Come Healing

I just had the privilege of sharing a few wonderful hours in the company of the amazing Leonard Cohen, who played Cardiff in his current world tour. I know this sounds like I’m bragging, and I am, but for me Leonard and Pubchurch are intimately associated. Primarily this is because if it weren’t for Bill Taylor-Beales, the initiator of Pubchurch (with his wife Rachel and Chris Coffey), I would not have known Leonard Cohen. Bill is a massive fan. Secondly, Leonard has so much to say about the Christian faith. He does not call himself a Christian and his spirituality is also rooted in his Jewishness and his Buddhism, but if he lyrics are filled with the grit and dirt of his humanity, the yearning for salvation, the sweetness of Grace.

I think some of our best Christian saints and prophets don’t identify as Christian. So I’ll leave you with the lyrics of Saint Leonard and may they bring the healing of God with them. If only all Sunday morning worship could express the gospel as good as this!

“Come Healing”

O gather up the brokenness
And bring it to me now
The fragrance of those promises
You never dared to vow

The splinters that you carry
The cross you left behind
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind

And let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb

Behold the gates of mercy
In arbitrary space
And none of us deserving
The cruelty or the grace

O solitude of longing
Where love has been confined
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind

O see the darkness yielding
That tore the light apart
Come healing of the reason
Come healing of the heart

O troubled dust concealing
An undivided love
The Heart beneath is teaching
To the broken Heart above

O let the heavens falter
And let the earth proclaim:
Come healing of the Altar
Come healing of the Name

O longing of the branches
To lift the little bud
O longing of the arteries
To purify the blood

And let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb

O let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb

Writer(s): Patrick Leonard, Leonard Cohen
Copyright: Old Ideas LLC, No Tomato Music