The word and the voice of God

[Remigius]

Songs of Love and Hate is maybe his "darkest" album but one of my favourites, perhaps because it's the first one I ever bought.
( the second one being "Death of a Ladies man" I have never heard an album of any artist in which the producers influence is so strongly present ) You should try a live-album John, I can recommend you the "Field Commander Cohen Tour of 1979"
album which has a very warm atmosphere. Good luck on your journey !

Remi

[john.m.lake]

Songs of Love and Hate is maybe his "darkest" album but one of my favourites, perhaps because it's the first one I ever bought.
( the second one being "Death of a Ladies man" I have never heard an album of any artist in which the producers influence is so strongly present ) You should try a live-album John, I can recommend you the "Field Commander Cohen Tour of 1979"
album which has a very warm atmosphere. Good luck on your journey !

Remi

Thanks Remi.... I'll add Field Commander to my list!

[~greg]

Jesus was quoting David, Psalm 82. David is paraphrasing God as saying:
"I have said, Ye (are) gods; and all of you (are) children of the most High."
...Which in Genesis actually reads:
"Behold, the man is become as one of Us, to know good and evil..."

Genesis 3:4
And the serpent said unto the woman,
Ye shall not surely die:
3:5
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof,
then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods,
knowing good and evil.

That's always been one of my favorites, because it clearly states that "the original sin"
was "the knowledge of good and evil".

Or, in other words, criticism, was the original sin.

Critics are evil.

~~

-- But also because it's in the title of an Erich Fromm book
that impressed me as a kid, and influenced me later -

You Shall Be As Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Tradition.

When, a few years ago, I calculated that it might be good for my reputation
if I joined a community group, I considered only two religions. And Judaism
was one of them. Mainly because of that book.

(The other was Unitarianism. Mainly because a little UU group
had formed in town. But then they moved out of town, and I
had to give up the whole idea. My reputation is mud.)

I don't have the book anymore.
But I found some good comments on it here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Pk3Pus ... h39Y&hl=en

which I quote below. (illgotten via SnagIt screen reader.)

Erich Fromm wrote "The Art of Loving", "The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness",
"Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis", "Escape from Freedom", etc.

Here's a quote about him that I just now ran across by accident: ---

from
http://www.soulcare.org/Bible%20Studies ... Deity.html
...
- Dr. Lucifer is alive and well. Erich Fromm, one of the founding fathers
of modern psychotherapy wrote many books and articles that had a powerful
influence on the mindset of our current culture, especially the concepts
of self-love and self-esteem. One of his books was entitled:
YOU SHALL BE AS GODS: A RADICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE
OLD TESTAMENT AND ITS TRADITION.
- Robert Schuller and other psychologized preachers began to absorb
these "new" teachings from the field of psychotherapy and like a
Trojan Horse the lies of Lucifer have invaded the church.
- M. Scott Peck, M.D., author of the phenomenally successful,
yet heretical bestseller, THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED, and his latest,
BEYOND THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED, promotes the lie of
"Process Theology" = God is changing & evolving.
Heb 13:8 says God is immutable, unchanging, the one and only I AM.
- Mormon Heresy: "As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become".
...

etc.

So you know, from that, that Fromm's good!


Anyway, I include a couple of paragraphs from Heinze's book
that preceed his metion of "You Shall Be As Gods".

Because I think the whole thing is very relevant to the subject of Leonard Cohen.

from JEWS and the AMERICAN SOUL,
Human Nature in the Twentieth Century,
- Andrew R. Heinze,
Princeton University Press
(c) 2004 by Andrew R. Heinze

pgs 281-283
...
In the work that most fully elaborates his humanism of relatedness,
The Art of Loving, Fromm betrays how deeply the Judaism of his youth
saturated the values of the atheist adult. Published in 1956,
The Art of Loving went through twenty-nine printings and sold a million
and a half copies in English by the end of the 1960s. (By 2000, the book
had sold 25 million copies in fifty languages.) Such success was impressive
for a Marxist critique of American emotional life that appeared at the height
of the Cold War. "In a culture in which the marketing orientation prevails,
and in which material success is the outstanding value," Fromm declared,
"there is little reason to be surprised that human love relations follow
the same pattern of exchange which governs the commodity and the
labor market." The art to which he referred was seldom seen, and
developed only by people who possessed what Fromm called a
"productive orientation," a concept he first elaborated in
Man for Himself (1947). In contrast to those personality types
that fulfilled the most venal tendencies of a capitalist economy,
the "productive" type sought "relatedness in all realms of human
experience." The productive type, that is, the mature person,
also had a healthy self-regard or self-love. Echoing Joshua Liebman's
motif in Peace of Mind, Fromm objected to Christian indictments
of self-love and argued that "the idea expressed in the Biblical
'Love thy neighbor as thyself!' implies that respect for one's own
integrity and uniqueness, love for and understanding of one's
own self, cannot be separated from respect and love and understanding
for another individual."

