Coastal Theology
Coastal Theology - Faith, Learning, and Creativity at the Edge of the Pacific
Welcome to Coastal Theology, a podcast from the Vancouver Island School of Theology and the Arts. Each episode invites you to join us in thoughtful conversations on faith, art, and Christian learning — shaped by the coastal rhythms and spiritual richness of Vancouver Island. Whether you’re a curious learner or considering a course with VISTA, we’re glad you’re here.
Coastal Theology
The Prophet's Playlist: Walking Through Leonard Cohen's Biblical Landscape with Dr. Brian Walsh
"You want it darker? We killed the flame." These haunting words from Leonard Cohen capture the spiritual emergency of our times—and might be his most important message for today's church, according to theologian Dr. Brian Walsh.
In this profound conversation, we explore how Cohen's music creates a bridge between ancient biblical imagination and contemporary spiritual hunger. Walsh's new book "Rags of Light" examines Cohen not merely as a poet or musician, but as a modern-day psalmist whose work functions within "the landscape of the Bible."
The grandson of a renowned Talmudic scholar, Cohen's Jewish heritage infused his art with covenantal themes that Walsh unpacks with remarkable insight. From "Suzanne" to "Hallelujah," Cohen's catalog reveals a sophisticated theological imagination that embraces both prophetic judgment and priestly surrender. His unflinching articulation of human complicity in suffering creates authentic space for grace—what Cohen himself called "a manual for defeat" that paradoxically opens us to redemption.
Walsh shares his fascinating experience crafting worship liturgies around contemporary artists like Cohen, where songs become prayers and eucharistic responses. These services revealed a profound spiritual hunger among diverse attendees, many drawn not by religious affiliation but by the resonance of Cohen's artistic voice. When the line "there ain't no cure for love" becomes a communion response, something powerful happens—sacred and secular boundaries dissolve into genuine encounter.
What emerges is a vision of faith where arguing with God becomes an act of devotion, where sexuality and spirituality intertwine as expressions of the same fundamental longing, and where even our darkest articulations can become pathways to light. Join us for this illuminating conversation that will transform how you hear Cohen's music and might just rekindle your imagination for what worship could be.
Don't miss Dr. Walsh's upcoming workshop "Liturgy, Contemporary Music and Liberating the Imagination" on September 20th in Victoria, where he'll explore how contemporary artists can enrich our spiritual practice and communal worship.
LINKS:
Dr. Brian Walsh Bio and Empire Remixed Website
A Glad Footnote - Dr. Brian Walsh's piece on Walter Brueggemann
Wine Before Breakfast Community
Rags of Light - Spotify Playlist according to the book
If It Be Your Will - The Webb Sisters with Leonard Cohen
If It Be Your Will - Antony
Hallelujah - Favorite version of Dr. Brian Walsh
I'm Your Man - Leonard Cohen Documentary
The Traitor - Performed by Martha Wainwright
VISTA website
Rags of Light Creative Workshop Info
Learn more about the Vancouver Island School of Theology and the Arts
Credits:
Coastal Theology Podcast theme performed by Mark Glanville
Welcome to Coastal Theology, a podcast from the Vancouver Island School of Theology and the Arts. We explore how Christian faith, learning and creativity flourish on Vancouver Island and how you can be part of the story.
Speaker 2:All right, hey everybody, welcome to Coastal Theology. Where are we at? We're at episode three, I think, angela Mark, and now today we're going to interview Dr Brian Walsh. I'll say more about him in a minute, but first I'm not introducing a new co-host. This is still Vanessa.
Speaker 1:But she might sound a little funny, you sound a little funny in her own words.
Speaker 2:I didn't say that's your. I'm quoting you, vanessa. Why do you sound a little funny? I?
Speaker 1:do. A couple weeks ago I had a bike accident and I broke my jaw and lost some teeth. So now I sound funny for a few months, but I still wanted to do this interview, even though you tried to get me off of it.
Speaker 2:We're surprisingly stubborn about wanting to be here. I thought you need to rest. It hurt me to hear you talk because I thought it was painful, but it's not painful to talk, it's sore.
Speaker 1:yes, Especially if you make me laugh, so try not to laugh.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's going to be hard because I'm such a funny guy. Okay, I'm glad you're here. We're excited to interview Dr Brian Walsh and he's coming. He's a Canadian theologian and he's coming to Victoria September 20th. Let me give the full details and then we'll introduce him and welcome him. Perfect, because he wrote a book.
Speaker 1:Yes, a wonderful little book called Rags of Light.
Speaker 2:Rags of Light, leonard Cohen and the Landscape of Biblical Imagination, called rags of light, rags of light, leonard cohen in the landscape of biblical imagination. So he's looking at the music of leonard cohen, cohen seeing the intersection of of leonard cohen's music and theology, the church and and all that. It's fascinating. We we've uh, we've read it and we're excited to chat with him about it. He's coming to victoria to do a Vista conference September 20th Creative Workshop in conversation with the book Rags of Light, and the title of the workshop is Liturgy, contemporary Music and Liberating the Imagination. This is from the website. It says this conversation would specifically discuss the shaping of liturgy that engages contemporary music. It'll offer examples of Eucharistic liturgies that featured the music of artists like Bruce Coburn, van Morrison, annie DeFranco, joni Mitchell, tracy Chapman, u2, leonard Cohen and Bruce Springsteen. How does one write liturgy that invites the work of these artists into the rituals of the church, which avoids cheap fandom while respecting the art in such a way that resonates with scripture? And, importantly, how does such liturgy shape the liturgy of our lives? So we're going to chat with Brian about all this and more, and specifically around his book.
