Is Love a Cold and Very Broken Hallelujah?

David knew the secret chord

Photo by Slava Abramovitch on Unsplash

Leonard Cohen, who wrote the song “Hallelujah,” once said, “You look around and you see a world that is impenetrable. You either raise your fist or you say ‘hallelujah.’ I try to do both.”

If the world is impenetrable, it begs a series of questions:

Who are we as human beings? What is our purpose on this planet? Is it to love, is it to find a sense of sacredness, is it to to stand up and speak out when there is injustice?

Is it to find common bread with our brothers and sisters?

Is it to heal the broken strands of individuals and society?

Or is it to lash out at others and sow disharmony?

Love is not some kind of victory march. Instead it’s an up and down experience, one that can transform or break you. It can be something that heals your tattered self, picks you up by your lapels, and makes you scream at the top of your lungs and say “hallelujah.”

Or it can be a cold and very broken hallelujah.

And that’s part of the mystery of life, what makes it so impenetrable.

There’s many slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that come your way, and as they do, how does it make you feel?

Does it make you angry? Does it make you want to cry out loud? Does it make you want to raise your fist and say, fuck, I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore?

I’m with you on that, my friend.

But at the same time, how do you integrate that deeper sense, that sacred chord that has minor falls and major lifts?

David knew, and his insights pleased the Lord.

Yet here we are, in a culture that abandons the sacred. As that happens, you find people raising the fist to lash out at others, with no sense that what they are doing feeds a dark foreboding that spews only more hate.

There’s eight billion of us on this planet. Some say it’s too many. It’s too many only if the level of discord is wretched and tears us apart.

Granted, eight billion people are never going to live in harmony. There’s too many diverse souls on the planet for that to happen. Much of that disharmony is caused by a lustful greed and thirst for power and money.

Sadly, that’s an age old story.

And there’s no magic wand that’s going to make it all better, and make us live in blissful harmony.

I’m not even sure I want that. There are times when we need discord, conflict, and turbulence, for out of those difficult interactions, greater understandings can happen—if we choose to raise the fist and say “hallelujah.”

Can we find our way in an impenetrable world? Many of us are seekers, trying to find the logic of a seemingly irrational universe, a universe that appears to laugh at us for our failings and blemishes and hurts.

But there is a logic that rules the universe, and it shows up in David’s secret chord.

Its name is love. Not an unconditional love—that’s what the Buddhists would call idiot compassion.

It’s a love that has boundaries, that knows right from wrong, that cares for every being on the planet while understanding that some people are so cold and very broken that all they can do is lash out and sow disharmony.

At the same time, it’s a love that has no limits.

I want to love you, even if I hate you. I want to see you, even if I’m blind. I want to hear you, even if I’m deaf.

I don’t like what is happening to many of my brothers and sisters. War, extreme weather, poverty, people starving and suffering, people in major debt—all while others laugh at them or enrich themselves at their expense.

We’re not going to make it as a people if we continue that way.

If life is impenetrable, we can’t just allow ourselves to be befuddled by its mysteries and pretend they don’t exist. We can’t just plow forward at the pace we’re going, jettisoning whatever is sacred in order to fulfill the holy gospel of prosperity and untold riches.

That’s not the way to live. It drowns feelings and leads you to ultimately feel nothing and be numb, all while that sense of being alone drives the oldest of humanity’s desires—human companionship.

Human companionship and the intimacy that comes with it is nurturing, and something we all want. Yet at the same time, we recoil from touch, recoil from love, recoil from gentleness, recoil from softness.

It’s a defense mechanism to recoil—something is distorted within. Some of that is because of what happened when you were young, while another aspect of that defense mechanism is caused by social conditioning.

The conditioning tells you: don’t trust others. People are out to get you. It’s a dog eat dog world. Don’t let your guard down. Get yours before someone else gets it first.

It’s exhausting to live like that.

And because you can run but you can’t hide, you can’t live that way forever. Eventually you’ll break down, physically or emotionally. You will have a crisis at some time in your life—a health crisis or an existential, what is the meaning of life, crisis.

At that crossroads, when you find yourself in a deep and dark ditch, that’s when life will be at its most impenetrable.

Eventually, if you only treat it symptomatically with medications such as antidepressants—or other substances—you will get out of that ditch and get back to carrying on as before; but in doing so, you’ll carry a heavy weight on your shoulders, one that will gnaw away at your soul.

The alternative is a more natural approach—therapy, nutrition, meditation, acupuncture, somatic therapy, energy medicine, etc.—that allows you to liberate yourself and free your soul.

