I've been listening to Dylan almost exclusively since my father died. It's a one-way conversation, which is sometimes how it was when my father was on a roll. He was a man who loved to talk, and I loved to listen to him talk. I've always had "problems with authority," but at the same time, I've always been on the search for a sage, a poet, a wise man...and my father, rarely came across as "the authority," rather, he was almost always a fellow traveller.
Ultimately, I believe that "we" are the authority, that even if there is a "higher power," a "supreme being," that power or being does not have time for us; I imagine an ocean, we are a drop in that ocean, so in that way we are one with a higher power, that power contains us, but our experience is of the "drop," alone, self-contained. Once in awhile we get a glimpse of another realm...
Dylan sings about life, death, disappointment; in many of his songs he has "chip on his shoulder," but more than anything the poetry of being human comes across. I no longer have my father's voice to comfort me, to madden me, to motivate me, to make me laugh...Dylan will have to fill the void...