Speaker 2:Brian Walsh is a theologian writer and former campus minister whose work bridges scripture, culture and imagination. He's the author of several influential books, including Colossians Remixed and Kicking at the Darkness. His latest book, rags of Light, leonard Cohen and the Landscape of Biblical Imagination, explores Cohen's music as a modern psalmody, uncovering themes of prophecy, lament and hope. So we're very excited to welcome Brian Walsh to the Coastal Theology Podcast. Welcome, brian.
Speaker 3:Thanks, great to be here.
Speaker 1:Brian, I was so excited to interview you and to read this book because we named our son Leo after Leonard Cohen.
Speaker 3:Wow, not Gabriel, okay.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:You didn't know that.
Speaker 2:Maybe you told me and I'd forgotten.
Speaker 1:Yeah that's his namesake. He knows that. So I wanted to first tell you, if it's okay, my association with Leonard Cohen, like when my relationship started with him, and then, Andy, I want to hear yours, Okay, so when we were first married I've been married for 20 years we watched the documentary I'm your man like 10 or 12 times in a row. I mean it was just the best thing we'd ever seen and it felt like worship. You know, there were a few songs in it that we played over and over again. Our favorite, Brian, was Theiter by Martha Wainwright. Do you know the song, the Toiter?
Speaker 2:Leonard Cohen the Toiter. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:You didn't mention it in your book. I wondered why.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of Cohen songs.
Speaker 1:Oh, there are. Yes, I'll let you pass on that, but her performance of the Troider was so powerful. And then Leonard's description of what that song meant just touched us so much. Basically he said it meant that there's this feeling we all have that we're meant to accomplish something and we like some mission we're mandated to accomplish and then we find out we can't do it. And actually all along it's find out we can't do it and actually all along it's okay that we couldn't do it and we can stand guiltless in the predicament we find ourselves in. And I heard that as like a life with god, like this manual for defeat that you talk about so much in your book. It was like he wrote about that from the beginning and it's okay to need jesus and there's like a lot of grace in that. So that song was our favorite. But also, if it be your will, on that documentary sung by anthony was so powerful yeah wow.
Speaker 1:So that documentary is why we loved leonard cohen so much and started listening to his songs. But then, when our son was born, two months early, we didn't have a name for him but we had a CD I think it was called Old Ideas Traveled to and from the NICU every day for a month to go see him, spend the day with him, and we only played old ideas in the car on the way to and from, and my favorite song on that record was Show me the place where you want your slave to go. Show me the place. I can't make it, I don't know. Show me the place, help me roll away the stone.
Speaker 1:And that month, as like a new mom to a preemie who was four pounds in the NICU, I felt like a slave. I was like Simone Weil is someone who I love and she says Christianity is a religion of slaves, which reminds me of Leonard Cohen saying only drowning man can see him. It's like I don't know I was going to say I felt like it was like Saturday of the Paschal Mystery that month at the NICU, but it was actually Sunday. Our son was alive, but it was still touch and go. And you're like is this real? And so I felt like a slave, but it was my choice. I wasn't like handcuffed, my feet weren't shuffling in chains but it was my choice. I wasn't like handcuffed or my feet weren't shuffling in chains, but it was my choice to be like I am indebted, I have nowhere else to go. Just tell me what to do. So that cemented that. We would name him Leo. That's my. Did I win the contest of the best story.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to go, I'm not going to go, I'm not going to go. That's amazing. I was not expecting that. I know. You know, in many ways, this is my intro to Leonard Cohen, your book, brian, and it's been a really helpful way because I've been aware of Leonard Cohen and he's been an interesting, mysterious figure to me, but I haven't been exposed to a lot of his music because, as you said, brian, it's such a robust catalog. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed.
Speaker 2:I don't know how to get in. So this book has actually been a great way for me to kind of get into Leonard Cohen. And I was telling you, brian, over email how I would just take every as you mentioned a song, I would just add it to my playlist and just kind of listen as I go. So I can kind of develop this playlist and listen to songs as I go, and that was a great way to get exposed to Leonard Cohen.
Speaker 1:Wow, thanks for listening. I was excited to tell you both about that. So, brian, one question for you. Well, you can respond to anything you heard, of course, but also I have this sense. You know that we're drawn to people like I know who some of andy's favorite theologians are, and to me it says that there's some chemistry and some dna relationship between andy and daryl johnson or eugene peterson or something. So you being drawn to leonard Leonard Cohen makes me think you share something with him, that there's something about his vocation or his charism in the world that you might have. Is that true? What do you think you're drawn to him?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, I can talk about why I'm drawn to him. Humility requires me not to want to identify with his charism Really, because his charism, his gifts, are so absolutely amazing. You know, I tell the story in the book of being in high school and the high school teacher at the end of class his name was Mr Welsh and he read to us DH Lawrence's poem the Snake, first time we'd ever heard it, handed it out to us and invited us all to go home and write a Freudian analysis of the poem, which I put up my hand and he said Walsh, and I said no, not going to do it. He said why not? Now? You have to.
