DANCE ME TO THE END OF LOVE
“Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love”
~ Leonard Cohen
Like a fresh wind from a freer place, these words, sung in their author’s unique, gruff voice backed by rich, sweet, female harmonies, began to blow through me. I hadn’t actually heard it since a late night show on a Friday night decades ago. Now, in a different era of life, claustrophobic busyness was crowding in on me with toxic claws. As my blood pressure was rising and my jaw tensing, an eternal perspective beckoned to me from this poetry set to rousing violins.
After listening to it feverishly, repeatedly, I finally searched out what the singer’s inspiration might have been. Outside the Nazi death chambers, string quartets would play classical music, before they themselves would enter the crematorium. This macabre blend of beauty and death, in the name of civilization, infused further by the marital passion in this song, is still a rising burnt offering, which is what “Holocaust” literally means.
From the death camps in North Korea to the unspeakable horror raids in Sudan, the panic is still raging. Recently in Egypt, a Coptic church was captured and used as a torture chamber by Muslim radicals. More Christians have been murdered for their faith in the 21st century than in all others since Christ’s ultimate sacrifice combined.
In our privileged life, let perspective push back self-pity and spoiled entitlement. Let us dance through whatever panic may rip through life, because we hear the sweeping violins. Let us hear the sweeping wings of our homeward Dove. Soon we will be lifted like an olive branch to the Beauty behind the veil. We will dance with Love that has no end – Love Himself.
Hebrews 6:19-20a
“This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil, where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus…”
Image by Kirah Zoellner
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Soli Deo gloria.