As he moved through his argument about the nature of mature love
and its evolution in Western history, Fromm drew on his Jewish education
and placed himself in a line of radical Jewish thinkers whom he deemed
the true inheritors of the Jewish spirit. He married Maimonides to Freud
in order to criticize the infantile conception of God to which, in his view,
most people adhered. In the Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides
discoursed on the problems of anthropomorphizing God and insisted
that God could not be identified by adjectives (e.g., wise, just) that
applied to people. Freud, for his part, thought that God was a projection
of neurotic needs for a father figure. Fromm also objected to such
diminished conceptions of God, but he parted from Freud by favoring
the attitude of "the truly religious person" who "follows the essence
of the monotheistic idea ... knowing that he knows nothing about God."
Having established the unknowability of God. Fromm went on to argue:
"The love of God is neither the knowledge of God in thought, nor the
thought of one's love of God, but the act of experiencing the oneness
with God.. .. This leads to the emphasis on the right way of living."
He then claimed that Eastern religions (Taoism, Buddhism. Hinduism)
and also Judaism exemplified that approach, whereas Christianity
(except for Meister Eckhart, his favorite mystic) did not. because
it elevated thought over action and belief over deed. "The emphasis
of the Jewish religion was . . . on the right way of living, the Halacha."
Fromm explained, "In modern history, the same principle is expressed
in the thought of Spinoza, Marx and Freud." In Western culture, then,
the truest source of a mature rather than infantile love of God, and
a mature practice of love as human relatedness, was Judaism and
those visionary Jews to whom Fromm looked for inspiration.

That Fromm's humanism had deep Jewish roots became startlingly
clear in You Shall Be As Gods(1966), which was subtitled
A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Tradition,
Although the book elaborated an argument already present in
The Art of Loving, here Fromm finally brought the old apparatus
of rabbinic exegesis out of the closet into which he had put it at
age twenty-seven, dusted it off, and produced a thoroughly original
piece of writing: a brief for humanism composed for the general reader
and based on a sophisticated Jewish analysis of the Bible with
many detailed references to Talmudic and rabbinic commentaries.
He argued that the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic Judaism contained
the seeds of a grand and radical humanist tradition in Western thought.
The Bible showed a "remarkable evolution from primitive authoritarianism
and clannishness to the idea of the radical freedom of man and the
brotherhood of all men." Moreover, the entire Jewish tradition from the
Pharisees through the Hasids promoted a belief in the human being as
an unfolding personality commanded to "be holy" as God is holy. As
Joshua Liebman had stressed the Jewish concept of people being in
partnership with God, Fromm affirmed the same idea but with a rich array
of midrashic prooftexts illustrating the remarkable boldness that the
God of the rabbis seemed to accept from mere humans. ("Man is not
God, but if he acquires God's qualities, he is not beneath God, but walks
with him.") Most important, Fromm contended, the Hebrew Bible
established unequivocally that people, in serving the one God, should
never reduce themselves to serving men. By liberating human beings from
"incestuous" ties to land and blood, obedience to God placed them on a
path of "imitating" the divine attributes of mercy and justice. "Man, the
prisoner of nature, becomes free by becoming fully human. In the
biblical and later Jewish view, freedom and independence are the goals of
human development, and the aim of human action is the constant process
of liberating oneself from the shackles that bind man to the past, to nature,
to the clan, to idols."


