Next week we'll be attending the Bruce Cockburn concert here in Belleville. We bought our tickets months ago, crossing our fingers that COVID would be on the wane. Well...we'll go and hope that this won't be a singalong at the old folks home which turns into a super-spreader event. We're getting longer in the tooth but Bruce will be turning 77 next month -- yikes! It was close to 50 years ago that we attended first Cockburn concerts and we've each heard him in different cities across Ontario. He was a member of the audience at a coffee house featuring one of my sisters-in-law's band because Fergus Marsh, a long-time musical collaborator was in the group. He's garnered just about every musical award Canada has to offer, including 13 Junos, and had success in the United States as well.
Cockburn became a Christian all those decades ago and included spiritual themes in his music even when he moved away from the evangelical community of those days. In recent years he began attending a small congregation in San Francisco with his wife, on her prompting, and younger daughter. He enjoys the social justice commitment of the eclectic congregation and the preacher. Now he is a part of the worship team with musicians who'd never heard of him.
Last week Bruce was interviewed by TVOntario's The Agenda and he has a white beard, not unlike that of a certain blogger. He was refreshingly open about his Christian faith and I commend the interviewer, Nam Kiwanuka, for asking about it in a respectful and genuinely curious way.
In another interview he mused: "It’s a continuing journey, I don’t feel I have the corner on understanding anything. I just have a desire to have a relationship with God, a day-to-day thing … I’ve always believed a relationship with God should be central to everyone’s life, and I’ve tried to keep it the center of mine."
Please pray for all of us attending the Cockburn concerts next week. We'll wear our masks and won't take lighters because that could be dangerous.
Here is The Agenda interview link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vluO2ZJd7N0
And here are the lyrics for a song called "Orders"he wrote for a church fundraiser:
The just the merciful the cruel
The stumbling well-intentioned fool
The deft the oaf the witless pawn
The golden one life smiles upon
The squalling infant in mid-squall
The neighbors fighting down the hall
The list is long; as I recall
Our orders said to love them all
The cynic and the crooked priest
The woman wise the sullen beast
The enemy outside the gate
The friend who leaves it all to fate
The drunk who tags the bathroom stall
The proud boy rushing to his fall,
The list is long; as I recall
Our orders said to love them all
The pastor preaching shades of hate
The self-inflating head of state
The black the blue the starved for bread
The dread the red the better dead
The sweet the vile the small the tall
The one who rises to the call
The list is long but as I recall
Our orders said to love them all
The one who lets his demons win
The one we think we’re better than
A challenge great—but as I recall
Our orders said to love them all
Canadian musician Bruce Cockburn is one of my favourite "grizzled groundlings" and I write about that in today's Groundling blog groundlingearthyheavenly.blogspot.com/2022/04/bruce-
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