this year.

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.

‘Here is your cross, / Your nails and your hill; / And here is your love, / That lists where it will’ (Leonard Cohen) … Marc Chagall, ‘The White Crucifixion’ (1938)

The Songs and Poems of Leonard Cohen: 14, ‘Here It Is’:

‘Here It Is,’ a poem/song by Leonard Cohen, was first released 22 years ago on his tenth studio album, Ten New Songs, co-written and produced by Sharon Robinson and released in 2001.

I first used this poem in a Lenten setting when I was asked to preach at the Three Hours Devotions in Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork, on Good Friday, 9 April 2004, by the then Dean Michael Burrows, now the Bishop of Tuam, Limerick and Killaloe.

This poem has the capacity to touch the reader or listener in painful places we are often too uncomfortable to search or reach.

Leonard Cohen himself once said: ‘It’s nice to write a catchy tune about death.’ But, while, some people may like poems that talk about blood, sweat and tears, I found out in Cork that Good Friday almost 20 years ago that many people are uncomfortable with some of the words in this poem.

Yet, surely, Christ must have suffered to this extreme of anxiety in Golgotha, and must have emptied himself completely of all human fluids on the cross on Calvary.

Who speaks in the poem?

Whose voice do we hear?

Who is singing?

Who narrates within the lyrics?

Is it God?

Is it just Leonard Cohen?

Is it his soul?

Does it really matter?

Some of those questions may be answered if we read this poem in the light of Advent as we prepare for Christmas or, more particularly, in Lent on the journey towards Good Friday and Easter.

Is this a legitimate way to read this poem? In his introduction to his Harvard lectures, The use of poetry and the use of criticism, TS Eliot wrote: ‘The poem’s existence is somewhere between the writer and the reader. It has a reality which is not simply the reality of what the writer is trying to ‘express’, or of his experiences of writing it, or of the experience of the reader, or of the writer as reader. Consequently the problem of what the poem ‘means’ is a good deal more difficult that it first appears … But a poem is not just either what the poet ‘planned’ or what the reader conceives, nor is its ‘use’ restricted to what the author intended or what it actually does for readers.’

Some commentators say the speaker in this poem by Leonard Cohen is God; others say the poet is speaking to himself at a point in life where death seems near, and he feels the need to collect his thoughts, recollect the past, and to face the future in truth.

And here is your love,
That lists where it will.

In this poem, God is taking an overview of a life and mixing in a bundle of opportunities in which a person has the opportunity to love. In each of these love/desire experiences, one has the opportunity to feel God’s presence.

In the first paired verses, 1 and 2, God is King of the universe and Lord of Creation, and he shows his majesty and his lordship through his love of all created things:

Here is your crown
And your seal and rings;
And here is your love
For all things.

In verse 2, the ‘cart’ is the human body in which Christ is incarnate and in which he moves around in God’s royal domain, the ‘cardboard’ the weak and flimsy body of his suffering, and the ‘piss’ the loss of all human life in his dying. In his life, suffering and death, he gives his all in love for all:

Here is your cart,
And your cardboard and piss;
And here is your love
For all of this.

In the second pair of verses, verses 3 and 4, the ‘wine’ in verse 3 may mean our thoughts and spiritual ideas. But I find resonances with the wine of the Last Supper and imagery that reminds me of Christ falling under the weight of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa, for the sake of his love for all:

Here is your wine,
And your drunken fall;
And here is your love.
Your love for it all.

The ‘sickness’ in verse 4, may be the love we have for each other, a love that may keep us away from loving God, and therefore perhaps defined as a ‘sickness’ as it detracts us from our divine purpose, to ‘love God’ first and then to love others. The bed and the pan also echo the ‘piss’ in the second verse:

Here is your sickness.
Your bed and your pan;
And here is your love
For the woman, the man.

In the four sets of two verses, the third line of each verse points to ways that we may love. But love is not mentioned in the third set of paired verses (5 and 6) – instead, we have the lines:

And here is the night,
The night has begun;
And here is your death
In the heart of your son.

And here is the dawn,
(Until death do us part);
And here is your death,
In your daughter’s heart.

Instead of love, he uses the word ‘death’ in the third lines of each of these two verses, emphasising the depth of love a parent feels for a child, and so the even deeper love God feels for us as his children in the death of Christ on the Cross.

Those verses reiterate the idea of the living and dying of every moment; the following of day with night, and night with day.