Speaker 3:At this point I've been a Christian about two years and I had all the enthusiasm of a convert and I said, well, because I don't think any of us know anything about Freud. You've not taught us about Freud. All we know is he has something to do with sex and we got a poem about a snake in a hole. That's kind of obvious. I'm not going to. You know, I think I'm not going to do this for my English baby.
Speaker 1:That sounds like something Leonard would do Disagree at age 17 with the teacher.
Speaker 2:It sounds like that paper would write itself. You missed an opportunity for an easy.
Speaker 3:It was so easy and God bless him. He was a good teacher and he said well, what will you write on? And the first thing I said was Suzanne, by Leonard Cohen.
Speaker 1:Who says that. What teenager says? The word essay on Suzanne says the essay on Suzanne.
Speaker 3:I guess a teenager who had just this was what? 1971? 1971. So the song hadn't been out that long. But there was something about the pathos and the eros of that song that spoke pretty deeply to both my my burgeoning sexuality, but also, and more profoundly, my, my burgeoning Christian faith. And undoubtedly the second verse of of the song, about Jesus, is why I thought this would be a great song to write about, because if somebody as famous as Leonard Cohen can talk about Jesus in a pop song, then surely I can talk about it in English class at high school.
Speaker 3:And that really just set me on the path of engaging music theologically at the age of 17, and I've never stopped.
Speaker 3:I came back to Cohen through the song if it be your will, and, and it was uh. It showed up in in in the uh, the, the, the teen movie, pump up the volume and a certain point, the, the protagonist, uh, who's a sort of a pirate radio guy, uh, says effort, I'm done, stick a fork in me, and he goes off the air and just sits there for a few minutes and then he says eff it again and he goes back on the air and he plays If it Be your Will. And this whole sense of prayer and this sense of I cannot speak on my own authority. I need permission, I need a call, I need to be invited. That resonated with me and retroactively, that's been my experience throughout my life since my conversion at the age of 16 is that if I'm to speak, I need to speak through tears, I need to speak prayerfully and I need to speak at the Holy One's bidding, and that's something I I resonate deeply with with Leonard Cohen.
Speaker 1:Beautiful.
Speaker 2:Like that.
Speaker 1:Okay, there's like so many topics I want to talk about, so I'm going to name a few and then you, you two, pick. Yeah, okay, I'm.
Speaker 2:I'm realizing why you were so stubborn about wanting to carry on with this podcast despite, uh, your your challenges recently.
Speaker 1:Now I'm discovering okay, this is very important for vanessa to be here. So my favorite topics are covenant you talk about it throughout the book and that is just not an idea that has, like you know, formed my imagination yet as a question. Um, I know what it means, but I don't use it. The way you use it it's kind of like the through line in your book and in your understanding of leonard cohen, so I'd like to talk more about that. Or, uh, accusation and complaint like I love the fiery side of Leonard Cohen and I feel like that's something my faith needs more of, and maybe in our churches maybe we could use a little bit more of that. So that's another topic. Oh, the like prophetic judgment on the myth of progress that leonard cohen does feels really relevant.
Speaker 1:Like it just I don't know why it sounds so good to me to listen to. Everybody knows, and especially the way you talked about it, brian, that song it just found. It's like I'm craving someone to say the whole thing is doomed. It's rigged like why does that feel so good? And then the last one would be worship and eros. Like we are homo eroticas, we have this like longing inside of us and we're looking for in relationships. And so many of leonard's songs feel like is he talking to a god or is he talking to a woman? Is he looking for god or is he looking for love? And it's like, yes, he is Both.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 1:I feel like worship and Eros is really relevant for me as a Christian right now too. Like what do we do with that? How do we move more there? Those are my favorite topics. Which one is you guys like?
Speaker 3:where do you want us to go here, andy?
Speaker 2:that was a good menu, good sampling of of what people might get from the book or the workshop as well um well, can you go back to number covenant?
Speaker 1:yeah um the like judgment on judgment on progress or whatever complaint and worship and eros.
Speaker 3:I think I can talk about them together Okay thank you oh let's do it, you know.
Speaker 3:I mean let's start with Covenant. I mean the book is on. You know the subtitle is Leonard Cohen and the Landscape of Biblical Imagination, and that notion of a landscape is actually Leonard's idea. This is how he describes the overall narrative, worldview, mythos within which his, his art happens. And he says it's all within the landscape of the Bible. And if, if we look at the biblical story as a whole, the whole thing is about covenant, the whole thing is is about a God in relationship. And and this, this is at the heart of Cohen's understanding.
Speaker 3:Raised as a conservative Jew with a very famous Talmud scholar, rabbi for a grandfather, he's deeply, deeply saturated in the story of Israel. And the story of Israel is I will be your God and you will be my people. It's a story of covenant. And the covenant goes right back, I mean, the first time we meet. The word covenant is actually in the Noah story and there the covenant that God makes is with an unfaithful partner, in fact a violent partner. You know, this is in genesis six. Oh, my goodness, I talked about three hours. Here in genesis we meet, I think, the most devastatingly sad verse in the Holy One's own heart that there's nothing but evil in the heart of humans. And the Holy One says I'm sorry, I made them. I'm sorry I made them. That the creator, who created in such joy and delight, right, it is good, it is good. It is good, it is good, it's delightful. That creator comes to a point six chapters into the damn story, six chapters in, and says that was a bad idea, and yet decides to make covenant, decides to marry humanity, but not just humanity.