You Shall Be As Gods was intended both as an apologetic text for
the tradition that Fromm loved and as a kind of guide for the perplexed
humanist, both the religious humanist and the "non-theistic humanist"
(as he called himself) who needed "the experiential reality" behind the
idea of God if not God per se. He opened with the old Jewish complaint
about Christian misrepresentations of the Torah as a nationalistic book
focused on an angry and vengeful God. "Among most Christians the
Old Testament is little read in comparison with the New Testament,"
he observed. "Furthermore, much of what is read is often distorted by
prejudice." Fromm then gave his readers a short grand tour through the
postbiblical Jewish tradition, including an autobiographical account of
his own rich education in the sources of Judaism. Paying homage to the
three great rabbis who instructed him. he explained. "Not being a practicing
or a 'believing' Jew, I am, of course, in a very different position
from theirs... Yet my views have grown out of their teaching, and it is
my conviction that at no point has the continuity between their teaching
and my own views been interrupted."

In part, Fromm wanted to reconnect secular Jewish idealists with the
"revolutionary" principles of their ancestors. He believed that "the
universalism and humanism of the prophets blossomed in the figures of
thousands of Jewish philosophers, socialists, and internationalists, many
of whom had no personal connection with Judaism." And, having
reached his sixties, he was prepared to reflect on the possibility that the
halakhah, and the observance of the Sabbath in particular, might contain
valuable lessons and methods for the struggle to affirm life in a society
that turned people "into appendices of machines." The sanctification of
all activity on the Sabbath was an antidote for the poisons of modern
society; it was an incarnation of the humanist ethic. "I do believe that
the principle of the Sabbath rest might be adopted by a much larger
number of people—Christians. Jews, and people outside of any religion.
The Sabbath day. for them, would be a day of contemplation, reading,
meaningful conversation, a day of rest and joy, completely free from all
practical and mundane concerns."
...

[john.m.lake]

God wrote:
Genesis 3:4
"And the serpent said unto the woman,
Ye shall not surely die:
3:5
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof,
then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods,
knowing good and evil."


Greg: That's always been one of my favorites, because it clearly states that "the original sin"
was "the knowledge of good and evil".

Or, in other words, criticism, was the original sin.

Critics are evil.

Hmmm, You peaked my interest Greg. To criticize is to evaluate the merits and faults of the given topic at hand. Do you hold this belief ("Critics are evil") to be true for 'all topics' or just in relation to what you believe to be 'God' ?

[Manna]

When, a few years ago, I calculated that it might be good for my reputation
if I joined a community group, I considered only two religions. And Judaism
was one of them. Mainly because of that book.

(The other was Unitarianism. Mainly because a little UU group
had formed in town. But then they moved out of town, and I
had to give up the whole idea. My reputation is mud.)

of the available religions, I have also recently considered these two. Though my reasons are different. Or at least I think they are. The calculation I do all day is C1V1 = C2V2.

[Casey Butler]

Hi ~greg... Thanks for posting the quotes. That Andrew R. Heinze quote I couldn't make it through though, hard as I tried.

It's another good example of the endless words we use to get around expressing simple love for/to one another.

As far as any original sin, the record would indicate the opposite. There is no sin in the world. Sin is the invented excuse we harden our hearts against Love with. Religions of sin are our excuse for ignoring our own need for Love.

According to Genesis, all that has ever existed are billions of fantastically diverse, beautiful, unique, and awesome people learning the consequences of living without Love, in order that they might freely choose Love. Though as Leonard points out, we'll all come to Love as refugees.

Some estimate 55,000,000,000 people.

This planet of ours is going to be a wonderful place for a very, very, very long time. And it's all science, not religion. :-)

[John Etherington]

Hi Casey, John and everyone,

I haven't had time to follow this thread in its entirety, but I would like to pick up on the earlier gnostic themes that emerged.

To recap, the gnostics believed that we all come form a Divine Source (God), but in this life we are trapped in the world of matter. We all have a spark of the Divine in us, and the goal is to re-connect with this, and ultimately to return to the source (Jesus role was to help us with this process). This basic idea influenced most of the western mystery teachings that followed right though to Rosicrucianism and modern New Age thought. I tend to agree with this myself. However, as I understand it, the more extreme beliefs of some original gnostics were that this world was created by an evil god (an other to the Divine Source) and that matter and the physical body are essentially evil (which I don't agree with).

In the light of these ideas, I would like to consider Leonard's "Avalanche", which I have always found compelling but difficult to understand lyrically. I should add that I have rarely read any attempted analysis of this song (though,if there is any here, please direct me!). The only analysis I can remember reading interpreted it literally as a hunchback talking to a woman. Indeed, it can be read this way - as that of one who feels physically or emotially disfigured adressing another. But, no doubt it can be interpreted on many levels. One that has begun to emerge for me is that it conveys a message from God or the divine spark within.

