Spiritual Quote of the Day (Leonard Cohen, on the Need to ‘Listen to the Mind of God’)

“Listen to the sovereign heart
Resign its sovereignty
Listen to the sovereign heart
Don’t listen to me.
 
“Listen to the mind of God
Which doesn’t need to be
Listen to the mind of God
Don’t listen to me.” —Canadian poet-singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen (1934-2016), “Listen to the Hummingbird,” in The Flame: Poems Notebooks Lyrics Drawings (2018)

 
Leonard Cohen died five years ago today in Los Angeles, but not before leaving a body of work focused on the manifest miseries facing every human being—and the wan but real ray of hope that manages to get through. “There is a crack, a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in,” he observed in one of the songs in the second half of his career, “Anthem.”
 
For an interesting analysis of an abiding characteristic of his work, see Allan Showalter’s August 2019 blog post, “The Human Predicament in Leonard Cohen’s Music.”