Let There Be Light

It’s 2020.

The world as we know it is crumbling, crashing, burning.

Times are hard, and getting progressively, relentlessly more so. People are losing their jobs, their loved ones, their grip on reality, and their hope that things will ever get better.

Every morning, the papers deliver nothing but more bad news.

Then, something miraculous happens—a small, but mighty ray of light bursts through from somewhere.

Sound. Faint at first—hardly even perceptible—but gradually, the chords of a song start coming through, building volume. It’s familiar.

I know you.

Something leaps up, in the heart. Hello? The heart calls. Who’s there?

Voice. A bright, clear bell, simultaneously pure and rugged, rings through space, and breaks the whole heart open.

The heart remembers the first time it heard this voice, crying out on vinyl through dad’s old speakers. The millionth time it heard this voice, soothing the anxious despair of a disillusioned twenty-something.

Now, the heart hears this voice, and an unstoppable “Hallelujah!” erupts from it’s depths.

It’s 2020, and Yusuf Islam has resurrected Tea For The Tillerman, breathing new life into one of the most beloved collection of songs, well, ever.

I text my mom as soon as I learn about Tea For The Tillerman 2.

Mom, I write, I have good news.

In the beginning was the song.

My mom used music the way some parents use the Bible to teach their children about life and how to live it.

Riding shotgun in the car, windows rolled down, music turned up—that’s how I received lessons about life from my mom. We’d ride our eternally overheated Chevy Blazer down the dusty old roads of California’s Central Valley. A red chariot speeding across the farmland I was born and raised on.

She’d play a song for me, and extrapolate its meaning, verse by verse.

Bread, “It Don’t Matter to Me”—

True love lets you be free.

Joni Mitchell, “My Old Man”—

Real love doesn't need permission from anyone else.

Van Morrison, “Crazy Love”—

Romance.

Stevie, “Silver Spring”—

Sometimes it will hurt, but it will never break you.

Tea For The Tillerman was a gospel all its own. It was an album written by a young seeker, a spiritual dreamer, an artist simultaneously hopeful and skeptical. Skeptical of the path others would have him take; hopeful that he would find a better way for himself.

Mom nudged the worn cassette into the tape deck and pressed play.

An Exegesis of Tea For the Tillerman, Song by Song

Where Do the Children Play introduced to me the holy innocence of Creation. Earth is a sacred gift, I learned, entrusted to us to love, enjoy, and care for. I quickly understood the warning implicit in this teaching: if human negligence of this gift goes unchecked, the gift will be lost. The greatest threat to our original innocence isn’t a woman. It’s greed.

I reminded myself of a verse from the Epistle of Joni, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” I resolved to be a faithful steward of the magnificent ground I’d been gifted. 

Hard Headed Woman paid homage to the courageous, free-thinking woman. Honor. Glory. Power. All praises to this fearless and fiery goddess who stands her ground and makes decisions according to her own innate wisdom. If she is a temptress of man, it is only toward his highest potential. 

Be like her, my mom instructed, and don’t waste time looking. The right one will have spent his whole life searching for you.

Wild World expanded upon the wonders and woes of the adventure I was embarking upon. There will be beauty and there will be brokenness, the teachings explained, and you will find plenty of both. You must venture out and discover what you can. Only, don’t ever forget who you are and where you come from. Use this remembering as an anchor to draw you back in, when you’ve ventured too far.

I rooted my heart in the farmland, and started stretching my branches to the wide open sky.

Sad Lisa, like old Job before her. This was the first song to ever break my heart in the listening, and that was the lesson. There will be sadness. There will be unbearable grief. Your heart will break, and there will be nothing you or anyone else can do, but let it.

I surrendered to the tears, let them flow until they had had their say, and left them to dry up and tighten on my cheeks. I understood I could withstand the sadness.

Miles From Nowhere, the joyous Psalm that moved me from deep in my belly, clear up through my heart and out into the world. My body was a gift from God to me—and only me. And it was for me and only me to decide what I would do with it, and where I would take it. I’d been granted a joyous vessel, and I only had one shot at making the most of it.

I dove headfirst into deep water, aiming to drink up every last drop of it.

But I Might Die Tonight taught me that I was born for a greater purpose than making money. I was to surrender to nothing—and certainly not to capitalism—but my own inspiration. There’s a difference between making a living and making a life. Choose wisely, the teaching warned.

Longer Boats served as a promise, a rainbow. Even the darkest storms pass. Help is always on the way. Hope is available, if you can just hold onto the shore.

Mom would hold the steering wheel firmly, hands at 10 and 2, and keep her eyes steady on the road as she sang along. “Longer boats are coming to win us, they’re coming to win us, they’re coming to win us.” I watched as the mantra took her somewhere. It was a far away place, but I could tell from her face, the place was calm and safe.

Into White. A poem. A song of songs, if the lover were the natural, simple world. Imagination is a fruit of the Spirit, and can pull you out of the shadows, into pure Light. Find the beauty in all things, the poet sings. The beauty is there.

Oh yes, the beauty is always here.

On the Road to Find Out was a trickster of a teaching, and it took me years to uncover the true depth of its meaning. Go, it encouraged, venture out into the magnificent world! Go on, search for all you are seeking. But—and here’s the trick—whatever you’re looking for, you wont find out there. And what’s more, you’ve already got it. You’ve had it this whole time. If you really want to know something, be still. You are already holy.

Father and Son instructed me on the passage of time. The fleeting nature of life and love. Some day you’ll know. One day, the teaching explains, you will have visited the faraway place the mantra takes your mother to, and you’ll want to hold her close, and make your arms a safe space for her to rest in, so she doesn’t have to go so far away to feel okay.

When I was a kid, a teenager, I didn’t know, and I resented this teaching. Now, I listen, and I regret not listening better, not learning it in the moment. Still, I am thankful for the lesson, even if I couldn’t accept it until I’d lived it.

Tea For the Tillerman, a different kind of Revelations. Not the end of the humanity, but the eternity of humanity. Not a war on evil, but a celebration of basic goodness. No judgement, only joy.

Tea For The Tillerman 2

In 1970, Cat Stevens delivered a gospel of good news, of a wild world that would break your heart and put the pieces back together in a more beautiful mosaic than you might ever have imagined.

Fifty years later, the prophet has returned, rerecording Tea For The Tillerman, in its entirety. At once, it is nostalgic and fresh. It delivers as much pure idealism as it did 50 years ago, enough to crack your heart in two. Yusuf Islam has still got it, as the saying goes. Still, there is a new gravity in this iteration, an inescapable urgency. A line like, “But I might die tonight” carries more meaning, not because of age, but because of the state of the world.

In a recent interview with NPR, Yusuf is asked why, after so many years, he decided to return to pop music. “There was a point when the Bosnian War was taking place,” he says,

and it was a big, big shock, because this was Europe and we were seeing a genocide right on our doorstep. This was quite frightening. But I was involved in relief and delivering aid to these people, and when I got there, I found that they were singing these songs. I mean, these songs lifted their spirit at this time when it was so dark. I think it was that that made me realize that music has a very important part to play in the shaping of our dreams and the shaping of what we want for tomorrow. What we want for today.

Amen.

Have you found salvation in a song?

I’d love to hear from you about how music has influenced your life and your heart. Maybe it’s music you inherited from your family, your friends, or music you discovered on your own. How has it helped, healed, sustained you? Write your stories in the comments below. You have no idea whose spirit might be lifted by your song.

Love.

Jamie