OnWord

When Eileen and I attended a Thanksgiving prayer service at Our Lady of Victory Parish in Troy, NY, on the evening of Sunday, Nov. 23, I sampled food for thought that I’m still digesting. It was so abundant, I want to share it now.

The rabbi of a local temple led our extended assembly—members of congregations not only from Catholicism and Judaism, but also from area Episcopalian and Methodist churches—in praying Psalm 146. It begins and ends with the word “Hallelujah,” or “Praise the Lord,” and it thanks God for his trustworthy love.

In call-and-response fashion, Rabbi Robert Kasman intoned the psalm in Hebrew and invited us to sing along with choruses of hallelujahs. When he began the first passage, the notes which I had expected to sound esoteric instead rang true in my memory. The music for each chorus was particularly familiar.

Everyone repeated that sequence of hallelujahs with full voice, whether or not we knew its origin. The rabbi later explained to me that he had adapted the entire psalm as new words for “Hallelujah,” the magnum opus of Leonard Cohen (1934-2016). The song was released forty-one years ago.

After two decades of various “cover version” performances, the somberly hypnotic piece was ranked #259 on Rolling Stone magazine’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” As noted in Wikipedia, “Hallelujah” also reached a new generation via the 2001 film, Shrek.

Thanks to YouTube, we can see and hear Cohen’s performance in London, with the captioned lyrics being especially useful for the analysis that follows. In addition, listen to Rabbi Kasman musical ministry, recorded live at Our Lady of Victory, starting around the 4:10 mark here.

Before Sunday’s interfaith service, I had greeted the song with mixed feelings and ignorance. But I’ve learned more from that powerful prayer meeting, plus my admittedly incomplete research.

Cohen took years to compose “Hallelujah”—including about eighty alternative verses, hyperlinks to snapshots of life. From these, several verses have been standardized for performance. Apart from his personal theological and rhetorical choices, one finds his spiritual and musical diligence in every scene.

In the first verse, he refers to David’s own psalm-writing efforts. One can imagine that, composing music on a lute of his time, called a kinnor, and using the string tones he had available, the “baffled king” sought a chord that exceeded the lute’s limitations.

Metaphorically, this “secret chord” might have been a seventh chord, comments podcaster James Hargreaves. Songwriters will tell you the sound of the seventh directs our mood upward, toward some higher resolution; it’s a ”major lift” in contrast to any “minor” chord, which takes a sad song and makes it sadder.

Now 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 ya?
It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth,
The minor fall, the major lift—
The baffled king composing “Hallelujah” – Leonard Cohen

That’s my interpretation based on insights from video sages such as “the Pop Song Professor” and “Lot of Meaning,” as well as Hargreaves—and Cohen himself. The composer spoke about the significance in bits and pieces, waxing either spiritual or secular, referencing the mundane and mysterious.

He presented King David as a providentially chosen man with “issues.” This held lessons for an errant searcher like Cohen, who was troubled by our wounded world—what he called this “vale of tears.” I didn’t hear mentions of Job, but perhaps Cohen struggled similarly to understand good and bad news.

The best response was to keep praising God, or at least to display the poignancy of offering up our various exploits; the saintly and the weak, you might say, all crave a secret chord, or a “secret cord,“ to higher meaning, Hargreaves observes.

He points to the Old Testament passage telling us the bond of love between a man and woman is durable if God is the third party in the relationship: “Where one alone may be overcome, two together can resist. A three-ply cord is not easily broken.” (Ecclesiastes 4:12)

Cohen’s “Hallelujah” lyrics evoke more dissonant possibilities in the search for love. But he recognizes humanity’s hunger for that stronger cord. While Judeo-Christian thought leads Catholics and others to use “Alleluia” as a shout of unsullied glory and joy in our liturgies, Cohen’s personal approach to “Hallelujah” includes a touch of lamentation.

This important ingredient in many other psalms is described as grief, anguish, or spiritual desolation, but even those “psalms of lament” conclude with affirmations of hope in God.

That is the takeaway that nourishes my reflections on this Thanksgiving. These days, we are especially aware of the different worldviews, experiences, moods, and needs clustered around the table for a family celebration. No single snapshot of our secularized culture can inspire a Norman Rockwell portrayal of total happiness.

Of course, expressing gratitude has never been a simple matter. When President Abraham Lincoln, on Oct. 3, 1863, proclaimed a national “Day of Thanksgiving and Praise” to bring people together in the middle of the Civil War, his sermon-like text began by counting the nation’s blessings, such as “fruitful fields and healthful skies,” as well as the Union’s economic resilience.