Speaker 3:The covenant in Genesis 9 is not just with Noah and his descendants, but with the earth and every living creature, right? So covenant permeates absolutely everything. And so this notion of relationality that's at the heart of Suzanne, suzanne is, and you want to travel with her. You want to travel blind and you know that you can trust her, for she's touched your perfect body with her mind. The same thing with Jesus. This deep longing for relationality is because relationality goes to the very core of all things. I mean Christians believe that, even about God, god is not absolute, because an absolute has no relationships. God is a community of relationality, and out of that community of relationality that we understand as the Trinity comes forth a creation of interrelationality. So God enters into covenant with us, and a covenant is always dynamic, it's never static, it's always growing.
Speaker 3:My goodness, how do your relationship with your beloved, your husband, change and grow? While little Neil was in intensive care, you had to change in who you were to each other, to be faithful to the new reality that you were facing. Right, and I'll bet you, vanessa, that there are moments in your life together with your husband, where there are some pretty big, serious fights. Right, you argue with each other and that's part of the relationship, and so is it any surprise that Moses argues with God. Is it any surprise that Leonard argues with God? That's at the heart of Jewish spiritual identity is to argue with God, and that creates an incredible dynamism, I think, in our spirituality. That's why complaints and lament are integral. I mean, I can't remember what percentage of the Psalms are laments, but it's a large percent. Arguing with God is an act of faithfulness, right, and you know, a marriage is over when you don't bother arguing anymore.
Speaker 1:You're right.
Speaker 3:Because you just don't care, it's been checked out, then you're done. So we've got covenant, we've got argument and we've got judgment, prophetic judgment, when the relationship has been so misdirected that it is bearing bad fruit of injustice and unrighteousness rather than the good fruit of justice and righteousness. So that's why the prophets and Isaiah was huge for Leonard, absolutely huge. Isaiah breathes throughout Leonard's work. Huge Isaiah breathes throughout Leonard's work. And Isaiah and Jeremiah and the other prophets, they come with this judgment, this prophetic voice, judgment upon Israel. And Cohen picks up, before he picks up his priestly mantle as a Kohen, as a priest, he picks up the prophetic mantle. That's where he really begins. And so in songs like the Future and Everybody Knows, and First we Take Manhattan, and so many others, there's this prophetic voice. And in the Future, I'm the Little. I've seen the nations rise and fall, I've heard their stories, heard them all. But love's the only engine of survival and it's their point. I got my quote wrong. He says I'm the little jew who wrote the bible, identifies himself with, with that prophetic tradition, and and then you know, finally, if I can try and pull all these things together, yeah, eros, you know. Uh, I think you quoted Chesterton, the man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.
Speaker 3:I go to Nick Cave's 1999 lecture on the love song, in which Cave argues that all love songs are fundamentally about the longing for God you know. And so when we find this intermingling of sexuality and spirituality in Colin, there should be nothing alarming or shocking about that. Eros is really at the heart of what it it means to be human. So we are homo eroticus, we are the, the, the, the ones who long for, for this kind of intimacy. No wonder the hebrew word for knowledge is yada, which means you know. The same has the same meaning as sexual intimacy. Adam knew Eve, and she conceived and bore a child, yada. And so knowledge, even for a biblical worldview, has to do with that kind of deep, deep intimacy, and so I think it all hangs together in.
Speaker 1:Colin. Wow, that was just masterful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well done. Way to take all the menu items instead.
Speaker 1:Of just one. I like that. I love it. Do you have any reflections off of what he said?
Speaker 2:Well, it's kind of connected, but I was thinking I was just wondering what it's like, I think, in my own life, like I'm a pastor and I love that I get paid to study the Bible and to teach the Bible and to preach the Bible, and all that I was wondering about for you, brian. Like you're an academic, you've written books. I've quoted you in a couple of sermons we just recently did Colossians, so I found some good stuff that you put together a few months ago for our series. I was wondering about this, like there's something about doing theology that is wonderful and beautiful, but then there's something else about art that taps into something else for us, and just listening to you talk about how Cohen kind of taps into this biblical landscape and the theology, but there's something wonderful about putting that to poetry and music that resonates at a I don't know at a different level and I was just curious kind of what that relationship's been like for you as a theologian, as an academic, and kind of what that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, how that interplays. Yeah, I mean homo eroticus is also homo liturgicus. Right that the creature driven by Eros is the worshiping creature.
Speaker 2:And worship comes to expression in many ways.
Speaker 3:But that's where we get the word liturgy. And you know I did my gig as an academic philosophical theologian. I did my master's degree on the German theologian Wolfhard Pannenberg, and you know I was the Canadian expert on Pannenberg for a while. But increasingly that kind of theoretical engagement in theology left me more and more cold. What I was really longing for was the kind of deep relationality that we were just talking about and the kind of dynamism that we were talking about in the very being of God, that we're talking about in the very being of God. And so systematic theology just came to me to be a category mistake. It's just a bad idea. We just shouldn't do it.