Night could represent ignorance and not knowing. But for mystics like Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila, who I have referred to in recent days, the night is also the beginning of the mystics’ journey towards communion and union with the Father, the ‘I Am Who Am.’ The Son must die in order for us to recognise his inherited unity with the Father.

Night turns to dawn with the resurrection, dawn is no longer night, the conscious is united with unconscious, night with day, and the soul with God.

In the last two paired verses, 7 and 8, he warns in verse 7 of ‘hurried’ desire and reminds us of how we hurry because we ‘long’ for something to be fulfilled, or over, or experienced. Instead, it is love on which everything is built and has its foundation:

And here you are hurried,
And here you are gone;
And here is the love,
That it’s all built upon.

In the final, closing verse (verse 8), the reference to Christ’s death, when he is nailed to the cross on the Hill of Calvary, becomes the summation of the poem:

Here is your cross,
Your nails and your hill;
And here is your love,
That lists where it will.

The word ‘lists’ in verse 8 may be a ‘list’ of objects, names or experiences. But to ‘list’ is also to listen, and also to ‘lean’ one way or the other, as when a boat leans to one side. Is he suggesting that our love may lean in different directions as time goes by, or that the love in each verse is different, listing or leaning in a different direction?

The refrain after each paired set of verses says:

May everyone live,
And may everyone die.
Hello, my love,
And my love, Goodbye.

We keep living and dying each moment. May we just do this.

‘Here is your crown / And your seal and rings’ (Leonard Cohen) … a Torah crown on display in the Jewish Museum in Vienna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Leonard Cohen, Here It Is

Here is your crown
And your seal and rings;
And here is your love
For all things.

Here is your cart,
And your cardboard and piss;
And here is your love
For all of this.

May everyone live,
And may everyone die.
Hello, my love,
And my love, Goodbye.

Here is your wine,
And your drunken fall;
And here is your love.
Your love for it all.

Here is your sickness.
Your bed and your pan;
And here is your love
For the woman, the man.

May everyone live,
And may everyone die.
Hello, my love,
And, my love, Goodbye.

And here is the night,
The night has begun;
And here is your death
In the heart of your son.

And here is the dawn,
(Until death do us part);
And here is your death,
In your daughter’s heart.

May everyone live,
And may everyone die.
Hello, my love,
And, my love, Goodbye.

And here you are hurried,
And here you are gone;
And here is the love,
That it’s all built upon.

Here is your cross,
Your nails and your hill;
And here is your love,
That lists where it will

May everyone live,
And may everyone die.
Hello, my love,
And my love, Goodbye.

‘Here is your crown / And your seal and rings’ (Leonard Cohen) … a crown above hands in the priestly blessing on the grave of a cohen in Kraków (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 17: 10-13 (NRSVA):

10 And the disciples asked him, ‘Why, then, do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?’ 11 He replied, ‘Elijah is indeed coming and will restore all things; 12 but I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but they did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man is about to suffer at their hands.’ 13 Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them about John the Baptist.

‘For John came neither eating nor drinking’ (Matthew 11: 19) … Saint John the Baptist depicted in a panel in a window in Saint Mary’s Church, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 16 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), has been ‘The Faith of Advent.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (16 December 2023) invites us to pray in these words:

Thank you, God, that you have plans for us and they are for us to prosper and give us hope and a future. May your word to us be fulfilled.

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.

Collect on the Eve of Advent 3:

O Lord Jesus Christ,
who at your first coming sent your messenger
to prepare your way before you:
grant that the ministers and stewards of your mysteries
may likewise so prepare and make ready your way
by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just,
that at your second coming to judge the world
we may be found an acceptable people in your sight;
for you are alive and reign with the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Leonard Cohen on stage at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, in 2012 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow



‘Here It Is’ lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC.

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

Daily prayers in Advent with Leonard Cohen and USPG: (3) 5 December 2023

‘A million candles burning / For the help that never came’ (Leonard Cohen) … Chief Rabbi Gabriel Negrin places candles in the Holocaust memorial in Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Chania (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.

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.

Leonard Cohen at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham in 2012 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Songs and Poems of Leonard Cohen: 3, ‘You Want It Darker’:

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.

A month before he died, I had bought his last album, You Want It Darker, which is both deeply spiritual and at the same time gives voice to his expectations of imminent death.

In an interview with the New Yorker magazine to coincide with this album, he declared a determination to keep working at his craft until the end. Yet he seemed to be aware that death was coming. ‘I’ve got some work to do,’ he said. ‘Take care of business. I am ready to die. I hope it’s not too uncomfortable. That’s about it for me.’

