Today I’m thinking about Leonard Cohen, and about how his words still matter to me. His music and his poetry tug at the threads of all that endures: life, faith, love, death. Every line he wrote feels boundless yet so near, as if he wasn’t just speaking to us but with us; sharing the search, surrendering to the mystery, inviting us to stumble along with him through the light and the shadow.
His work speaks to what’s raw, what’s real: doubt, yearning, awe, grief – all made somehow bearable, even beautiful. The songs don’t just exist to be heard; they map a way to feel through the dark, revealing both sorrow and the fleeting glimmers of light that sustain us. There is humility there, and an understanding of the weight of longing and loss, laid bare with grace and grit.
I think of that defiant, quiet ‘Hineni, hineni – I’m ready’, he said, with courage and perhaps a touch of resignation, but not without voicing his grievances on the way out. You want it darker is, in so many ways, his mourner’s Kaddish. A final reckoning with whatever, if anything, lay on the other side, his voice low and prayerful, calling out into the abyss as if to strike a last bargain with the void.
In the glow of yahrzeit candles, there’s light enough to sense his presence, just enough to feel that blessing. His memory truly is a blessing! A reminder to carry life’s burdens with reverence and to keep singing through it all, no matter how dark. In the flicker of the flame, I catch echoes of his voice: ‘Ring the bells that still can ring…’ A reminder that even brokenness has its music, and even now, the song goes on.
Today marks eight years since his passing according to both the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars – 6 Cheshvan or 7 November. Eight years, and still, his voice remains. Perhaps it always will, lingering in the spaces between light and darkness, in the spaces where we listen for what cannot quite be heard.