The holy or the broken Hallelujah

This post comes from a thought that rattled around in my head for a week until it all came together in a powerful message, one step at a time. Last week we went to Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I loved it. Could've spent days there. The last thing I looked at was a Picasso. The Rape of the Sabine Woman.
I thought it was ugly. Disjointed. Never got the whole Picasso thing anyway, and not much of an art lover. I like pretty. Don't usually dig into meanings in art work. I read the story under the picture and looked at it again. And something moved me. The sadness. The disjointed. The ugliness, because it was supposed to be ugly. The unfinished feel, even though the artist was done and the picture had been framed and hung in a museum.
Saturday night Steve and I were talking and I told him I had asked one of my friends to write a guest post and she made a funny comment about it. He said that she is a great writer, which she definitely is and we were trying to remember a specific thing she wrote at church a while back (which I will post tomorrow). Finally we remembered, it coincided with a sermon from Psalms and this song.
Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen
I've heard there was a secret chord, That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you? It goes like this The fourth, the fifth, The minor fall, the major lift The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Your faith was strong but you needed proof, You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you, She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair, And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
Baby I have been here before, I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you. I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march, It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
There was a time you let me know, What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you? And remember when I moved in with you
The holy dove was moving too, And every breath we drew was Hallelujah
Maybe there’s a God above, But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you, It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not somebody who has seen the light, It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah
You say I took the name in vain, I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you? There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard, The holy or the broken Hallelujah
I did my best, it wasn't much, I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you, And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song, With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah is defined by Webster as “an exclamation of praise to God”.

I love this song. Have for years. That weekend at church, they asked people to write poems about a "broken hallelujah" and what that meant to them. I didn't get it...then. The broken hallelujah. But I realized Saturday night that I do now. And I thought about the Picasso. How ugly and disjointed it was. How sordid it was. And yet I wanted to stand and stare at it, because I got it. I’m not one that thinks I’m a prize. Most of you know that. Not that I don’t know who I am in Christ; that I get. I’m talking on earth. I have wonderful friends, my family loves me, and really, in spite of this, I don’t struggle with self esteem too much. I’m just an average woman living an average life trying to take care of my exceptional family. I love my husband and my kids and my grandkids more than I can say and they come first. Nothing I wouldn’t give up for them. Nothing I wouldn’t do for them. No expectations. They are what I live for. And I’m going all stereotypical here, but in my experience men (real men) are not like this because it’s a woman trait. And I don’t want a girlie man. I want a tough guy. And teenagers are very self absorbed. I feel undervalued by my family most times. But because I know how valuable I am to God, I try to fill up with him and generally that gets me by. I would love more, but I’m not needy, selfish or self absorbed, so I just “get over it” (my favorite phrase Jake uses all the time, he gives you roughly 3 minutes to whine and feel sorry for yourself and then it’s time to move on).
For the final piece of my puzzle, my friend Jenn posted a comment on my Sunday post “He walked out of the tomb” about being broken. You can back up and read it there.
When I wrapped my thoughts around this song, this picture, this comment and the poem you get to wait till tomorrow for (just a teaser to keep you coming back) I realized that my canvas is ugly. It’s disjointed. People may be staring in horror at my life right now. Here’s the thing, my canvas isn’t finished. I’m not hanging on a wall in a museum for you to look at. I’m a work in progress. And the one holding the brush is so much more than Picasso. I’m not trying to color it in or make it appear more beautiful than it is. I’m not throwing a sheet over it to hide it. There are blank spaces on the canvas that are being filled in. Paint can still be put over some of the ugly parts to make them beautiful. And someday it will be finished and framed. Right now I only have a broken hallelujah…
There's a blaze of light in every word it doesn't matter which you heard, the holy or the broken Hallelujah