“No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things,” Lincoln said, with a segue to lamentation. “They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.”

Lincoln added that those giving thanks should, “with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife….” Americans should “fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility….”

Gratitude was portrayed not as merely joyous emotion, but rather as a practice, a duty, a resource for wellness, and a transformative habit of the heart.

I am now more inclined to think of Thanksgiving as an Alleluia of joy and a Hallelujah of healing.

In the spirit of Psalm 146, the Hallelujah expresses a community’s trust in the God who brings justice, who “raises up those who are bowed down,” who “protects the resident alien” and “comes to the aid of the orphan and the widow.”

In the spirit of Leonard Cohen’s sung scenarios, it helps to look at all the individuals bringing what they can to this feast, whether their message is awe-filled gratitude or painful bitterness. Many come with wounds they’ve inflicted on themselves and others. The healing must go deeper, beginning with shared trust, then extending to accompaniment on a journey that stretches far beyond this Thursday

Our world has served up an era of dissonance, alienation, and uneasiness, even hints of civil unrest. Thanksgiving has never been more important as a day to join together, to take in lots of interpretations and insights about how our loved ones, and strangers, are coping.

One major duty, as always, is to glorify God for abundant blessings. We’ll remind each other of the bonds of love still widespread in the land, even though they sometimes seem like a “secret cord.”

This awareness from many perspectives, much like the diverse revelations of love shared at Troy’s interfaith prayer service, can encourage us to go forth to share the reason for our hope. Thankfully, fellowship also helps us to “find rest”—spiritual tryptophan before the turkey—so we’re ready for the task ahead.

The second, inseparable duty, which President Lincoln voiced amid actual civil war, is to marshal an extra sense of penitence, humility, dependence, and compassion which will place us in right relationship with everyone around our collective Thanksgiving tables.

We must develop abundant ways to say, “We’re all in this together,” securing the three-ply cord that makes gratitude a gift to God, to ourselves, and to others.

The ongoing communication that results, perhaps finding meaning at the crossroads of lamentation and faith with seekers like Leonard Cohen, can shed light on our respective, imperfect hallelujahs. That might give everyone a “major lift” and even get us singing songs we know in our souls.

Image from Microsoft Bing’s AI Co-Pilot.

Happy Thanksgiving to all friends and readers of “Phronesis in Pieces” and OnWord.net.

The Overton Window, a tool for mapping public opinion, has helped to describe our evolving society since the 1990s. But in the past ten years or so, American discourse has gone off on more tangents, and people’s perspectives occupy a wider vista, hard to cram inside one frame of reference.

If we want to live not claustrophobically, but comfortably in a room with a view, our modern-day blueprint for community and communication must include windows where truth receives our full attention.

Political scientists, journalists, and pollsters have adopted Joseph Overton’s dynamic model, explicitly or implicitly, to assess which policy options reside safely in a middle ground of general acceptance. They also study the timelines along which notions in some categories lose momentum and other previously minimized ideas gain traction.

Their gamesmanship, using basic buzzwords like “inflation” and ”crime,” clearly requires a reality check from the more customized outlooks of people’s grass-roots lives. Otherwise, given America’s growing diversity, the torrent of cultural change, and algorithms which enrage or distract us, those claiming to “know it all” will discover blind spots in their master Window and will misinterpret nuances which plain folks just feel in their bones.

During the George Floyd protests of 2020, Gwen Walz offered news audiences a metaphorical, yet tangible, glimpse of how individual perspectives might clash with the mass-media “Over-view.” 

The wife of Minnesota’s governor—namely Tim, who became the Democratic Party’s candidate for U.S. vice president four years later—gave an interview describing her real-time thoughts during the Minneapolis riots. Critics had said those nights of mayhem proved the governor too soft on crime.

“I could smell the burning tires, and that was a very real thing,” Gwen Walz said. “And I kept the windows open as long as I could because I felt like that was such a touchstone of what was happening.”

The cadre of opponents weaponized that quotation during the 2024 campaign. One critic, Matt Walsh, hyperbolized, “Tim Walz’s wife sat by the window enjoying the smell of poor neighborhoods burning during the Floyd riots. She did everything but pull out a fiddle.”

Hardball tactics and confirmation bias teamed up to deride Walz’s comment, which admittedly placed emotion above clarity at that moment. But this should have reminded us that countless windows are always open for souls to absorb various impressions. While analysts expect the Overton model to be nudged along gradually by large-scale exchanges of facts and persuasion, the Walz brouhaha entailed pondering the causes individuals adopt. We can assume the smells at the window struck Walz with imagery linking past racial-justice disputes to the new “summer of love,” although not everyone caught the scent.

