Playing the Indian Card

Saturday, January 13, 2018

Leonard Cohen on Miracles



"I’ve witnessed many miracles, some very conventional. I was a counselor at a camp in the Laurentians in the early 50s. In the town of St. Margaret, Quebec, there was a nun by the name of Sister Anne, who began curing people, locally. Within two or three weeks there were private ambulances from as far away as Texas in the streets of St. Margaret, which had maybe 5,000 people. People were sleeping on the streets and in the public squares. There were cripples, crutches, wheelchairs. There were hundreds of people in the public square singing all day and the chief of police walking up and down with his baton singing along.There was a line waiting and Sister Anne would come down the stairs of the little parish church and people would be brought to her. She had a silver crucifix and she would cross them and tell them to stand up or walk towards her. And sometimes they would drop their crutches and walk towards her and the crowd would surge in and pick up the crutches and break them and throw them into the air. Sometimes a person would collapse. She didn’t seem to be attached to the outcome of blessings. She merely gave the blessing. Afternoon after afternoon I witnessed miracles. Some would say there are certain kinds of hysteria that this particular kind of treatment addresses well. That’s OK. Whatever the thing is, I saw these cures. She was eventually called away and encouraged to stop performing this kind of practice. Those were miracles that I saw very clearly."

-- Leonard Cohen



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