Search This Blog

02 January 2011

A Cold and Broken Hallelujah

Leonard Cohen writes of a "cold and broken hallelujah" in what has become a new favorite of mine. KD Lang's version is particularly striking.

I know what a broken hallelujah is. I know what it is to wring a cold and broken hallelujah from a broken, bruised and bleeding body, heart and soul. The past year has had many such moments. Yet they ended in "hallelujah."
A broken hallelujah is one that emerges from a place of brokenness and yet affirms a living, sovereign, inscrutable God. The awe of that divine majesty gives birth to the hallelujah. Even when it is a cry of pain.
The existence of that Other is a mantle staving off the desperate cold of isolation. Even in despair the psalmist is never abandoned. Hallelujah.

2 comments:

  1. You've put my 2010 into words, gorgeously.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you (most faithful reader)! I'd love to know where Leonard Cohen got his language; I got mine from him.

    ReplyDelete