This suggests that stewards of democracy should explore people’s inner realities and visceral reactions more imaginatively. We can connect the “public issues” at work in our politics to worldviews which human beings carry in their reason and emotions.

We saw this in 2022 when various pundits predicted a “red wave” in the nationwide mid-term elections. They cited polls to argue that, due to the Biden administration’s unpopularity, issues like “immigration” guaranteed Republican victories in state races for governors and members of the U.S. Congress. This prediction conformed to the conventional wisdom, as Politico explained, that the first mid-term cycle after one party has captured the White House usually brings triumphs to the opposing party.

But Americans also needed to take this into account: In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court had handed down the Dobbs decision, which ended the federal constitutional right to an abortion, giving authority to states. Many incensed individuals believed women had lost a fundamental freedom.

Thus, the elections were surprising. Amid concerns about discrimination, voters in critical states ranked abortion as their most important issue. Even though Republicans won races in some locales, “the red wave never arrived,” Politico reported.

Fast-forward now to Election Day 2025. Polling firms once again faced difficulties, not so much in predicting the winners in places like New Jersey, Virginia, and New York City, but in foreseeing the size of Democratic Party victory margins.

The issue of “affordability” jumped to prominence, although many voters defined it in locally specific ways—access to housing in New York and high property taxes in New Jersey, for example. Other machinations and motivations were at play, too. We discovered that reports of candidates’ character flaws drew mixed reactions, and partisan loyalty sometimes took a back seat to practical or passionate tactics which brought people to the polls.

We have emerged with affordability solidly positioned as an Overton Window buzzword, although its full meaning has yet to be crystallized.

Is it simply a more dire, intense substitute for “inflation”? Or is it evidence that one-word labels can hardly contain the complexity of experiences and influences?

President Trump, in early responses to Nov. 4, seemed to argue that lower gas and egg prices proved he had already delivered affordability. He did marshal add-on announcements, such as promising to cut the cost of weight-loss drugs, but he still derided the idea as nouveau-inflation, a winning issue for him in 2024.

Alas, the nimble buzzword can cover many travails people see in their windows. It has immediate impact, seen burdening families who must make ends meet each week—especially when federal paychecks and programs were suspended. It is also long-term, affecting millions who want to buy a house or simply to access housing, to buy and insure a car, to invest in higher education, or to save for retirement.

Many suddenly associate affordability with paying for “health care” writ large, in light of Obamacare exigencies. This concern is a storm gathering rapidly in the Overton Window, probably foretelling political tumult which pundits didn’t see coming on Election Day.

The buzzword of “crime” is likewise a catch-all now grown into a bigger constellation of problems. Officials may placate voters with reductions in homicide statistics, but plenty of frustrated folks see a more profound, comprehensive picture of law and order, drugs and homelessness, political killings, and all types of violent behavior, even extreme rhetoric. Within this broad category, large groups fear an unfair justice system, as well as “kings” threatening democracy. People choosing policy options differ on whether current conditions justify getting tougher on crime or empathetically cutting back certain forms of law enforcement.

The list of buzzwords grows longer as labels expand in their options and impact. We dare not forget legacy topics like those mentioned above, but we should also monitor newer ones like “wokeness.” In a grim metastasis, turmoil has added “anti-Semitism” and other globalized hatred to the list.

We can imagine “artificial intelligence” becoming fertile turf for our pollsters, although we’ve already passed any binary point of saying we’re for or against the technology. We’re not sure what public opinions will explode. The “phone-free schools” movement swept quickly into about fifteen states, and parents and governors might soon make AI abuses their next targets.

We recently saw a policy flip that, after a long controversy, led to widespread approval for release of the Epstein files.

Among the young, basic questions about “capitalism” are likely to spread beyond New York, given a recent survey revealing that 62 percent of adults under 30 hold a favorable view of socialism.

There’s also one topic surprisingly absent from most public opinion polling—namely, “good government.” Many window-watchers repeatedly say America is “headed in the wrong direction,” and they disapprove of both major parties. We hear bipartisan worries about autopens, presidential infirmity, lawfare, bureaucratic waste, massive debt, and unfair election practices. But these don’t merge to spark momentum toward organized ethics reform. Opinion-shapers don’t want to preach or practice moralism; they prefer to look at personalities rather than today’s disincentives for accountability and servant-leadership.

So, what shall we do about our country’s Overton Window? It’s starting to look like an abstract expressionist painting.

