The Testimonies of Yusuf Islam

On the Road to Find Out

2009-09-06T21:16:00.000-07:00

This song is my own personal story, the story of my looking for God, for Christ. I know that Cat Stevens wrote it about himself, about his own road to find out. Yet it feels so true to me, that it can only mean one thing. It must be the common experience of many people, maybe of all mankind, at least of those who are seeking something or Someone beyond themselves.

On the Road to Find Out can be heard as the story of Christian going on his pilgrimage, fleeing the City of Destruction, and running towards the Celestial City in John Bunyan's famous book Pilgrim's Progress.

The song climaxes with the triple exhortation "The answer lies within, so why not take a look now, kick out the devil's sin, pick up, pick up the Good Book now!" This reminds me of the voice that instructed Augustine of Hippo when he was still living in sin, to "take up and read" the epistles of the apostle Paul. The triple repetition of the stanza openly points to the Orthodox Christian faith, which often speaks words and performs actions three times. This triplicity occurs in a few other Cat Steven's songs.

The explicit nature of the last stanza is hard to cover up, but people try, changing "the Good Book" to "a good book." The issue here is not capitalisation; it's the use of the word "the" which makes the phrase mean only one thing—the Bible. No other book in history has been called "the good book." Not the Talmud or the Qur'an, not the Bhagavad Gita or the Upanishads, not the Book of Tao or the Book of Mormon, only the Bible has received this title, "the Good Book," and in the context of the rest of the stanza, "kick out the devil's sin," what else can he have meant?

The best proof of all, is simply to listen to him sing the song. Listen carefully. What is he saying in that last line, all three times?

On the Road to Find Out — Play it!
Track 9 on the album Tea for the Tillerman

Well, I left my happy home
to see what I could find out
I left my folk and friends
with the aim to clear my mind out
Well, I hit the rowdy road
and many kinds I met there
and many stories told me
on the way to get there

CHORUS
So on and on I go,
the seconds tick the time out
So much left to know,
and I'm on the road to find out

In the end I'll know
but on the way I wonder
through descending snow
and through the frost and thunder
I listen to the wind come howl
telling me I have to hurry
I listen to the robin's song
saying not to worry

CHORUS

Well, I found myself alone
hoping someone would miss me
Thinking about my home
and the last woman to kiss me
Well sometimes you have to moan
when nothing seems to suit you
but nevertheless you know
you're locked towards the future

CHORUS

And I found my head one day
when I wasn't even trying
and here I have to say
'cause there is no use in lying, lying

Yes, the answer lies within
so why not take a look now
Kick out the devil's sin,
pickup, pickup the good book now
(three times)

Comments

The poetry of this song makes many obvious allusions that need not be commented on, but for the second to last stanza, "And I found my head one day when I wasn't even trying…"

This is the true pattern of how God, the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who is the Lord Yahweh, relates to us. We would not have been looking for Him, had He not first been looking for us. From our end of the scope, it seems that He just ransoms us when and if He wants to, without our effort or even desire: we find our head when we're not even looking for it, or rather for Him. And what happens to the pilgrim when he finds his "head"?

Metanoia — Repentance!
"Kick out the devil's sin, pickup, pickup the good book now!"

And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be Head over all things to the church.
Ephesians 1:22

But speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him, who is the Head, even Christ; from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.
Ephesians 4:15-16

Cross Reference

On the Road to Find Out, at Cost of Discipleship

Into White

2009-09-06T21:15:00.000-07:00

After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.
Mark 9:2-4 NIV

Into White — Play it!
Track 8 on the album Tea for the Tillerman

I built my house from barley rice
Green pepper walls and water ice
Tables of paper wood,
windows of light
And everything emptying into white.

A simple garden, with acres of sky
A Brown-haired dogmouse
If one dropped by
Yellow Delanie would sleep well at night
With everything emptying into white.

A sad Blue eyed drummer rehearses outside
A Black spider dancing on top of his eye
Red legged chicken stands ready to strike
And everything emptying into white.

I built my house from barley rice
Green pepper walls and water ice
And everything emptying into white

Comment

I've always included this song in my spiritual Cat Stevens list, even though it is really only about living simply and purely. It's always reminded me of the Transfiguration of Jesus somehow. Something about the meaning of Christ's Transfiguration seems to relate to this song.

Christ wasn't transfigured by a special dispensation from the Father, so that His three closest followers could see it. No, Christ does nothing for show or for display. In actual fact, it was not Christ who was transfigured, but rather it was His disciples who were given the grace to see Him as He really is. It was not Christ "emptying into white," but rather His disciples.

A simple lifestyle and natural diet are not going to "empty us into white" as the three disciples were. Things don't work like that.

Think of the Great Fast before Pascha (Easter). Many think of the vegan diet that we partake of as a kind of punishment of the body, when in reality, as we are making the pilgrimage to Christ's life-giving death, to the new Tree of Life, the Cross, we are gradually "emptying into white," by the grace of God, by the privilege of simplicity in not only our diet but everything we do. Why? So that when we see Him hanging on the Cross, we will remember seeing Him on the mountain, transfigured, seeing Him as He always is.

