Leonard Cohen on Saintliness, continued

We are meditating on what Leonard Cohen says about saintliness, in his book Beautiful Losers.* Saturday’s DM ended with his observation that Love is at the center of the saint’s energy.

But Cohen doesn’t define what love is—instead he does name its effect. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. What love accomplishes, Cohen believes, is balance, “a kind of balance in the chaos of existence.”

Love has something to do with riding the chaos, not running from it, not covering it up, not denying its omnipresence, but enduring in a manner of balance, order and chaos, light and dark.

This observation seems especially pertinent in our times of the triple dark night of the soul, Mother Earth, and democracy.

But a saint does not hold the power to “dissolve the chaos.” Otherwise, as Cohen says, “the world would have changed long ago.” Evil would be gone and chaos would not keep returning. Life would be perpetually joyful and light-filled and we would be in control. Not so. Saints don’t eliminate the chaos, they teach us how to dance with it, how to make balance happen.

I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory, He rides the drifts like an escaped ski.

Cohen assures us that saints cannot even dissolve chaos for themselves, they too are thoroughly marinated in chaos. Saints do not have it altogether. It would be both “arrogant and warlike” to imagine a human being could “set the universe in order.”

So saints don’t even try to erase chaos, instead, they learn to ride it, he or she “rides the drifts like an escaped ski.” This is “a kind of balance” and this amounts to the glory that is saintly. An escaped ski has momentum and energy but nothing to steer it, it can go anywhere and at any pace possible.

The ski follows the curve and caress of the hill. Equally, wind, rock and snow determine its trajectory. No one is in charge. A kind of trust otherwise known as faith prevails.

Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. The key to the saint is that he/she loves the world deeply and surrenders to the laws both of gravity and of chance. Again, he/she is not in charge but chooses to surrender to the forces larger than ourselves that we call gravity and chance.

The key is surrendering to loving the world unconditionally. What happens, happens. Do we all have that within us to do? 

To be continued.

* Thanks to Maria Popova, “The Balancing Monsters of Love: Leonard Cohen on the Saints Among Us,” The Marginalian, February 23, 2023. 

To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.

Banner Image: A collage of various editions of Leonard Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers (1966), compiled by team member Rosanna Tufts. 

Queries for Contemplation

Have you dissolved chaos even in yourself—or have you learned to navigate it like an escaped ski? Do you know people who so love the world that they give themselves to the laws of gravity and chance with generosity and without regret? Are you one of those people?

Related Readings by Matthew Fox

Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations. 

Prayer: A Radical Response to Life. 

A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice. 

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality. 

Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society. 

Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint For Our Times. 

Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Times. 

The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times. 

A Way To God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey. 

Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic—and Beyond.