![\"leonardcohen\"](\"https:\/\/robertlpeters.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/leonardcohen.jpg\")
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Montreal, Canada<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n It’s two years ago today since poet\/troubadour Leonard Cohen moved on into the next dimension. I came across this insightful tribute by Maria Popova online (with thanks to Brenda Sanderson<\/a> for the link)…<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n + \u00a0 + \u00a0 + \u00a0 + \u00a0 +<\/span><\/p>\n A generous reminder that we must aim for \u201ca revelation in the heart rather than a confrontation or a call-to-arms or a defense.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Trained as a poet and ordained as a Buddhist monk<\/a>, Leonard Cohen<\/strong> (September 21, 1934\u2013November 7, 2016) is our patron saint of sorrow and redemption. He wrote songs partway between philosophy and prayer \u2014 songs radiating the kind of prayerfulness which Simone Weil celebrated as \u201cthe rarest and purest form of generosity.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n One of his most beloved lyric lines, from the song \u201cAnthem\u201d \u2014 a song that took Cohen a decade to write \u2014 remains what is perhaps the most meaningful message for our troubled and troubling times: \u201cThere is a crack in everything, that\u2019s how the light gets in.\u201d<\/em> It springs from a central concern of Cohen\u2019s life and work, one which he revisited in various guises across various songs \u2014 including in \u201cSuzanne,\u201d where he writes \u201clook among the garbage and the flowers \/ there are heroes in the seaweed,\u201d<\/em> and in the iconic \u201cHallelujah\u201d: \u201cThere\u2019s a blaze of light \/ In every word \/ It doesn\u2019t matter which you heard \/ The holy or the broken Hallelujah\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>\nThere Is a Crack in Everything, That\u2019s How the Light Gets In: Leonard Cohen on Democracy and Its Redemptions<\/span><\/h4>\n