Douglas Todd
Douglas Todd writes about religion, diversity and migration for Postmedia News and other publications, including Religion News Service, based in New York. He’s received more than 40 journalism awards, including The Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year Award, a National Newspaper Award and many Jack Webster Foundation awards. He is chair of the International Association of Religion Journalists (IARJ).
Bio last updated June 9th, 2022.
Articles by Douglas Todd
Leonard Loved The Light
By Douglas Todd
February 7, 2017
Most biographers focus on how Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen was rooted in Judaism and how he took up Zen Buddhist practice. Many fans also recount his fondness for psychedelics, wine and the erotic. Yet it’s especially intriguing that, despite his iconoclasm, Cohen also appealed to millions who are active or nominal Christians.
Even though Cohen strove valiantly in the 1990s to become a Zen monk at Mount Baldy Monastery in California, he concluded Zen was a spiritual discipline, not a faith In a song about spiritual surrender, Cohen seems also to be alluding in If It Be Your Will to Golgotha, the hill on which Jesus was crucified: “If it be your will / To let me sing / From this broken hill / All your praises they shall ring Cohen, who has spoken of his poems and songs as “muffled prayers,” also mined the meaning of love to make the spiritual quest again seem meaningful to millions In Show Me the Place, Cohen references the classic Christian teaching that the Christ is God’s holy “Word,” incarnate in humanity
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Leonard Loved The Light
Douglas Todd
February 3, 2017
Most biographers focus on how Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen was rooted in Judaism and how he took up Zen Buddhist practice. Many fans also recount his fondness for psychedelics, wine and the erotic. Yet it’s especially intriguing that, despite his iconoclasm, Cohen also appealed to millions who are active or nominal Christians.
Even though Cohen strove valiantly in the 1990s to become a Zen monk at Mount Baldy Monastery in California, he concluded Zen was a spiritual discipline, not a faith In a song about spiritual surrender, Cohen seems also to be alluding in If It Be Your Will to Golgotha, the hill on which Jesus was cr...