Speaker 3:Systematizing theology Theology is an art form, not a theoretical endeavor. And so I remember talking to a bunch of PhD students at the Charles School of Theology once, and it was just after orientation. We're sitting around having a glass of wine and they're all talking about the musicians that they love and the bands that they're listening to. At a certain point I stopped. I said you guys are all animated by this art form, yet none of you bring any of that into your work as PhD students. And the response was can you do that which?
Speaker 1:I said actually no you can't, you can't.
Speaker 3:You can in my class and we might be able to sneak you in doing a PhD, but you're not going to get much support except from me.
Speaker 3:So I've been drawn specifically to music as an art form, and I'm not a musician, but I've been drawn to this, you know, from from the, a very early age. And so what, what, what captures my imagination? But but a good song, you know. You hear a song like Joni Mitchell's case of you, and you think can there be a better song than that Is there? Is there a more perfectly written song than what Joni did there? Or you listen to Leonard and you've got a song called there Ain't no Cure for Love, which mixes up sexuality and spirituality all the way through.
Speaker 3:And in the last verse he sings I walked into an empty church. I had no place else to go, when the sweetest voice I ever heard whispered to my soul I don't need to be forgiven for loving you too much. It's written in the scriptures, it's written there in blood. I've even heard the angels declare it from above there ain't no cure. There ain't no cure. There ain't no cure for love. And I'm thinking other than Christ has died, christ has risen, christ will come again. I don't know a more succinctly beautiful expression of the gospel than that verse. The way in which he word crafts that, and while he's been talking about he can find no cure for love in his own life. Now he tells us the Holy One can't find a cure for love either. That's why, oh, boom Now. That just opens up, uh, the imagination.
Speaker 3:And that's really what I'm looking for you know I I wrote a piece, uh, in july for the christian courier, called a glad footnote, on walter bruggemann who just recently died, and the idea was, if everything I've written since 1990 is but a footnote to Walter Brueggemann, then I'm okay with that. Walter has had that kind of impact on my life and what's at the heart of Brueggemann? But imagination and the importance of imagination. So being drawn to the arts, and in my case to the musical arts and to the art of songwriting, is just kind of a natural thing.
Speaker 1:Wow, I'm still like feeling from you quoting that song, that song. It reminded me that at the end of the song Chelsea Hotel, he says I don't even think of you that often. About the woman he had a night there with. But it's so funny because he thinks about it constantly. He wrote a song about it, yeah, but it feels like the.
Speaker 1:The joke is about god too, you know just like, like that, like you said that, um intimate relationship with this push and pull. I don't even think about you that much at the end of the whole song.
Speaker 3:And another line in Chelsea Hotel is we may be ugly, but we've got the music. Let's acknowledge where the real power is we may be ugly, but we've got the music and that, of course, the song was while Janis Joplin yeah, right, I was forgetting her name, but yes, that's just a little side note.
Speaker 1:I love that Leonard wasn't like this amazing musician or had this amazing voice. You know, like when you watch all the documentaries on him and all these people do covers of him and some really odd people, but um, it's just so powerful his words. So it makes sense to me that he's a liturgist or a cantor. The way that you talk about him because there's this, because he's not, uh, jeff buckley, let's say so it's like he made it accessible for us all to enter in and bring our voices too. I love that part of him.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's. I mean. Who's covered more than Leonard Cohen? What song has been covered more than Hallelujah? Yeah, and I'll tell you, I still like one particular version of Leonard's better than any of the covers you said that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's on a live album from the 80s in which he doesn't use the typical first two verses. He uses alternative verses. I never liked the first two verses, to tell you the truth, and I find his own performance. Having said that, when it comes to If it Be your Will, I don't think anybody tops the Web Sisters and how they performed that with Leonard on those last tours of those last amazing three or four years touring.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll watch that. I love Anthony's version, so I'll see if it tops it.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, and and Anthony, we can just geek out on this stuff. I mean, anthony's version is so incredibly vulnerable and I generally don't. I mean mean I don't much like his music, but that that was a pretty astounding, uh, rendition of the fear, will I mean it caught the brokenness of the song yes, yeah, it's a little painful to watch.
Speaker 1:it hurts a little bit. Yeah, what are you?
Speaker 2:thinking about Andy. I'm thinking that we're talking to Dr Brian Walsh. He's coming to Victoria in September, september 20th, for a creative workshop in conversation with his new book Rags of Light, leonard Cohen and the Landscape of Biblical Imagination. What we've been talking about, brian, what might we expect if we show up to your workshop in September here in Victoria?