Thus, the soul or God coming into incarnation enters the material world (I stepped into an avalanche it covered up my soul).

Any being entering this world is to some degree disfigured (as an aside,I see that the Navajo religion talks of a "hunchback god").

To conquer the pain of existence we must serve God/the spark of the divine within us.

"You strike by side by accident" I would associate with the image of the soldier piercing the side of Christ on the cross (also in recent songs Leonard mentions "the spear of the age in your side").

Most people only offer "crumbs of love" to God or their own divinty. If we again consider the figure of Christ he is said to have carried, in the crucifixion, the suffering of mankind. Thus our individual pain, is only a shadow of His wounds.

God/the true Self within apparently longs to re-connect with us, but we have freedom of choice whether we seek re-connection.
("I have begun to long for you etc.).

Finally, it does not serve the greater purpose to either wear rags (sackcloth) or take the fierce approach of fundamentalism.

The words of God manifest in flesh, or the spark of divinity within us are there in the final lines:

"It is your turn, beloved,
It is your flesh that I wear".

All good things, John E

[Gregor]

John,
Try 'Dear heather,and Ten new Songs ' they are leonard at his best but his very best and his has given some of his music to Anjani .If Leonard is the voice of gog try Anjani She has the voice of the angles ,also there is The BOOk OF LONGING.
Rgeards
Gregor.

[John Etherington]

Hi Gregor,

You obviously intended this reply for greeksiren's "Favourite Leonard CD" thread in LC Music section. Unfortunate typo there, by the way... Gog in Judeo-Christian tradition = the satanic powers who wage war against God and the righteous at the end of the world!

All the best, John E

[John Etherington]

Re: Re my "Avalanche" post (a couple of messages up), it has just occurred to me that the song could be a dialogue between God and the hunchback figure. Gina once suggested that in "Famous Blue Raincoat" Leonard might be dialoguing with himself. This could be true, if dialogue was something that Leonard was using at the time of "Songs of Love and Hate".

All good things, John E

[john.m.lake]

Gregor: John,
Try 'Dear heather,and Ten new Songs ' they are leonard at his best but his very best and his has given some of his music to Anjani .If Leonard is the voice of gog try Anjani She has the voice of the angles ,also there is The BOOk OF LONGING.
Rgeards
Gregor.

Thanks Gregor! And.. I have not listened to Anjani yet - but looking forward to it. Enjoy your Day!

[john.m.lake]

The astronauts that journeyed to the moon are the only human beings that were able to see the Earth from a distance - this enabled them to see the entire beautiful world in all its glory. What they saw was a Garden of Eden – a peaceful place – or so it looks from space. They were all struck not only by its amazing beauty but also its amazing fragility. All of these men came back changed – none of the petty concerns of our day to day lives concerned them to the degree they would have before. They were enlightened – And they still try to explain to all they see….

Others, like Leonard, are enlightened in a different way. He is able to speak directly to our souls using his gift for words and music. You hear it from person to person – the light has shone upon them! The beauty in those words and voice and music transcends time and helps guide us through the smoke and mirrors of our own creation…

I truly enjoy the great diversity... of different religions or (non-religion like I speak of).. or the thoughts of Atheists and agnostics - because - the 'truth' is a combination of 'EVERYTHING'…. On this Good Friday – whoever you are – whatever you believe - Jesus came and spoke to an 'ancient' culture. Things were explained to them in a way that they would understand in their 'place in time'. I believe it is important to 'focus' 'mainly' on the words attributed to Jesus directly - some of them may have been misconstrued themselves - BUT - other passages of not his words 'shout out' children's fables - not that they do not have an important lesson to teach of course - BUT - I believe Jesus' own words should be the top priority…. For his words, regardless of the time period, transcended time, transcended human history and human laws….

May God bless the weak and the weary, the hungry and the cold, the sad and the lonely the lost and the frightened… May the joy of this Easter time engulf them and keep them safe for the remainder of their days. And may God bless you, the written story, the open book, the singing of the angels and the song with the hook – Hallelujah !

[Casey Butler]

In the light of these ideas, I would like to consider Leonard's "Avalanche", which I have always found compelling but difficult to understand lyrically.

