Strict religious doctrine works for some, but it can also be an obstacle to developing a relationship with the Divine, or at least to doing so at your own pace, in your own space, and under your own and God’s terms. Freedom to study, freedom to pray, and freedom to weigh what comes in are essential if we are to maintain the necessary state of openness to the promptings of the Divine.
Over and over, we have seen religion used as a vehicle for charlatans and kooks to manipulate populations for political power, or ego gratification, or simply money. Don’t get me wrong: the world is full of examples of wondrous work by people and organizations that are deeply religious in nature. But these efforts are fragile because they are carried out by the mechanics of our personalities, our brain chemistry, and myriad interpersonal complications. Formalizing it all doesn’t help. And when the formal meets the ambitious or the insane, we get misguided believers destroying priceless antiquities, phalanxes of the fearful slaughtering the innocent to “stop the spread of Communism,” and Muammar Gaddafi earnestly declaring, “God sent me here to save Africa from the white man.” We get reactionary Islamists so offended, on God’s behalf, by smoking, shoplifting, having children out of wedlock, or even music that they whip the offenders or amputate hands or feet or heads. Truly crazed believers, for whom the world is an infantile projection of themselves, often seek and sometimes seize power. There never seems to be a shortage of them, and the suffering under such people has been prodigious. They are not always religious. The same could be said of the devotees of secular doctrines, e.g., Maoism or neoliberalism.
There are many good reasons to attend churches, synagogues, mosques, viharas, temples, and shrines. Praying in the company of others can be nurturing. The sense of belonging can be affirming and comforting. Engaging in ritual can feel like participation in the deep workings of the cosmos. But the power and grandeur of institutionalized religion also appeals to the insecure assumption that a relationship with God must be hierarchical. The opposite is true. A relationship with God starts with the one, with the individual, and flows outward from there.
Religion is what its practitioners want it to be. God, on the other hand, is not a social being. Personally, I prefer the God of compassion and love to the wrathful, fearsome, repressive one. There is such contrast between our many cherished concepts of the Divine that it almost seems more accurate to do as some traditions have done—the Hindu, for example—and give them all different names. It is commonplace for us to feel we know what God has in mind for us. The operative word there is “feel.” We seldom know what gifts or challenges await us. We project our limited imaginings onto the screen of our lives. We can’t help it. We do well, though, to remain gently detached from these stories we tell ourselves.
Sometimes, at moments you least expect and for reasons not necessarily explicable, a quiet prompting can well up from the murk of the unconscious. It’s clear and compelling and comes from who knows where, but there it is in front of you, undeniable. It could be called intuition or a gut feeling, but might it not be information from those depths of your being where the Divine operates? I’ve had moments in my life when I knew that a thing had to be done, but there was no explaining how I knew. I had to leave Berklee when I did. It was not a position arrived at by rational thinking. I wasn’t even halfway through my four-year program; I was studying music, which I loved; and my parents, who were paying my way, had high hopes. I just knew it was time to move on. I was newly an adult with no money, and my only choice was to head back to Ottawa, where no paying job awaited. Yet in my heart it was an easy good-bye and a welcome hello to my true path. I didn’t know it then, but today it’s clear that I was guided. I have had a few moments like this, for which I am grateful.
Artists have the power to influence and feed each other. The thrill I got from hearing the interplay between Gabor Szabo and Charles Lloyd on those mid-sixties Chico Hamilton records put a virus in my brain that is still there. Bob Dylan rattled my understanding of what a song could be not only by calling out injustice and war, but by the language and imagery that poured from him.
Artists create and reflect trends, techniques, and ideas not only for each other but for society at large. Elvis said it was okay to cut loose and dance, and shimmy your hips to tunes like “Hound Dog,” which hit the airwaves when I was eleven years old and changed my life. Pete Seeger put politics into popular music, as did Woody Guthrie before him, and Dylan took it even further before largely abandoning politics for other foci, including Christianity. “If I Had a Rocket Launcher” was not directly influenced by Dylan, but he was certainly embedded in the cultural evolution that allowed me to perform and record that song.
Performing with Pete Seeger at the annual School of the Americas protest in Fort Benning, Georgia
With the godfather of singer-songwriters, Pete Seeger . . . and a fine burgundy
When I wrote it in 1983, I was trying to share the shock I felt in grasping that had the means been at hand, I was willing to kill Guatemalan soldiers who were perpetrating atrocities against new acquaintances with whom I felt empathy. To me, those men in uniform had forfeited any claim to humanity and should be put down like rabid animals. I was wrong, of course. Far from forfeiting their humanity, they were expressing it. And so was I.