Speaker 3:So the workshop that Vista is hosting, that's right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay, because we're also doing a book launch together with an album launch for Rachel Coleman's incredible album that evening, coleman's incredible album that evening. Yeah, with Vista. You know I do a thing called Liturgy, contemporary Music and Liberating the Imagination, and you know, what I want to do is share out of my experience of crafting liturgy around contemporary musicians. So over the years, you years, I was an academic, but really the last 25 years of my life I was a campus minister at the University of Toronto, and one of the things I did there was I founded a church community called Wine Before Breakfast, and we would meet at 7.22 in the morning on Tuesday mornings not 7.30, but 7.22, for a worship with Eucharist, opening, scriptures, prayers, and then we'd have breakfast afterwards, and really a remarkable community emerged out of that, and one of the things that we would do as a band is we would put on a rock Eucharist in cooperation with the Church of the Redeemer in Toronto. So you choose an artist and then the lectionary would tell you what the text is, and so you would choose the artist and then you'd spend time, me and my musicians, studying the scriptures and studying the text for that Sunday, and then go to the artists and look for the songs that resonate. We were looking for a liturgy that shaped the imagination. We weren't looking for cheap relevance. I mean, if we're looking for cheap relevance, you know we would have been doing more contemporary artists than the ones we're doing. So we did, you know, dylan and Bruce Colburn, a couple of times, van Morrison, anya DeFranco, joni Mitchell, tracy Chapman, u2, leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, mavis Staples and others. And so what we would do is knowing what the scripture is for the evening. We would then listen to the catalog and we'd bounce ideas off of each other. And we'd bounce ideas off of each other. And so then we would shape liturgy in such a way that the whole service is using the music of whatever particular artist it is.
Speaker 3:And so when we did Cohen once, the offertory, while this table was being set, was Ain't no Cure for Love, and when we were doing the eucharistic prayer, the, the, uh, the band just kept on playing and the priest would start reciting the eucharistic prayer. And when we got to the response that in the eucharistic prayer would be glory to you forever and ever, instead of that response, the response was there. The response was there ain't no cure. There ain't no cure. There ain't no cure for love. Let the song just continue to bring us through the Eucharistic liturgy.
Speaker 3:And what we experienced in those services was almost full churches and we wouldn't know where folks came from. The people from the church wouldn't know, I wouldn't know from the Wine for Breakfast community. I mean, we could figure out. You know, we have 120 people here and I think I can identify who maybe 60 to 70 of them are. Where did the rest come from?
Speaker 3:And what we discovered in these liturgical experiences was hunger, deep, deep hunger. Uh, and. And I, I remember the first time we did cohen and, and the band is up there doing, uh, dance me to the end of love. And I can feel something. This band is real, they are really doing something right now. And I don't know what's going on. And then I turn around and I, I see it in, in, in the eyes of all the people around me hunger, yeah. And the band just picked up the hunger in the room and began to minister to the hunger. So what I, what I'm hoping to do, is play with some of those liturgies and just to share. Here's what we did. I'm not offering it as so you go and do likewise. I'm offering it as a testimony to how the arts function in ministry and in liturgy. That's the kind of thing I wanted to do Sounds so fun.
Speaker 1:I'm not a pastor and I don't work for a church, but I still want to go and it's still good for normal people, lay people.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely. I mean yeah, and these services, you know there'd be all kinds of people. Why are they there? They saw the name on the billboard Bruce Springsteen. They're there because they're into the boss and or they see we're doing Leonard Cohen. They just want to be there. I remember once we did Coburn, and we did Coburn that particular weekend because Bruce was playing just down the street two nights before and I went to the show and I know Bruce because I've written a book on Bruce and he wasn't really on for that show and I got in touch with my musicians. I said I'll tell you one thing we're going to be better than Bruce. We're actually going to do Bruce better than Bruce did Bruce this particular night. I just knew we would and we did.
Speaker 1:Do you know who? I'd be excited if I saw on your marquee you were doing a walk night with yeah. Lorne Hill. Oh, yeah, wouldn't that be amazing, that a G was Lorne Hill.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and it'd be easy enough to do. The material's all there, but what we're looking for is resonance with the scriptures, you know. So I mean a funny thing we did with Van Morrison the gradual hymn. So the hymn before the gospel is read was why must I always explain? Because, like you're reading the gospel, you're reading about Jesus and the poor guy had to explain himself all the time and Van Morrison kind of knew the problem.
Speaker 1:That's great. So this workshop is open to anybody, whether you're a professional liturgist or just someone who loves music, poetry, scripture, prayer, creativity, imagination.
Speaker 3:If you don't love any of those, you're going to have fun. If you don't love any of those, you're going to have fun. If you don't love any of those, you'll find something better to do If you're hungry.
Speaker 3:If you're hungry, you know there it is. And you know, when I was a pastor wine for breakfast, you know I mean I kind of specialized in, you know, young people on their way out, on the way out of the story, out of the church, and some folks on their way in, and I'd have students come up to me and say you know, you guys have communion, like every Tuesday morning. Yeah, I'm not sure, I believe. Okay, can I have communion? And and my answer would be I don't know, are you hungry? I mean, are you here at 7, 22 in the morning with with some hunger and you think maybe a piece of bread and a sip of wine might touch that hunger? And always the answer was yeah, I'm hungry'm hungry, that's what you better eat. You better come to the table, you know. And so the invitation is wide open.
Speaker 3:And that's part of the reason why I wrote the book and I kind of realized it after I'd written it kind of realized it after I'd written it that I wanted to bear witness to, to the power of, of of Leonard's art, and wanted to bear witness to how his art resonates so deeply with scripture. And it dawned on me afterwards that there are so many folks who are drawn to Leonard and they're drawn to Leonard because of the spirituality.