"Avalanche" is an easy one. Listening to Leonard's songs is like reading the prophets and Jesus and, yes, the Prophet Muhammad, Shakepeare's Sonnets...

I can attempt to summarize it like this:

* If you don't yet understand the meaning, his message is to you.

* If you do understand the meaning, he's singing his message for you, because Leonard has a voice that is heard far and wide, whereas you do not.

For example: Ask any homeless person the meaning of "First We Take Manhattan...". Odds are, I'll wager, after hearing it that person will immediately understand that Leonard Cohen IS his or her voice singing to the rest of us who are NOT homeless - or NOT poor, or NOT oppressed, etc... - but who are ultimately responsible for homelessness, poverty, and oppression, etc... because we refuse to love as much as it would take to wipe out all oppression, poverty, and homelessness, etc...

"Ah you loved me as a loser, but now you're worried that I just might win
"You know the way to stop me, but you don't have the discipline
"How many nights I prayed for this, to let my work begin
"First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin"

Now I'm not homeless, but Leonard sings "First We Take Manhattan" FOR me, because I hear him.

Take Hollywood, where I happen to be at the moment. The wealth here is just unimaginable. It's hard to describe, it's such a fantasyland where almost everything is perfect and in its place. Yet even on Rodeo Drive where some of the best and most expensive designer shops are, you will see the point men and women of Leonard's army, pushing shopping carts, digging through garbage cans, and sleeping on curbs.

Simply by their presence, the homeless execute judgment within the heart of every shopper who sees them. Shoppers and residents who consider the homeless, whom they themselves create, as such a blight on the community that one lady tried to organize volunteers to sit on benches in shifts so the homeless couldn't use them to rest on.

For at least forty years Leonard Cohen has been in a special spiritual place watching the rest of us, singing to us. He has understood the real Words of God spoken through Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, the prophets, and thousands of other poets and philosophers and playwrights and others...

Leonard has known, for that long at least, that all of humanity's differences really make no difference to Love, they make no difference to the True God. That no matter what race or religion we belong to, no matter our intelligence level or our education, no matter how beautiful or how ugly we are, how rich or how poor we are, no matter what language we speak...

We all share the same Heart.

When we understand that, when we understand that the homeless person down on Rodeo Drive is as important to God - as important to Love - as Leonard Cohen is - as Jesus Christ is - as each one of us is...

Leonard won't be lonely any more. His "beloved" will be with him again. There will be no more homeless, no more oppression, no more poverty, etc.

"Avalanche" is really just another cry from the wilderness we've made Love dwell in for 2,000 years.

"You who wish to conquer pain,
"you must learn what makes me kind;
"the crumbs of love that you offer me,
"they're the crumbs I've left behind.
"Your pain is no credential here,
"it's just the shadow, shadow of my wound."

Try another look at the lyrics.

Casey

[John Etherington]

Hi Casey,

Thanks for your comments. It's true that you can interpret the song solely as the predicament of a hunchback/cripple, and it would be great if it were this alone, but I've always felt that it is saying more (hence my gnostic interpretation, above). "Avalanche" comes across as an intensely personal statement from Leonard, at a time when he seemingly had "everything" - talent, fame, money, women etc. The theme of the cripple appears several times in Leonard's work in the early Seventies...did you ever read the short story about the cripple that I believe appeared in "Selected Poems"? (I must go back to that, myself). I think that Leonard's most "Christ-like words" at this time were those relating his identification with the predicament of the suffering in "Please Don't Pass Me By". I was in my "red velvet seat" at the Royal Albert Hall with when he recorded it, even though I was only 18, and had paid for my ticket from my salary (which was £10 a week, at the time!).

All good things, John E

[John Etherington]

Hi Casey,

Following on from what you say above, it's interesting that the first person I met who was totally into Leonard was a man that I sold "Songs of Love and Hate" to, when I worked in Soho Records in 1971. We made a connection through our interest in Leonard, even though we were worlds apart, at the time. I was a long-haired 19 year old, three years out of school. He was a man of Persian/Indian (origin?) with dark skin, who looked a bit like Meha Baba, a striking figure, who wore expensive suits and came in the shop with beautiful young English women on either arm. He told me that he thought "Songs of Love and Hate" was a great album, but had absolutely no idea what "Avalanche" and "Love Calls You By Your Name" were about!

Happy Easter! John E