Her Place by the River

One of my favorite heartsongs is Suzanne by the wonderful Leonard Cohen. The opening verse has the beautiful invitation

Suzanne takes you down to her place by the river.
You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night beside her
and you know that she`s half crazy but then that`s why you want to be there
and she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China
and just when you want to tell her that you have no love to give her
She gets you on her wavelength and she lets the river answer
that you`ve always been her lover.

I don`t know the personal Suzanne who invites and takes you down by the river. I do know the woman who takes me down by the river and who feeds me on the exotic. People say that it is I who am crazy to go anywhere near her place.

Have you ever gone down to the place by the river? This is the place called Life. It flows. It flows inside me and you. Or do you claim that in your life there is no water - no well spring of joy that makes you seem half crazy. Do you claim, like so many of us, that you have no Love to give her. Or do you know. Do you know within that deep inner solitude that begins to open you up and you get tuned into a different wavelength.

This river is your Source. It isn`t separate from you. It cannot ever be separate from you. It is the river of Being and to the ego it looks absolutely crazy. Most of us are more like a pond that has little flow through it. We are tuned out of the wavelength of the flow of the ever new. That is until we meet with the half crazy woman.

This Suzanne, for this writer is a kind of Priestess. She seems half crazy because she doesn`t need or depend on you and the love you think you don`t have to give her. She can attune you to the wavelength of Love. It makes you afraid because you are not used to being down by the river of Life flowing as Love in form. This is the fruit she will feed you from the far of land.

You want to get away from this crazy woman. She is too much. She feeds you what is exotic from a far away land. No, you and I want to make our excuses because being with her might mean we have to recognise that it is not she who is crazy but it is us. We are crazy for a "crazy little thing called Love. "

You might spend the night beside her, you might only spend only a moment beside her, and your attunement would be certain. This down by the river is a dangerous place to go. Her place down by the river has the sound of silence and in it you can hear and see and feel in ways that allow you to hear your unique heartsong. Are you willing to go further?

This blog to be continued


Picture - Nymph by the River - Fredrick Lord Leighton