I imagine God surveying his beautiful and lively earthly creations, and I wonder what might be his ultimate reaction to his intended pride and joy, humanity, taking the gifts of life, of potential, of intelligence, and squandering them so wantonly. Would he “go Old Testament” on us, turning his back in a cold rage to busy himself with new creations elsewhere in the multiverse? Perhaps there would be a call to Kali, the Hindu goddess of two realms, ferocious and loving mother with a string of fifty human skulls for a necklace, one skull for each letter of the Sanskrit language. Aroused by the scent of all the death and pain we have caused, would she wield her sword, a destroyer of false consciousness, and finish what humanity has started?
How terribly sad it is that we have so pissed away those gifts as to threaten even our own existence. If we do ourselves in, can we say we had it coming? Certainly, though unfairly, because not everyone does. Equally unfair is our impact on the other species with which we share our little vessel.
There’s a knot in my gut
As I gaze out today
On the planes of the city
All polychrome grey
When the skin is peeled off it
What is there to say?
The beautiful creatures are going away
Like a dam on a river
My conscience is pressed
By the weight of hard feelings
Piled up in my breast
The callous and vicious things
Humans display
The beautiful creatures are going away
Why? Why?
From the stones of the fortress
To the shapes in the air
To the ache in the spirit
We label despair
We create what destroys,
Bind ourselves to betray
The beautiful creatures are going away
“BEAUTIFUL CREATURES,” 2004
To listen to a sample of this song visit b.hc.com/s/102.
I don’t buy the argument that because humans are a part of nature, and because extinction has been a part of evolution for the past four billion years, the current crisis—what scientists are calling the sixth major extinction event in world history—is also somehow natural, or that God ordains it. We can and should be putting forth policies to save ourselves and this beautiful earth, but where is the will? Where is the Manhattan Project for the planet, the Marshall Plan for humanity? It’s chilling to witness the indifference shown by so many powerful world leaders to this greatest crisis of all time.
Are we heading into a time of tribulation? Perhaps, though not necessarily the Tribulation, as some of our fundamentalist friends believe. It’s not our job to second-guess God. But tribulation in the form o
f massive and rapid changes appears to loom on our collective horizon. There is a very strong chance that in the lifetime of my first daughter, Jenny, most people in the world will experience the grim price of the Industrial Revolution in the form of shortages of food, water, shelter, clean air, and peace. In the lifetime of my second daughter, Iona, born almost two generations after Jenny, we could see the whole grand and beautiful human experiment come crashing down, like the Titanic with the band playing, like Icarus flying too close to the sun. It doesn’t have to be that way. Just as I pray that humans soon change course, I also commit a small portion of my focus, energy, and political capital (such as it is) to assisting whatever forces might be actively trying to forestall such a future.
People who maintain a relationship with the Divine—no matter the religion or sect or specified belief system—will bear a special burden. It’s the burden of healing that is so needed after our poor stewardship of this blessed earth and of each other. Between the dogmatism of fear-based fundamentalism and the Battlestar Galactica new-aginess of Hollywood, down there in the cracks, there is room, there is a necessity, for the sharing of real, personal, and experiential knowledge of God—of love. That is our mission, should we choose to accept it: to get that experience, to be fueled by that love, and to go forth and share whatever insights and inspiration we may have gained, while simultaneously supporting our communities and families in all ways feasible. We don’t need to worry about making converts. If we go out there shining with the light of God and brimming with love, it will be noticed. A door will be opened for the spirit to walk through. Whether that spirit gets discussed in Islamic, Jewish, Christian, or any other religious terms is not really material. It’s being awake to its presence that counts.
Me, Iona, and MJ
photo credit: JACLYN HUTCHESON, H & COMPANY
It’s recognizing that from the first to the last we are all one in the gift of grace, and that if we hold this gift dear we can be whole again.
Shaman clambers up the world-dream tree
Looking for clues about what is to be
Chants and trances give his spirit wings for flight
Wings still shackled to history
The chain of events ain’t broken so easily
Oh, let me rest in the place of light
Skull-drum skin stretched tight
Sends out ripples in the gathering night
The deepest darkness breeds the brightest light
Music rising from the bones of saints
From the pungent smell of sad sweet poems and paintings
Oh, let me rest in the place of light
God waves a thought like you’d wave your hand
And the light goes on forever
Through the seasons and through the seas
The light goes on forever
Through the burning and the seeding
Through the joining and the parting
The light goes on forever
Gypsy searches through the cards for truth
Alchemist searches for eternal youth
Human reaching almost makes it but not quite
And so strikes out at what the wind blows by
You live and it hurts you, you give up you die
Oh, let me rest in the place of light
Fugitives in the time before the dawn
Backed up to the wall with weapons drawn
Like mounted nomads always ready for a fight
This creature that thinks and so can fake its own being
Lightless mind’s eye not much good for seeing
Oh, let me rest in the place of light
God waves a thought like you’d wave your hand
And the light goes on forever
Through the people and through the walls
The light goes on forever
Through who obeys and who does not
Through who gets rich and who gets caught
The light goes on forever
Uptight lawyer on Damascus road
Becomes a nexus where the light explodes
Concentrated, overpowering sight
Two-way whirlpool churning up all time
Infinity stoops to touch the human mind
Oh, let me rest in the place of light
God waves a thought like you’d wave your hand
And the light goes on forever
Through the buildings and through the hills
The light goes on forever
Through the struggles and the games
Through the night’s empty doorframe
The light goes on forever
“THE LIGHT GOES ON FOREVER,” 1980
To listen to a sample of this song visit b.hc.com/s/103.