If you do that, you’ll then know the meaning of freedom. This type of freedom isn’t an individualistic thing; instead, it’s a collaborative effort, in conjunction with others. Your freedom has to be connected with the freedom of others; it becomes a responsibility that allows you to grow and thrive while helping others grow and thrive.

This understanding is what the Dalai Lama meant when he said that his religion is kindness. That’s the golden rule in action, to treat others with kindness and compassion, in the same way you hope others will treat you.

Of course, not everyone will treat you with the kindness and compassion you show others. Some are just too cold and broken to remember their humanity, or they are too tribal to be willing to reach out and connect to those who are different.

They instead want to shower others with venom.

The challenge is this: those who shower others with venom, you don’t want to accept who they are or what they are doing; but you can understand that they are broken and lonely, and have forgotten that there is a logic to the universe—the logic of love.

I want to love those who continually speak venom and spread disharmony, but I will raise my fist at them, to let them know what they are doing is wrong.

And you must do that too.

Which then begs the following: if love is the answer, what is the question?

The question remains, what do we make of this impenetrable universe, one with so many divergences and distortions and dishonors?

When so many choose to dishonor the sacred vessel that carries us forward, how do we get them to stop? Yelling and screaming at them won’t work.

As they say, you can’t fight fire with fire. Or as Gandhi said, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

There’s a righteousness to this world. It’s a righteousness that says, honor our friends, and even more than that, honor our enemies, even when they dishonor us.

Turn the other cheek is a teaching from the Bible.

I can’t say I am capable of doing that all the time.

But more than that is this understanding: Those who dishonor are cold, broken, and lonely. Their soul needs honoring.

I’m not saying you can walk up to them and give them a big fat hug. That would be pretty darn weird.

Instead, meet them where they are.

The spreaders of venom and disharmony do the world no favors. They are angry and overcome by the lust for money and power.

What would the opposite of the world they want look like? It would be a sane, humane, and compassionate world; it would be an enlightened society.

You’ll never get everyone to live that way, but if there were enough people who understood what an enlightened society looked like, there could be better guardrails that halted those who were hell bent on destruction.

The ones hell bent on destruction need to be called out in a thoughtful manner for what they are doing. Humanity is asking those of us who do want to live in an enlightened society to help steer the ship in the right direction.

“A rising tide lifts all ships,” said John F. Kennedy. This is how the ship gets steered in the right direction, by making sure all have the opportunity to be helped and to thrive.

You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, as Bob Dylan once sang; instead, while steering the ship, you just continually adapt course as the winds change.

The worst thing you can do is resist the winds of change by holding fast to absolute ideas.

But that’s what we see: people fighting the ever changing nature of society by holding fast to outdated ideas. Sure, change can be challenging—just when you think you have figured out the impenetrableness of life, things change again.

Yet the only constant in life is change. That’s why the Chinese developed the I Ching, the Book of Changes, as a tool to navigate those changes.

Paradigms shift on a regular basis. It’s how we shift with them that dictates our own moral code and moral compass.

At one time in the U.S., slavery was legal, until the day it thankfully wasn’t. As the paradigm shifted, there were many who had trouble with that change; even now, to this day, there are resentments harbored about it.

How do we get to the point where we can raise the fist and also say “hallelujah?” It takes a certain level of growth and cognitive evolution. It also takes an open hearted nature and a sense of humility, one that allows you to say “I was wrong.”

Admitting you were wrong was the story of Amazing Grace, when a slave trader realized he once was lost but now was found, and that he was blind but now could see.

Once he came to that realization, he knew the secret chord that pleased the Lord.

It was a lived experience that led John Newton to write “Amazing Grace.” He was running a slave ship when a violent storm threatened to capsize his vessel. He called out to God for mercy, and his spiritual conversion occurred by virtue of his being saved.

It doesn’t take a major cataclysm like what John Newton experienced to change a person. All it takes is dropping the defense mechanisms that shape a cold and broken nature.

There’s two ways that can occur. It happens when someone else stands tall in speaking the truth to the person in a firm but gentle manner.

That’s how people change one at a time. The greater way to enact transformation is when a societal narrative changes—when society as a whole understands the importance of raising the fist and saying “hallelujah.”

When it no longer becomes acceptable to spread venom and disharmony, and when the lust for money and power becomes seen as a deplorable manner of living, then the possibility exists to create a world in which love is enshrined as the core of sacred living, and also as the glue that keeps open the door to the mysteries and impenetrableness of life.

At that point, the secret chord that David played would please us all.

Hallelujah. And raise the fist.