We're waiting for the time when our eyes can look on that whiteness without blinking, when everything that is in us will be "emptying into white."

Longer Boats

2009-09-06T20:42:00.000-07:00

Here, the journey is interrupted by a significant encounter. The pilgrim is offered a boat ride off the lonely island he is on. Who is making the offer? The captain of the ship of religion, who sails under the flag of the man-made god. The pilgrim knows he is to wait for a boat to rescue him. Is this the boat? He ponders, and something inside him says,
"No, longer boats are coming… Hold on to the shore…" because otherwise "they'll be taking the key from the door."

Longer Boats — Play it!
Track 7 from the album Tea for the Tillerman

CHORUS
Longer boats are coming to win us
They're coming to win us,
they're coming to win us
Longer boats are coming to win us
Hold on to the shore,
they'll be taking the key from the door.

I don't want no god on my lawn
Just a flower I can help along
'Cause the soul of no body knows
how a flower grows...
Oh how a flower grows.

CHORUS

Mary dropped her pants by the sand
And let a parson come and take her hand
But the soul of no body knows
Where the parson goes,
where does the parson go?

CHORUS

Comments

"I don't want no god on my lawn…"
The pilgrim doesn't want a dead, man-made idol, even if it claims to be God, on his lawn, his life. He'd rather have something living, even if only a flower that he'd have to tend.
He doesn't want a ready-made regimen, a religious observance, that's not what he's waiting for.
He wants a life in God, that he has to work at.

Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.
Philippians 2:12-13 NIV

"Mary dropped her pants by the sand…"
He sees a woman give in. She lets down her defenses and trusts a man to take her in charge. But where is he taking her? And where does he disappear to once he has her in his power?

"Longer boats are coming to win us
Hold on to the shore,
they'll be taking the key from the door."

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.
Matthew 23:13-15 NIV

But I Might Die Tonight

2009-09-06T20:15:00.000-07:00

And he told them this parable: "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.' Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry." ' But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?' This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.
Luke 12:16-21 NIV

But I Might Die Tonight — Play it!
Track 6 on the album Tea for the Tillerman

I don't want to work away
Doing just what they all say
Work hard boy and you'll find
One day you'll have a job like mine
'Cause I know for sure
Nobody should be that poor
To say yes or sink low
Because you happen to say so, say so, you say so

I don't want to work away
Doing just what they all say
Work hard boy and you'll find
One day you'll have a job like mine, job like mine, a job like mine

Be wise, look ahead
Use your eyes
he said
Be straight,
think right
But I might die tonight!

Comment

No comment is necessary. The reference is to Christ's teaching on the rich man who builds and amasses wealth to his own glory.
To whom will all the fruits of his labors go?

Miles from Nowhere

2009-09-06T18:47:00.000-07:00

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

I Think I See the Light

2009-09-06T14:52:00.000-07:00

Cat Stevens was hospitalized for tuberculosis. His recovery started him on the spiritual path of life. He was recovering from more than the health problems occasioned by his worldly excesses.
In the song I Think I See the Light, the first gleams of his spiritual awakening are tied, as they continue to be later, to his love for a woman.

This eros is the same love that we find in the days of mediæval chivalry in the troubadours' love for their "Lady," and yet further back, the source of both is to be found in the holy and divine scriptures of the Hebrew Tanakh, in the Song of Songs which is Solomon's.

There is no apology to be made for this, nor is this an example of spiritualising the act of carnal love. No, the love of man for woman is first a spiritual love, which fulfills itself in the physical acts. Eros is, in fact, the Greek word for love as applies to God's love for mankind, and man's love for God.

Only when this is forgotten, when Christ the divine Bridegroom, is removed from love, then eros becomes broken and the so-called 'love' we see in the world is the result.

I Think I See the Light — Play It!
Track 4 on the album Mona Bone Jakon

I used to trust nobody,
trusting even less their words,
Until I found somebody,
there was no one I preferred,
My heart was made of stone,
my eyes saw only misty grey,
Until you came into my life girl,
I saw everyone that way.
Until I found the one I needed at my side,
I think I would have been a sad man all my life.

CHORUS
I think I see the light coming to me,
Coming through me
giving me a second sight.
So shine, shine, shine,
Shine, shine, shine,
Shine, shine, shine.

I used to walk alone,
every step seemed the same.
This world was not my home,
so there was nothing much to gain.
Look up and see the clouds,
look down and see the cold floor.
Until you came into my life girl,
I saw nothing, nothing more.

CHORUS
I think I see the light…

Comment
Until love awakens for another human being, the ultimate purpose of one's life remains unknown, and there is a consciousness of the futility of all things. Alone, the soul wanders in a place where nowhere is home, because home is where the heart has been awakened to love, and without love, there is no welcome, and where welcome is absent, there is no home.

