Leonard Cohen “If It Be Your Will” (in memoriam: FredHjr)
I’ve been thinking of FredHjr and what a fine man he was, and how much I and others here will miss him. It’s no exaggeration to say that many of us are grieving.
This particular piece by Leonard Cohen kept coming to mind, and so I’m posting it here—partly because I happen to love it, and partly because it seems particularly appropriate since Fred was a man of faith.
If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will
If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well
And draw us near
Oh bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will
If it be your will.
Moving. Thank you.
Years ago I attended a memorial for the young son of friends. He had died by drowning in a lake just after his high school graduation. You can imagine the grief.
One question from the Priest’s eulogy has remained with me: “How long is a life?”
Never heard of this song before tonight. It left me in tears.
I heard this song and I thought of my father. He died very close to age 60. I was 14. It was sudden, too. One morning he had a stroke. Before the next morning, he was already a corpse.
I never quite understood why he had to be taken away from me so early in my life. But I guess some things don’t have to be understood, but are just the will of God. It took me a long time to comprehend it.
I’m now 36 and thinking of my own mortality. I know that I don’t want to be missing in my daughters’ lives. (Both are under age 3.) But if I’m taken away from them earlier than they could handle it, I don’t want for them to be angry with God, as I was for a long time. I want for them to think that I will be with God for all eternity, and that I will await their arrival there.
I hope Fred’s family is thinking of the day they will get to see him again, and look forward to it. But for now, it is just horrible for them to see him go. My deepest sympathy to the Hunt family.
(They might, just might, be remotely related to my husband… His family is from New England as well – CT, with ancestors in NH, Maine and New Brunswick.)
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