A turn toward communion

In many ways, The Red Hand Files are a companion to Cave's current tour, "Conversations with Nick Cave," which features spontaneous exchanges between the artist and his audience. He fields requests, tells stories and answers questions from the crowd.

For a performer who once cultivated an aloof and even menacing persona, Cave's turn toward communion, on stage and online, is striking.

Delivered weekly to inboxes around the world, The Red Hand Files offer a cyber-sanctuary to speak about hard things, Cave says, the issues that "require a bit of room, or space, or even nuance."

"I also receive a lot of mail these days from people in difficult situations and I feel that I have some experience which I can pass on."

"I felt very acutely that a sense of suffering was the connective tissue that held us all together," Cave continued in Red Hand Files #2. "Without being hyperbolic, this feeling of collective love has saved my life. It is a transcendent circle that just seems to grow stronger. It is religious."

Religiously literate rock n' roll

Cave might seem like an odd fit for the mantle of Postmodern Internet Guru, with his pointy black shoes, shiny black suit and sternum-baring shirts. At times, he looks like a fallen preacher, or the nihilistic Bible salesman in a Flannery O'Connor story.

Onstage, he snarls and struts like a shaman. His former band, the Birthday Party, was known for its furious energy and raucous shows. A former addict, Cave once said he could "write the Michelin Guide to detox centers."

Cave's music, too, can be dark. His first huge hit was a murder ballad. A more recent tune imagines a resurrected Lazarus in modern America. He ends up in the madhouse.

But Cave has long been one of rock'n'roll's most religiously literate songwriters. He keeps a bust of Jesus and a Bible open to the Gospel of John on his piano. Cave himself wrote an introduction to Mark's Gospel for a British publisher in 1998. He is the rare rock star to open a love song with the line, "I don't believe in an interventionist God/But I know, darling, that you do."

In his punk rock days, Cave says, he was obsessed with the Gothic drama and wrathful God of the Old Testament, channeling His energy to hiss and spit at the world.

"I was a conduit for a God that spoke in a language written in bile and puke," Cave said. "And for a while, that suited me fine."

But then, Cave says, he took up the Gospels.

"The voice that spoke through me now was softer, sadder, more introspective."

'I felt ministered to'

Raised Anglican, Cave said he has all but given up on organized religion, yet still longs for a world infused with magic and awe.

Like a lot of artists, his spirituality is idiosyncratic and undogmatic. He believes humans are hard-wired for transcendence, which can be accessed through creativity and imagination.

But Cave, 61, who now lives with his wife Susie Bick in Brighton and Los Angeles, seems more interested in seeking than arriving at a conclusive theology. Chris Goodman, Cave's media representative, said the musician was not available for an interview; he prefers to let the letters speak for themselves.

"He's not pushing the 'Nick Cave Rules,' Woodbury said. "He's giving people the tools to dig in and find the answers for themselves. He seems genuinely interested in helping them on their journey."

Several weeks ago, Cave responded to a father of three boys from Australia who despaired about the future. The musician agreed that the endless negativity available online can "erode our souls and the souls of our children."

But then Cave coaxed the fearful father to reconsider his apocalyptic despair, offering the example of his own family.

"I have always seen it as a kind of parental duty to show my own children beautiful stuff, and in so doing reveal to them an alternate world," he wrote.

"I felt ministered to," said Woodbury after reading Cave's response to the father. "That's the only word I can use to describe it. It's a trusted authority figure sitting down next to you and saying, 'Listen I know things are bleak but it's in your own best interest to keep your eyes on what is beautiful and sustaining."

Woodbury isn't alone in appreciating Cave's approach.

What God's voice sounds like

Last month, a fan named Rute from Portugal asked Cave what the voice of God sounds like. Does God even have a voice, or does divinity make itself heard in other ways? Perhaps God might sound a bit like Nick Cave, Rute suggested.

"I hope the voice of God would be something other than booming, authoritarian and male," Cave answered. "Wouldn't that be a pleasant surprise."

The musician offered his own take on God's voice. In the recording studio, he said, sometimes the most pure and beautiful choruses can emerge from a cacophony of varied vocals. Maybe God's voice sounds something like that, Cave offered.

"Perhaps, God would have the combined voice of all the untold billions of collected souls, an assembly of the departed speaking as one -- without rancour, domination or division, a great, many-layered calling forth that rings from the heavens in the small, determined voice of a child, maybe; sexless, pure and uncomplicated -- that says 'Look for me. I am here.'"

Cave then ended the letter as he always does: "Love, Nick."