Sharing the Hallelujah

“Love is not a victory march. It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.”

- Leonard Cohen

For about a month I had been wanting to smoke a cigarette, badly. Talk about an odd craving. I wrote in my journal “I can’t decide if I need to see a counselor or smoke a cigarette.” When I shared the fact with a girlfriend she asked, “Did you used to smoke?”

“Nah. I mean not routinely. I smoked clove cigarettes a handful of times with friends. You know, similar to how guys smoke cigars on occasion to celebrate a memorable moment. But that’s it.”

“So why do you think you’re wanting to smoke?”

“I have no idea, but I can’t get it out of my mind. I’m wondering if I should just get it over with, so I can stop thinking about it.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. She was being humorous I think, but it reminded me of the eyebrow I used to raise at a college friend who did start smoking routinely our Sophomore year. The eyebrow of concern. The eyebrow of I’m not sure I get you. The eyebrow of muffled disapproval. I wish my eyebrows weren’t so manipulative and judgmental back then.

“Actually I think it’s Leonard Cohen’s fault.” I watched that documentary on him and wept at his lyrics, and I just felt the desire to sit with my messiness and let it waft around me. I pictured me and Leonard sitting side-by-side on a curb, taking a drag and singing our “cold and broken hallelujahs.”

“How so?” She asked.

“Well, he just writes so poignantly about humanity and our repeated falls from greatness. And he somehow captures that there is beauty in the falling because it is then you know you need the saving. Somehow a cigarette encapsulates all that meaning for me right now.” I remembered Leonard saying, “Only drowning men could see Jesus.”

“You know, I came about that close,” I said to my friend holding up my thumb and pointer-finger in a pinching motion, “to smoking when I was at the airport recently.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I had told myself that after picking up my suitcase from baggage claim, I would walk outside the door to pick-up my rental car, and if someone was sitting there smoking, I would ask them if they could spare a cigarette and a light.”

“What happened?” My friend asked, engaged in my story.

“Well, I walked outside and wouldn’t you know it, there was a man sitting about 20 feet away from me on a bench smoking a cigarette. So I just stood there, staring at him, frozen. All I could think was, I probably shouldn’t sit down with a man I don’t know and smoke a cigarette with him because he might think I’m flirting. On the other hand, isn’t this destiny?” I smiled, knowing how foolish I sounded.

“And?” My friend coaxed.

“And I paused too long.The man got a call on his cell phone, at which point he stood up, put out his cigarette and walked away. And I said to myself, ‘See, it wasn’t meant to be.’”

“Ha!” She was tickled by my foolishness.

“It would have made a good story though, huh? I keep thinking that. Maybe that’s all I’m searching for, a real good story.”

“Well, I guess I’ll support you in whatever you need to do, black lungs and all.” She smiles.

“Thanks. Maybe the feeling will pass.” Or maybe, I thought in my head, I’ll need to be like Bobby in King of the Hill. He decides he wants to smoke and so his father Hank has him smoke cigarette after cigarette after cigarette until he gets sick. Lesson learned and craving killed.

A few days later I am with my family in downtown Oklahoma City. We stop at a gas station and my husband, Tony, pumps the gas as me and my four kids sit in the car. A man approaches Tony. I see him walking from clear across the parking lot. His hair is light colored and looks a bit matted and oily. He has layers of clothes on and dirt is speckled in places on his neck and face. His skin looks leathery and the wrinkled lines that etch into it seem premature for his age. Weather-worn. Life-worn. Those lines whisper stories I can’t quite hear. But the soft whispers remind me of Cohen, and I bet this man knows something of cold and broken hallelujahs.

I hear the man speak, but his words aren’t clear to me. Tony turns to look at him and says, “What? You need cigarettes? I don’t smoke, man, sorry.”

I watch the man turn and take a couple shuffling steps away, his head down. It takes guts to ask someone for a cigarette. I know.

“Hey, wait!” Tony calls to the man, and me and my four kids jerk our heads back to look at him. The man turns, surprise shows up in the cracks of his face, and he walks hesitantly back to my husband. Tony pulls his wallet out of his back pocket and pulls out a 5 dollar bill. “Here you go. Go buy yourself a pack of smokes, man. Is 5 dollars enough?” I am melting in the car. I am melting at the gesture and the question. “Is that enough?” Because we wouldn’t know. We don’t buy cigarettes. We don’t know your lifestyle. But we want to know. We want to reach out. This is all so odd and unfamiliar and yet hopeful.

The man nods. He says thank you. His face, oh his face, it’s singing Cohen’s lyrics loud to me.

Tony finishes pumping gas.

My kids are going crazy. They fire questions like gunshots. “Who was that man? Why did Daddy just give him money for smokers? Maybe he doesn’t know smokers are bad for him? Can we tell him? When I grow up I will never give somebody money for smokers.”

I smile and let them fire their questions. I don’t have good answers. Remember, I’m broken? “Sometimes the most important thing you can do is give someone what they think they need the most,” I say to my kids, but really I’m saying it to me. I feel warm inside. I feel in love with my husband. I feel like the cigarette man is my brother.

The man walks back out of the convenient store and over to Tony. We all hold our breath to see what comes next in the script. He reaches his hand out, and says “Here’s the change. Thank you again.” And with that he disappears around the corner of the gas station.

I’m undone. Tony looks in at me through the rolled down window. Now it’s his turn to raise an eyebrow, but it’s an empathetic and baffled raise, as if to say, “You just witnessed that along with me, right?”

I did. I saw. Later, when we are discussing it further, Tony tells me, “Grace is not about giving people what we want them to want.”

I pull out my phone and with shaky hands and warm heart I text this message to my friend:

“I think my husband just gave my cigarettes to a stranger. Maybe that was the story I was needing.”

They were never my cigarettes to begin with. The hallelujah was meant to be shared.