If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn,
they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.
Who, on reading or listening to those words from Leonard Cohen’s Sisters of Mercy, doesn’t long to be cradled in the comforting arms of the Sisters of Mercy? And, then, when you listen more, you know he’s speaking directly to you:
Yes, you who must leave everything that you cannot control
It begins with your family, but soon it comes around to your soul.
Well, I’ve been where you’re hanging, I think I can see how you’re pinned.
When you’re not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you’ve sinned.
He wrote that song for you, for all of you who’ve been travelling so long.