Tell me, then, you whom my heart loves:
Where will You lead Your flock to graze,
where will you rest it at noon?
That I may no more wander like a vagabond
beside the flocks of Your companions.
Song of Songs 1:7-8 Jerusalem Bible

Eight words of testimony

2009-09-06T14:40:00.000-07:00

Cat Stevens produced many albums, but the following eight contain what I call his testimonies. For me they were pointers to a better life, a spiritual life, a life in Christ. Not every song on these albums is that kind of testimony. Some are in fact testimonies (if one can call them that) of the call of the world and of the flesh. Cat Stevens was no saint as he was rising up out of the "wild world" that he sang about, but he was honest about that Light that was beckoning to him. The following albums contain the testimonies of Yusuf Islam:

The albums pictured from left to right are:
Mona Bone Jakon (April, 1970)
Tea for the Tillerman (November, 1970)
Teaser and the Firecat (September, 1971)
Catch Bull at Four (September, 1972)
Foreigner (July, 1973)
Buddha and the Chocolate Box (March, 1974)
Numbers (November, 1975)
Back to Earth (December, 1978)

New Martyr of the Turkish Yoke

2009-08-27T20:22:00.000-07:00

Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, was born Steven Demetre Georgiou, of a Greek Cypriot father and a Swedish mother, in England, in 1949. Although his father was Greek Orthodox and his mother a Swedish Lutheran, Steven Georgiou was sent to a Catholic school. The family business, in which everyone worked, was—what should you expect?—a restaurant.
This is a very, very typical story for a Greek family in the post-WW2 diaspora in the U.K. as well as in the U.S. If you want to know more about Cat Stevens from a biographical point of view, read about him in the Wikipedia article. My purpose is not to publish a Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam fan blog, but to examine the lyrics in his ten major albums, and extract his testimonies, to demonstrate that these songs have a basis in the Christian faith into which he was born, but later abandoned.

Why would I want to do this? Well, to be honest, it's because I've always felt connected to him spiritually from listening to and singing his songs all my adult life, even till today. To the younger generation, Cat Stevens will not have the meaning he has for me—of course, I'm speaking of his music. He is a man of my own generation, shaped by the same influences, born into the same faith that I hold, yet he chose Islam over Christ, a religion over the Liberator and Savior of souls. How could he do this? It seems he never really knew Christ as he was growing up, only religion. He is what I would call a casualty of the Church, which never seems to have enough real shepherds to look for the lost sheep.

I've wanted to write my thoughts about Cat Stevens' songs for many years. I've even wanted to send them to him, to let him know how his songs were a major factor in my coming to know Christ. I've wanted him to know that someone picked up what he let fall. Like the story I told in my post Greeks from rocks, my relationship to this man, even though he has never heard of me, still changed the course of my life, for the better, for the best. For to know Christ and to be known by Him is the greatest and only worthy goal for a human being.

There is a book written about (mostly) Greeks who converted to Islam during the Τουρκοκρατία - Tourkokratía (Greek: Turkish rule) entitled New Martyrs of the Turkish Yoke. These were Christian men who were (usually forcibly) converted to Islam during the Ottoman Empire, and who later returned to their Christian faith. The most common testimony of these men before the Muslim judges when they were caught was "I was born a Christian, and I will die a Christian!"

This testimony of these new martyrs (for that is what we call martyrs who gave their lives after the Roman period) exacerbated, frustrated and infuriated the Muslim authorities, who usually bent over backwards to try to save their lives by offering them extreme enticements if they would only remain Muslims. Reading the stories you can feel the pain that some of the Muslim judges felt in condemning these men to death, and I can even believe it was genuine.
Like the men they put to death, these Muslim judges were prisoners of Islam. There could be no escape for either.

I have named this blog The Testimonies of Yusuf Islam, because it concerns the words that have issued out of his mouth up to the time when he renounced Christ and confessed Muhammad, "ash-hadu anna muhammadan rasulallah," and what those words meant to me. I know this is very subjective, and anyone, Cat Stevens himself, can or will say, "No, that's not what I meant by that," and I agree. The fact is, however, that he did say, write and sing these words, and it is for those on whom they fall to understand them. This is both the blessing and the curse of the artist. Once the work has been done and given to the world, it is not his any longer. It belongs to all.

I contend that there are seeds of the Word of God in many of the songs of Cat Stevens, and those seeds have in many cases fallen on good soil, and produced abundantly. Though Cat Stevens probably never gave it a thought, the good and man-loving God gave increase to the seed he planted. It did not return to Him void.
What is Cat Stevens to do with that?

I have named this post New Martyr of the Turkish Yoke, because I still hold out the hope that Yusuf Islam will in the end confess Christ and renounce Islam.
It appears extremely unlikely at this present moment, but I nevertheless continue to pray for it, as I have for whatever, two decades or more. Inside my Jerusalem Bible, the fat softcover one that I have used as my study bible for more than thirty years, I saved a newspaper clipping of a photo of Cat Stevens that I happened to like. That clipping is still there. Oddly, the other side of the page must have had a cartoon-like picture of an angel, for there is what looks like an angel's wing and a thunderbolt issuing from it. I wonder what it was, but I hope that the candle I light for Cat Stevens from time to time will keep his memory alive to God, who alone knows the secrets of our hearts.

He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. Matthew 12:30-37 NIV