Speaker 3:And I hope that my little book and it is a little- book might get into the hands of Cohen fans who are drawn to Cohen for the spirituality, so that they can then perhaps start to walk in the landscape that was his landscape of biblical faith. And who knows what might happen if they take a walk in that landscape.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, Bruce. That was such a beautiful last sentence.
Speaker 3:Okay, you're most welcome. See you guys in September.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm looking forward to meeting you, yeah.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Brian, for spending the time with us. This is great.
Speaker 3:So, yeah.
Speaker 1:Any last words. We're going to talk about you now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're going to talk about you.
Speaker 3:Well, when you sent me an email, you asked my most cherished lyric and I pulled that to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's empty church. And then the question was which lyric do you think is most important for us today, for the church? I think the most important word from Leonard Cohen to the church is this you want it darker we killed the flame. You want it darker we killed the flame. And there is, I think, a profound word to the church have we killed the flame, the flame of the spirit, the flame of the burning bush, the flame of Torah? And I believe deeply and tragically that much of the church in North America today, especially the church that has bowed the knee to Trumpism, has killed the flame, and that is, I think, one of the largest and most devastating crises of our time for the church there. Let's end on a real note. That's a spooky note.
Speaker 3:But it's powerful.
Speaker 1:Thank you for saying that.
Speaker 3:Okay, thanks, brian, we appreciate's powerful.
Speaker 2:Thank you for saying that. Okay, thanks, brian. We appreciate the time. Thank you so much and we'll see you in.
Speaker 3:September Okay.
Speaker 2:Bye-bye.
Speaker 1:Bye, whoa.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we did it with Brian Walsh Did.
Speaker 1:I call him Bruce.
Speaker 2:Did you at the end? Oh, you might have At the end, because we're talking about Bruce Goldberg, yeah, I think I might have called him. Bruce. Sorry Brian. Sorry Brian, take it as a compliment. It's Brian, not Bruce.
Speaker 1:Okay, what do we say?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, you didn't tell me how big a Leonard Cohen fan you were this whole time, so what's that about?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess I didn't consciously try to secretly impress you.
Speaker 2:You weren't trying to deceive me, it just came out that way, gotcha Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess it never came up, you just named your firstborn son after him. No big deal, my own name.
Speaker 2:Okay, well then, I'm glad you were here for the conversation.
Speaker 1:Me too, it would not have been as good an interview. Thank you, I do. I feel a lot of things, so I need to interview now.
Speaker 2:Then, what, yeah, what was that like for you? Cause this, obviously Leonard Cohen, you're coming in as a big Leonard Cohen person fan, et cetera, so, engaging the book, you're you're on a whole nother level than I was able to engage the book and I really enjoyed the book. Um, and then, and I would be guessing, uh, engaging this interview with with, uh, Dr Brian Walsh. Um, what was that like for you?
Speaker 1:And it was really powerful for me. Um, yeah, it feels very timely in my life, like, yeah, leonard Cohen kind of was a soundtrack for a first year of marriage because we listened to it so much, and then the soundtrack 12 years ago, what, what so first year of marriage.
Speaker 2:Did steven bring this in? Did you bring this in? Was it both of you? Yeah, it's steven.
Speaker 1:okay, he loved him and so we watched this documentary with all his songs being covered and all of these um interviews with him. So we just watched it over and over and over again. So it just captured our imagination and, yeah, it became kind of a soundtrack to our lives. And then for it to reemerge 12 years ago when Leo was in the NICU, for it to be what was playing in our heads, and then to name him that. And then now in my life, and then to name him that, and then now in my life, you know, leo just had his 12-year birthday. It's the day I came home from the hospital from my accident. Oh yeah, he just had his 12th birthday. It was the same day I came home from the hospital from my accident. So, reading this book over these last couple of weeks, cohen comes back around for you.
Speaker 2:Yes, first year of marriage.
Speaker 1:Yes, birth, and then and then just recently yes, so I wanted to read a quote from brian's book that just was like for me at this season in my life when I'm in recovery yeah and having like kind of an emergency.
Speaker 1:I was like this is it okay? He says. Isn't that what cohen has done throughout his whole career? Bringing the emergency of our souls, the emergencies of our culture, the emergency of broken covenant to eloquent, elusive and devastating articulation. And in that articulation, in that naming of our brokenness, the poet-priest lays our complaint before the throne of the Holy One and identifies human's complicity in the crisis. That's like Brian saying we killed the flame, identifies our complicity and, most amazingly, amazingly he retains a stance of surrender, devotion and service to the covenant god.
Speaker 1:I just thought that was the summary of the book because of where I'm at in life like I had an emergency I was in the eo and and leonard cohen, through his accusations, complaints, struggles, defeats brings the emergency of our souls into articulation, while naming our complicity in the problem and while remaining surrendered and devoted. If it be your, will you know yeah if I speak no more like you, tell me what to do, show me the place where you want your sleep to go. That's what I love about Leonard Cohen.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Why did you say wow, Just so, not expecting to have the conversation with you and with Brian that we had today? I mean just for people listening, like I was trying to convince him and say you don't feel like you need to get your rest. You don't have to do this. I got this one, I can find another. Be like. No, I want to do this, Like okay, and now I don't know why?
