Letters - 04 April 2025
From soul music to ethical banking
More soul music
I really appreciated Alastair McIntosh’s Thought for the Week (‘On song’, 14 March). As an admirer of Leonard Cohen’s music and poetry for over fifty years, I am always delighted to see his messages speaking to current times, and, as Alastair emphasises, with prophetic wisdom.
In the article we were taken on a challenging journey starting with our disappointing government, which seems to believe that it’s morally justifiable to expect the poorest of the world, the diseased, the starving, the dying, the dispossessed and the oppressed, to meet the cost of more weapons of destruction to boost our war machine. We then went to the brighter times of glasnost and perestroika, but then back to doom and gloom – Cohen’s ‘blizzard of the world’ where the ‘order of the soul’ is overturned.
And then we’re directed towards the prophecy – the solution, perhaps – which is repentance, a ‘turning back’.
But then it seemed that our final destination was the place where, as Alastair described, we’re easily ‘overwhelmed by things that are outwith our locus of control’ and ‘we have to dig from where we stand’ in order to have any influence on the blizzard of our broken world. Surely, though, we can all do a little more than share a meal, smile, cry, stroke the cat and admire the crocuses.
Or are these Jesus-like metaphors for deeper and more meaningful responses? I hope so.
Kevin Skippon
Feeling the benefits
Who were the greatest sinners? Those who built the slave-ships or those who built the concentration camps? Crucifixion comes in many forms and those who participate in it know not what they do!
Bill Bingham
