Love is not a victory march

​Once, when I was in the deeply depressed aftermath of a breakup (and my parent’s divorce and my dad’s suicide attempt), a friend lent me a CD: Jeff Buckley’s acclaimed 1994 album, “Grace.” If you know it, you’ll know why she now admits that, all things considered, this may have been a grave mistake.

I was sad, and so is the album. But didn’t so much make me sadder as it gave me a language to express the fullest depths of my sadness. (Psalm 13 did too.) One song stood out: Buckley’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Almost a cliché now, it said what I still hold as the truth:

And Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

It’s the darkness that resonates with me. And also the Hallelujah. Love is both. It’s always both. If it’s not really both, is it really love? Isn’t this what the cross of Jesus says too? That Love is not a victory march? Love is suffering and our salvation. Only love can include both dark and light. Only love bears the darkness until dawn breaks.

We Christians should know this better than anyone, and many do. We’re just as good as anyone (and sometimes even better) at insisting on a love that’s only the good parts. Thank God for a Jew who dabbled in Buddhism (Cohen) and a kid raised on Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd (Buckley).--PC