We give what we can to sing and hold on to the joy and hold on to the grace.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
I moved to Calgary. I was a television reporter. I moved to Calgary.
And that's when I really got to sit down with Leonard. It was 1985.
And Leonard had come to Calgary to promote his book, which was an astonishing book.
It's the book of songs. If you haven't read it.
What he did was he did a reworking of the songs from a rather human, carnal point of view.
And I got into the studio and we sat down.
If you remember the 1980s, the big thing is God is dead.
And I asked Leonard, why would anybody be writing a book of religious themes
at a time when it appeared that everyone was researching their churches and their synagogues?
And I always remember what he said. As he said, you know, you're Christian and I am a Zen Buddhist Jew.
But scripture is our common reservoir.
And it takes a courageous person to speak with a language when no one wants to listen.
I call myself a practicing Catholic. And by that, like Leonard, I don't do it very well,
but I figure if I practice enough, maybe one day I'll understand what this is all about.
And I just want to leave you with one other remark.
Leonard, as we got to know, as I say, we exchanged faxes and I would send him a little note.
And when I really needed him, he would always answer to my phone calls, which I found remarkable.
And I got a text one day from him and it was addressed to my fellow saint.
My fellow saint.
And on the occasions that we met, our discussions were primarily of a religious teasing nature.
He had this very moored sense of humor, this sense of searching and doom.
And he had a definition of a saint that I think I want to leave you with.
In my religion, Saint Paul, in the early days of Christianity when he would meet people,
he would call them saints, welcome my fellow saints.
And here was Leonard calling me a fellow saint, so he obviously I think knew and drew on the reference of Saint Paul.
But Leonard's definition of a saint, it is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility.
We have all achieved a remote human possibility, none perhaps more so than Leonard,
who I think the people here tonight would be saying welcome my fellow saints. Thank you.
Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on, dance me very tenderly, and dance me very long.
We're both of us, we need our love, we're all of us above.
Dance me to the end of love, dance me to the end of love.
Dance me to the children who are asking to be born, dance me through the burdens that our kisses have outborn.
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every bread is torn.
Dance me to the end of love, dance me to the end of love.
