In an essay titled “Being There: A Vision for Christianity and the Arts,” poet Steve Turner reflects on T.S. Eliot’s statement that religious poetry indicates “very clear limitations.” Turner goes on to say, in a booklet of his essay, that Steve Taylor was sharing with anyone who would read it back when he was launching Squint Entertainment, “We often have very narrow perceptions of what it means to call a work of art ‘Christian.’ Usually we want certain key words repeated a certain number of times so that we are assured that it has passed some kind of means test, but where would that put the book of Ruth or Ecclesiastes? Indeed, where would it put God’s greatest art works; the human body, the sun, the oceans, the mountains, planets, trees, animals?”

I offer Turner’s essay to anyone questioning what a story about Bruce Cockburn is doing in a magazine that focuses primarily on ‘Christian’ music. That’s the only defense I care to offer. However, if you’re wondering what a story about a folk artist with jazz leanings is doing in a magazine dedicated to ‘hard music,’ you’ll have to take that up with the editors. It was their idea. I jumped at the opportunity to talk with Cockburn again, about his new music and ages-old ideas, about his art and spirituality, about life and death and what matters while we’re living here within the mortal coil, God’s mystery in the poet’s breath.

The July/August feature by Brian Quincy Newcomb is completed in the new issue of HM. Subscribe here.