In the abstract, the Window is meaningful because it’s part of our national identity, or at least our goal of e pluribus unum. We want to reconstruct patterns of truth and heroism in our democratic decision-making. The patterns include a flow of coherent argumentation, pursuit of smart solutions, and respect for human dignity as promised  by the U.S. Constitution.

We know scholars will pass their model along to future generations, who will review our evolutions with pride—or will scrutinize the steps where we foolishly went wrong.

To place our frame of reference in a balanced context, we must ensure it always honors America’s bottom-up dynamics—a rare quality among nations. If China has an Overton Window, decisions about its priorities and trajectories are under top-down control.

Our mission to monitor and shape structures of interconnectedness requires constant, compassionate attention to the country’s smaller windows. We must experience more of the urgent, personal concerns in everyday life. To avoid descending into mob rule or an “anything goes” fatalism, we should learn (and teach) much more in face-to-face encounters than we do in the performative advocacy immersing us. Here are some thoughts to guide us:

• We need to incentivize our communications media to do what Pope Leo XIV recently urged for executives: Play “a crucial role in forming consciences and helping critical thinking.” Today’s firehose of news “calls for particular discernment and responsibility” among all content producers, from Washington Post reporters to podcasters. Given the absence of old-school gatekeepers, we must redouble America’s pursuit of the really real at the local and national levels. We owe our conversation partners clarity, honesty, and fairness in exchanging views and hopes, lest AI fakery and toxic info-tainment lure us into isolated bubbles.
• This will go hand-in-hand with a revitalized civil society where members of families and communities see their neighbors’ unique backgrounds contributing to mutual gain. People can’t draw closer if they see each other as threats to be controlled. This means deterring excessive self-centeredness or group identities, mostly by modeling one-for-all thinking as the best chance for successful outcomes.
• We should heed the danger signal from what is called the K-shaped economy, which pictures radically different opportunities for the rich and the poor. Class divisions and anxious influences will dis-integrate the Overton Window. Instead of glimpsing American dreams through our personal portals, we’ll be manning the battlements.
• Let’s revitalize education at all levels. Widespread ignorance of history, economic and political philosophy, and liberal arts and humanities is weakening our bonds of love and understanding. Parents and teachers must inspire vigor in young members of the human family, immunizing them from AI-induced laziness. May our amateur philosophers learn how to pursue progress—and how to define it.
• Religion, often derided as a divisive force, actually remains a powerful resource for building community based on truth, beauty, and goodness. All persons can find happiness in these transcendentals. Western civilization has drawn particular strength from a Judeo-Christian worldview of purposeful sacrifice. As British public intellectual Paul Kingsnorth put it recently, “A culture is a spiritual creation,” and it falls into chaos if its only gods are secular and materialistic. Without proselytizing, we should offer fellow citizens a peaceable vision of excellence turbo-charged with divine providence. That will make the Window, and its component parts, appealing to gaze through. Encouraging curiosity, wonder, and wisdom will enable us to bond by saying, “I bet you have spectacular views.”

Critics have argued that our 30-year-old model is irrelevant to how our country really works. A commentary in The Hillon Nov. 12 was headlined, “Instead of guiding us, the Overton Window now mirrors our divisions.”

Nevertheless, mapping shifts in opinion over time can capture many imaginations. It reflects our instinct that practical discernment and principled debate contribute to the American adventure. The Hill simply reaffirms that the adventure is more challenging these  days because people need to listen better.

Overton himself called his concept a “window of political possibility.” We can be forgiven for wanting to preserve his holistic approach which integrates stability and movement, the past and the future, middle ground and peripheries, and self-interest and our culture writ large. The buzzwords we’ll compile oversimplify the categories, but they invite us into rewarding explorations.

As a matter of morality, we create possibility neither by canceling “extreme” or “stupid” opinions we perceive, nor by cheering every notion that anybody voices. We’re jointly responsible to make prudential judgments which act as filtration—not to sift out people, but to sift through opinions vying for the Window’s “moveable middle,” as cited in The Hill.

Today’s times of confusion and urgency call for a sane center where attractive prospects get anchored to public acceptance, still allowing us to advance toward new horizons. With help from good leaders, we’ll navigate cautiously using three rules—heeding  lessons we’ve learned from moments of consensus; forming ourselves into hopeful, magnanimous visionaries; and tapping into the insights of fellow Americans with much on their minds.

This big-picture blueprint promises a comfortable home on common ground. It’s best illuminated with windows of opportunity.

Image from Microsoft Bing’s AI Co-Pilot.