We were chatting about Bruce Cockburn's induction into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame with my brother, Eric. We were trying to recall how many times we'd seen Cockburn in concert between us. We conjured up Grant Hall in Kingston, Massey Hall in Toronto a couple of times, the University of Guelph campus, Northern Lights Folk Festival in Sudbury, and more.
Honestly, none of us are huge fans anymore, but some of his songs are classics of the Canadian folk scene and his concerts were always great. When asked about his favourite songs Cockburn identified All the Diamonds in the World :
"My first overtly Christian song. It was when I started calling myself a Christian. I'd become that, in everything but the commitment. And having made the commitment, it was necessary to use the term. This song commemorates that commitment. Because of the lyrical content, the musical style was self-consciously hymn-like. The chord changes were quite churchy, which was quite different for me then, and remains so."
That song was from 1974 and Cockburn stepped away from his Christian identity for a long time. On his newly released album, or whatever we're calling it these days, he's included a song called 40 Years in the Wilderness. I do like this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjOZGihvAVk
"This song is Get Up Jonah, part two, in a way. You're still being invited to follow the road where it leads, but you're older. Maybe not wiser, but less angsty. After I wrote my memoir [2014's Rumours of Glory], I hadn't written a song in four years. I started going to church again, after not having gone for decades. There was a sermon about Jesus being baptized, which is when he really figures out who he is. He's shocked, and he runs out into the desert to figure it out. That struck me with considerable force. I felt like I'd been struggling with that issue for 40 years. I'd started to identify myself as a Christian in the 1970s, and here I was, 40 years later, back in church. And I'm living in San Francisco now, with my wife and child. I never would have imagined myself living on the West Coast. But it was an answer. I went with it. I went west in another one of those cosmic moments. This song is about accepting those invitations."
This story of Jesus' wilderness sojourn is read from one of the gospels on the first Sunday of Lent each year. I'm a bit curious to know if that was when he heard it, but in the end I'm just glad he accepted the invitation.
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