PHOTO SECTION
Kingston, 1947
Dad and me and Lionel electric train, Ottawa, 1948. Got to ride it like you find it.
Christmas, 1960
photo credit: BOB LAMBE
Just before leaving for Europe, 1964
photo credit: DOUG COCKBURN
Aroo and Me, Toronto, 1975
Japan, 1978
Genoa, 1980
BOB DISALLE
Street corner concert, Managua, 1983
Colomoncagua, Honduras, 1985
Elder Napoleon Kruger presenting me with an autographed copy of Our Elders Speak on stage before my concert in Vancouver, 1992
Receiving promotion to the rank of Officer in the Order of Canada from Governor General Adrienne Clarkson
Me and Jackson Browne (far right), Verde Valley Festival, Sedona, Arizona, with Salvador and Katia Cardenal of the Nicaraguan Duo Guardabarranco
photo credit: DIANNE COHON
Rosanne Cash, me, Lou Reed, and Rob Wasserman; the second Christmas with Cockburn, 1992
With Usama the oud player, Baghdad, 2004
photo credit: LINDA PANETTA, OPTICAL REALITIES PHOTOGRAPHY
Movie theatre, University of Baghdad. They were aiming at the police station next door.
photo credit: LINDA PANETTA, OPTICAL REALITIES PHOTOGRAPHY
The streets of Amman
photo credit: LINDA PANETTA, OPTICAL REALITIES PHOTOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A word of heartfelt thanks is hereby shouted out to the following:
Roger Freet, editor, whose idea this was, and his extremely helpful staff: Hilary Lawson, Natalie Blachere, and Sherri Schultz
Mark Tauber, publisher, for his support of the idea
Bernie Finkelstein
Linda Panetta
The Cockburn Project and Bobbi Wisby
Gavin’s Woodpile and Daniel Keebler
The Archives of McMaster University and Rick Stapleton
MJ and Iona, for love and for putting up with my semi-absence throughout the writing process
DISCOGRAPHY
STUDIO ALBUMS
Bruce Cockburn, 1970
High Winds White Sky, 1971
Sunwheel Dance, 1972
Night Vision, 1973
Salt, Sun and Time, 1974
Joy Will Find a Way, 1975
In the Falling Dark, 1976
Further Adventures Of, 1978
Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws, 1979
Humans, 1980
Inner City Front, 1981
The Trouble with Normal, 1983
Stealing Fire, 1984
World of Wonders, 1985
Big Circumstance, 1988
Nothing but a Burning Light, 1991
Christmas, 1993
Dart to the Heart, 1994
The Charity of Night, 1996
Breakfast in New Orleans Dinner in Timbuktu, 1999
You’ve Never Seen Everything, 2003
Life Short Call Now, 2006
Small Source of Comfort, 2011
LIVE ALBUMS
Circles in the Stream, 1977
Bruce Cockburn Live, 1990
You Pay Your Money and You Take Your Chance, 1997
Slice O Life—Solo Live, 2009
&
nbsp; COMPILATIONS
Résumé, 1981 (United States only)
Mummy Dust, 1981
Rumours of Glory, 1985 (Germany only)
Waiting for a Miracle: Singles 1970–1987, 1987
Anything Anytime Anywhere: Singles 1979–2002, 2002
Speechless, 2005
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BRUCE COCKBURN was born in 1945 in Ottawa, Ontario. He began his solo career with his self-titled album in 1970, and his extensive repertoire of musical styles and skillfully crafted lyrics have been covered by such diverse artists as Jerry Garcia, Chet Atkins, Judy Collins, Elbow, Barenaked Ladies, Jimmy Buffett, and k.d. lang. Cockburn has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Order of Canada, and he has been awarded thirteen Juno Awards as well as the Allan Slaight Humanitarian Spirit Award. A devoted and deeply respected activist, he has worked with organizations such as Oxfam, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, Friends of the Earth, and USC Canada. He lives in San Francisco.
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CREDITS
Front cover design: © Faceout Studio, Jeff Miller
Front cover and spine photograph: Kevin Kelly © High Romance
Music Inc./Kevin Kelly
COPYRIGHT
RUMOURS OF GLORY: A Memoir. Copyright © 2014 by Bruce D. Cockburn Enterprises Limited. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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