Shortly before his first muse, Marianne Ihlen, died, he wrote her a farewell letter telling her: ‘I will follow you very soon.’

The title track of You Want It Darker sounds like the bleak, religious confession of a man facing his own mortality. It is filled with allusions to Jewish liturgy, Christian liturgy and Biblical texts. The backing vocals are provided by the cantor and choir of a synagogue in Leonard Cohen’s home city, Montreal:

If You are the dealer, I’m out of the game
If You are the healer, I’m broken and lame
If Thine is the glory, then mine must be the shame
You want it darker – we kill the flame.
Magnified, sanctified is your holy name
Vilified, crucified in the human frame
A million candles burning for the help that never came
You want it darker – Hineni, Hineni, I’m ready, my Lord.

Here Cohen is quoting the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead (‘magnified, sanctified …’). He addresses God directly as the God who has dealt Cohen out of the game, and who has ignored the ‘million candles’ lit in vain hopes of salvation or redemption.

It is dark, but those who reach into the dark depths that are met on the most intense journeys in spirituality know that this too is accepting the majesty of God and the inevitability of death.

The Hebrew word Hineni which Leonard Cohen repeats in this song literally means: ‘Here I am.’ When it is uttered by Abraham and repeated by other Biblical figures, it is an assertion of moral responsibility: Here I am. I am not running away. Here I stand.

The word Hineni is also the title of the Cantor’s Prayer on Yom Kippur, in which the cantor confesses to being unworthy to represent the congregation and stand before the Almighty. It is almost as if Cohen is making a similar confession. I may be a poet, a hero, and a star, but You know as well as I do that I am unworthy of all that. I am here before You – ready for You to take me.

The song is enriched by extensive Jewish collaboration. The track features background vocals from Gideon Zelermyer, cantor of the Shaar Hashomayim synagogue in Montreal, along with the Shaar Hashomayim choir.

The Shaar Hashomayim cantor and choir also contribute to another song on the album, ‘It Seemed the Better Way.’

This was an 82-year-old poet at the end of a long and deeply spiritual life. It is not surprising, therefore, that this song echoes the language and rhythm of the Kaddish, the prayer for mourners that reaffirms faith in God.

Glorified and sanctified be God’s great name throughout the world
which He has created according to His will.
May He establish His kingdom in your lifetime and during your days,
and within the life of the entire House of Israel, speedily and soon;
and say, Amen.

May His great name be blessed forever and to all eternity.
Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honoured,
adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He,
beyond all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations that
are ever spoken in the world; and say, Amen.

May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life, for us
and for all Israel; and say, Amen.

He who creates peace in His celestial heights,
may He create peace for us and for all Israel;
and say, Amen.

Leonard Cohen, You Want It Darker:

If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game
If you are the healer, it means I’m broken and lame
If thine is the glory, then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame

Magnified, sanctified
Be the holy name
Vilified, crucified
In the human frame
A million candles burning
For the help that never came
You want it darker

Hineni, hineni
I’m ready, my Lord

There’s a lover in the story
But the story’s still the same
There’s a lullaby for suffering
And a paradox to blame
But it’s written in the scriptures
And it’s not some idol claim
You want it darker
We kill the flame

They’re lining up to prisoners
And the guards are taking aim
I struggle with some demons
They were middle class and tame
I didn’t know I had permission
To murder and to maim
You want it darker

Hineni, hineni
I’m ready, my Lord

Magnified, sanctified
Be the holy name
Vilified, crucified
In the human frame
A million candles burning
For the love that never came
You want it darker
We kill the flame

If you are the dealer, let me out of the game
If you are the healer, I’m broken and lame
If thine is the glory, mine must be the shame
You want it darker

Hineni, hineni
Hineni, hineni
I’m ready, my Lord.

‘They’re lining up to prisoners / And the guards are taking aim’ (Leonard Cohen) … Jewish people being moved from the Warsaw Ghetto by German soldiers on 19 April 1943

Luke 10: 21-24 (NRSVA):

21 At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 22 All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’

23 Then turning to the disciples, Jesus said to them privately, ‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! 24 For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.’

‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see!’ (Luke 10: 23) (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 5 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 (5 December 2023) invites us to pray in these words:

We offer up in prayer all the situations we have experienced or witnessed throughout the year to you Lord. Shine your light of hope into our lives.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
give us grace to cast away the works of darkness
and to put on the armour of light,
now in the time of this mortal life,
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility;
that on the last day,
when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
to judge the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

O Lord our God,
make us watchful and keep us faithful
as we await the coming of your Son our Lord;
that, when he shall appear,
he may not find us sleeping in sin
but active in his service
and joyful in his praise;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Almighty God,
as your kingdom dawns,
turn us from the darkness of sin
to the light of holiness,
that we may be ready to meet you
in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow



‘You want it Darker’ … 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

Daily prayers in Advent with Leonard Cohen and USPG: (2) 4 December 2023

‘If it be your will / If there is a choice / Let the rivers fill / Let the hills rejoice’ (Leonard Cohen) … the River Nidd at Knaresborough in Yorkshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

The countdown to Christmas began officially in the Church yesterday with Advent Sunday or the First Sunday of Advent (3 December 2023), the first day in a new Church Year.

Today, the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship remembers Saint John of Damascus (ca 749), Monk, Teacher of the Faith, and Nicholas Ferrar (1637), Deacon, Founder of the Little Gidding Community.

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.

Leonard Cohen on stage in Dublin at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Songs and Poems of Leonard Cohen: 2, ‘If it be your will’:

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.’

So often I want to be in control. I want to control the agenda, I want to control conversations, I want to control discussions. And I particularly want to control the words I use, the words others are going to hear me say.

And so, I am humbled at times when I listen to Leonard Cohen’s song, ‘If it be your will.’

I was at most of Leonard Cohen’s concerts in Ireland. He ended many of those concerts singing this poem, which for me is about submission to God’s will, accepting God’s will, leaving God in control of my spirit:

Leonard Cohen sings of his nearly complete subjection to the divine will.

If he is told to be silent, he will be silent; if he is told to sing, he will sing.

If he is allowed to express his true voice (‘if a voice be true’), he will sing in praise of God from ‘this broken hill’ … from Calvary?

The mercy of God, the compassion of God, the love of God, redeems the burning hearts in hell … if it is God’s will.

Leonard Cohen’s great hope in this will leads to prayer, to the one who can ‘make us well’ if we devote ourselves to God, pray to God, sing to God.

But he still prays to God to act on behalf of the suffering.

Cajoling God in song and poetry, Cohen says God has the power to ‘end this night’ of the darkness of the human condition, in which people are dressed in only dirty ‘rags of light’ that are fragmented, that are not fully whole and illuminated.

In this song, I imagine Christ on the cross as he speaks to God the Father as his agony comes to its close:

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before.

The broken hill is Golgotha where he has been crucified, the rugged and rocky Mount of Calvary.

‘Let the rivers fill’ may refer to the water of his thirst, the water of his sweat, the water that streams from his side, the waters of baptism, the Living Water that will never leave us to thirst.

If it be your will
To make us well
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell.

Advent is a time of waiting. The Dominican theologian Timothy Radcliffe says: ‘We must wait for the resurrection to break the silence of the tomb.’ We must speak up when it is necessary, and to have the courage to speak is ‘ultimately founded upon the courage to listen.’

But at the grave, at times of desolation, at times when there is no answer, we may also be called to be silent.

Leonard Cohen, If it be your will:

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will

If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.

‘Many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 13: 11) … a new interpretation by Kelly Latimore of Andrei Rublev’s icon ‘The Visitation of Abraham’

Matthew 8: 5-11 (NRSVA):

5 When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, appealing to him 6 and saying, ‘Lord, my servant is lying at home paralysed, in terrible distress.’ 7 And he said to him, ‘I will come and cure him.’ 8 The centurion answered, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed. 9 For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, “Go”, and he goes, and to another, “Come”, and he comes, and to my slave, “Do this”, and the slave does it.’ 10 When Jesus heard him, he was amazed and said to those who followed him, ‘Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. 11 I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.’

‘From this broken hill / All your praises they shall ring / If it be your will’ (Leonard Cohen) … in the mountains above Preveli on the south coast of Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 4 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 yesterday.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (4 December 2023) invites us to pray in these words:

Lord, we invite the Holy Spirit into the Advent season. Renew our sense of holy anticipation.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
give us grace to cast away the works of darkness
and to put on the armour of light,
now in the time of this mortal life,
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility;
that on the last day,
when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
to judge the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

O Lord our God,
make us watchful and keep us faithful
as we await the coming of your Son our Lord;
that, when he shall appear,
he may not find us sleeping in sin
but active in his service
and joyful in his praise;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Almighty God,
as your kingdom dawns,
turn us from the darkness of sin
to the light of holiness,
that we may be ready to meet you
in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow


‘If It Be Your Will’ … Leonard Cohen and The Webb Sisters, Live in London

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