Speaker 1:No, you know why. So, like someone sent me a verse from Job, they said they were praying for me. They said you know, may God heal your skin and flesh and knit together your bones and sinews, and I was like what a beautiful prayer. So I looked it up from Job 10. That is not a pretty chapter, so I memorized that chapter. It says I loathe my very life. Therefore, I give free reign to my complaint and speak out in the bitterness of my soul.
Speaker 2:You said because you brought up in one of the menu of options with Brian was like the why does it feel so good to name the darkness?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Right, I remember Good Friday, oh no, I think it was Ash Wednesday. Sermon the Plain is going down. Yes, there's, something that resonated for that with me, and I think some other people too, is like we look at our cultural moment, we look at the world we're in. It just feels like darkness. It feels like this isn't working. It's naming that thing. There's something potent and powerful about it, and because, if for no other reason, then it's true.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And just naming something that's true, even if it's disturbing, difficult. And I think another theme that's come up for me in our conversation is just the power and potency of creatively power and potency of creatively, imaginatively communicating both the darkness but also the light like what's true about who god is. Yeah and um, yeah, anyway, it's just sort of it's going beyond my articulation right now, but it's just sort of like stirring my imagination, maybe my wondering about oh what, how can we, how do we do this? Well, how do we do this more creatively?
Speaker 1:Yes, that's why I moved to. There's something about the articulation of the truth. The plane is going down, the game is fixed. You know, like my jaw is broken, I have missing teeth. There's something so powerful about naming that and then like kind of seeing what comes after that. But normally when I'm doing well, I just don't want to do that stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't want to pay attention to the dark.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a hymn, a line from a hymn that came to me.
Speaker 1:I don't want to pay attention to the dark. Yeah, yeah, a hymn. A line from a hymn that came to me reading the book is from Come Ye Sinners. It's if you tarry till you're better, you will never come at all. I don't know why, but after reading that book that was like a takeaway for me, because I think maybe leonard cohen didn't only write songs when he was good, hopeful, happy, handsome, successful. He wrote so many more songs when he wasn't better and yet he came to the table and he feasted on life with god and he died. In the documentaries you'll see he like depression left him and he died in a place of real peace and like as a priest. He died like in a priestly place with so much peace about his life and so that kind of arc of his life like so much struggle but then so much light at the end.
Speaker 1:So much surrender and trust. That gives me hope too, because I'm in the middle of the crisis right now yeah, that's good so brian was beautiful, like I you know said all these things and he's like well, let me just do them all at once and he did.
Speaker 2:I'm glad he did that.
Speaker 1:Anything else. I'm just going to look through my notes. The emergency one was big. Yeah, we didn't talk about repentance, but I thought that was pretty powerful too. Leonard Cohen has a song like when they said repentance I wondered what they mean, and he uses it like 12 times in one of these songs and Brian says it's because people are like what the hell is repentance? We just are not used to judging our lives against any moral framework or universe, so it's like repent where, To, to whom, for what?
Speaker 1:yeah but he has this like call to repentance, leonard cohen, and so does brian, and so that's one thing I wanted to know like, what does that look like like to to actively live a life of repentance now, because it's not very cool, you know yeah there's not something we talk about a ton In church. It comes up, but still.
Speaker 2:I mean the word itself. Where else is it used? Nowhere yeah and that's sort of a sign that the concept is kind of dying or dead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Sin too.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They kind of go together, which is the articulation of the emergency that the plane is going down.
Speaker 2:There's something there yeah, like the plane is going down, but the all the warning systems are off yes they're not being heard yes, they're just invisible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that that tracked. I was like, yeah, you're describing something that I feel what repent, what? Yeah and yet something in me is like I am hungry.
Speaker 2:I think I'm dying this has been a very fascinating and, uh, somewhat dark, which I'm fine with, by the way, I'm not anti-dark.
Speaker 1:No, you're not.
Speaker 2:As you know, Okay, anything else, we need to say yeah, I'm going to say one more time just to kind of bring this all together. Just a reminder for folks that if I mean this has got a lot of stuff going on. We're recording in kind of mid to late August, so hopefully this will be out by the end of August and we've got some big stuff coming up for the fall. We've got three courses at Vista that are rolling out in the first fall term and we've got a second three courses in the second half of the fall term. You can find out those at VistaCanadaorg. We have all that stuff up and as well as registration, I think, for Brian's workshop on September 20th. He has two. Did you hear that?
Speaker 1:So there's an evening one as well. Yeah, like a kind of a book launch, album release, so you can come at 10 am or you can come at 7 pm, on both.
Speaker 2:Okay, do you know where the information is for the evening things? I don't think it's on the. It's not a Vista thing, right? Right, it's Abbey Church, united Commons, so we'll link it in our podcast and then the rest of the stuff you can find on Vista, VistaCanadaorg, and so we've got a bunch of classes coming out rolling out this fall and then in the new year as well. So stay tuned for all that stuff.
Speaker 1:Thanks, andy. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:Vanessa, I'm glad you were stubborn about wanting to be here you too, Okay, that's it for us for now, and we'll probably be back in September with another episode of something. Thanks bye everybody for now, and we'll probably be back in September with another episode of something.
Speaker 3:Thanks.
