Miles from Nowhere

The album Tea for the Tillerman includes seven songs that I consider are spiritual testimonies, though four other songs speak in the same accents but not as explicitly. The theme of Light that emerges from the swell of carnality in the previous album Mona Bone Jakon is continued in Tea for the Tillerman with qualification and more clarity.
The Light has broken on the man of flesh and stirred him. Now, he responds, and looks longer and longer into that Light and begins to fathom its qualities. He begins to understand that the man of flesh is going to be transfigured into something or someone else. The first thing to drop off him is his dependence on his own body. The second is his bondage to time. He doesn't exactly know where he is headed, but he is already addressing the Lord, and trusting Him.


Miles from Nowhere — Play it!
Track 5 on the album Tea for the Tillerman

Miles from nowhere
I guess I'll take my time
Oh yeah, to reach there
Look up at the mountain
I have to climb
Oh yeah, to reach there.

Lord my body has been a good friend
But I won't need it when I reach the end

Miles from nowhere
Guess I'll take my time
Oh yeah, to reach there

I creep through the valleys
And I grope through the woods
'cause I know when I find it, my honey
It's gonna make me feel good
I love everything
So don't it make you feel sad
'cause I'll drink to you, my baby
I'll think to that,
I'll think to that.

Miles from nowhere
Not a soul in sight
Oh yeah, but it's alright
I have my freedom
I can make my own rules
Oh yeah, the ones that I choose

Lord my body has been a good friend
But I won't need it when I reach the end

Miles from nowhere
Guess I'll take my time
Oh yeah, to reach there.


Comments

"Tillerman"
So Yahweh God expelled him from the garden of Eden, to till the soil from which he had been taken.
Genesis 3:23 Jerusalem Bible

"Look up at the mountain I have to climb…"
As for Moses, and many another seeker of God, there is a mountain to ascend. The journey to God is a going up.

"I creep through the valleys, and I grope through the woods…"
The journey goes through depressions, dangerous lonely places, that one creeps through, and through thickets, dense places where one must grope to see the way.

"I love everything, so don't it make you feel sad, 'cause I'll drink to you, my baby I'll think to that…"
With a clever play on words contrasting the worldly and the spiritual, the pilgrim declares that he loves everything, but there is no reason for sadness—he will still drink to the glory of this world, "you, my baby," but he will think on the glory of the world to come, "that."

"Miles from nowhere
Not a soul in sight
Oh yeah, but it's alright
I have my freedom
I can make my own rules
Oh yeah, the ones that I choose"
The beginning of the journey is lonely, the pilgrim finds himself alone, isolated, but is unconcerned. Freed from the bonds that held him, he can now follow the rules, not slavishly, but because he wants to, because he chooses to. Making his own rules is the beginning. Discovering Whose rules they really are comes later.

Come, let us go up to the mountain of Yahweh,
to the Temple of the God of Jacob,
that He may teach us His ways,
so that we may walk in His paths.
Isaiah 2:3 Jerusalem Bible