There is, of course, no shortage of sacred music of all styles and traditions. You don't have to be a believer to be moved by it, but if you aren't, you are likely to be forced to reinterpret it, to find some other level of meaning. My own longstanding theological agnosticism leads me to hear it as representing something like transcendence, a word with enough latitude to represent whatever one wants it to represent. In my mind it is about those moments of wisdom or illumination when we rise above quotidian consciousness or understanding to view our lives and the world in broader perspective.

That perspective does not have to be empirically documentable to be true in some not necessarily literal sense. Intellectually, I accept the occurrence of mysterious experiences in which hidden dimensions of the world briefly reveal themselves, leaving us to ponder what else we do not see because we so choose. These are things not for the laboratory but for the intrinsically unprovable realm in which binary categories ("real" and "imagined," for example) collapse. Though these don't prove the existence of God or gods, they should teach us that "reality" is a tricky proposition, the universe is vast, and we are very, very small.

Eliza Gilkyson's beautiful and moving Secularia takes off from a Woody Guthrie line: "My religion is so big, no matter who you are, you're in it, and no matter what you do you can't get out of it." Well, who wouldn't want to be in a religion like that? Lots of people, apparently. Shockingly to anybody who thought that we have been living in the shadow of the Enlightenment, forces of chaos, irrationalism and tribalism, as often as not marching under the banner of religious faith, have delivered us into this cruel and harrowing age.

I hear Secularia as a testament, both personal and universal, to a religious faith for the skeptically minded, transcending (that word again) simplistic atheism for a more textured theology (if that's the word) that takes the listener beneath the world's surface and into the questions that religious beliefs rightly raise even if with disputable answers in which stories stand in, unknowingly to the most deeply committed, for the elusive and ineffable.

Secularia is not a philosophical essay, it should go without saying, but a collection of songs, and very fine ones without exception. The producer, Gilkyson's son Cisco Ryder Gilliland, places the material (mostly Gilkyson originals) into spare acoustic/electric settings that perfectly suit his mother's lovely, autumnal voice and the enigmatic liminality of the lyrics. Gilkyson, who identifies as a folk singer, offers a genuine folk song, the spiritual "Down by the Riverside," which stands out even amid sturdy competition. This is not quite the standard version, however. She's introduced lines from other folk songs and hymns including "Starry Crown," "Samson & Delilah" and "Lay My Body Down," adding power and depth into an already magnificent statement of moral purpose. The late Jimmy LaFave enters late in the song in what must have been among the last of his recorded vocals. I guess you don't have to know he was dying as he was singing, though it may help explain why one leaves the performance with a lump in the throat.

The feminist parable "Emmanuelle" opens with a line familiar from ballad tradition, "When first I came into this land," and enters a dreamscape: slumbering, sleeping slipping through seasons of silent lives/ A servant, a snake, a child stillborn/ A rock, a star, a drunk in a bar. While the song's mood could hardly be less alike, one can't help thinking of Dylan's masterpiece "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall." Gilkyson is a Dylan with a better voice and without the sometime empty wordiness. Nothing lands in her songs just because it rhymes with the preceding or following line. In this, in what is surely her mature masterpiece, the writing and singing offer up a piercing precision, affirmation without sentimentality, shot straight to the soul.

CoCo O'Connor is far nearer the beginning of a career than its twilight. On This Ol' War, produced in Nashville by Parker Cason, she serves up an EP featuring seven of her songs. They show the influence of the early Tanya Tucker (most obviously in the opening cut, "Daddy's Arms") and the Band (the closing two, "Crenshaw County" and "Free State of Winston"). These are decently crafted songs, and O'Connor is a strong vocalist. "Abilene" (not to be confused with those half-dozen or so other songs with the same title) is the one, however, that will draw you back for repeated, consistently satisfied listenings.

Now living in Santa Fe, O'Connor spent a few years in Music City trying to write hits, but to her credit she couldn't turn herself into a shameless hack. Still, the title song is an attempt at it, a heavy-handed effort to attach a metaphor of actual warfare to domestic dispute. As in some other cuts the arrangement feels on the bombastic side, overwhelming a song that frankly needs more work. There can be no doubt she has talent, but in my hearing anyway, she ought to tone things down, to work harder at avoiding cliched content.

Whatever its inspiration and however well sung, "Daddy's Arms" falls into a lamentable sub-genre of country songs -- e.g., the late Holly Dunn's "Daddy's Hands" -- that are as likely to render the listener uncomfortable as charmed.

Done up more approachably, in my opinion anyway, she wouldn't be called to the stage as a rock artist or some slightly off-the-path modern Nashville country belter. A stripped-down approach in the studio would put her voice at the forefront. Something like that happens with "Abilene," which -- along with its irresistible melody and appealing lyrics (even "I've got a heart as big as Texas" is forgivable in the context) -- is why it stands out and hints at a more consistently successful recording to come.