Woodstock
I just heard the song Woodstock. It made me think.
Do your remember Woodstock — the music festival on Max Yasgur’s farm in New York, August 15-18, 1969? I was only ten years old, but I remember it. Even at that young age I knew it was something important. The four day festival, which drew over half a million people, was the defining moment of the Sixties counter culture era.
A little while ago I heard the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young version of Woodstock. The song was written by Joni Mitchell after she heard about Woodstock from her boyfriend, Graham Nash. Joni says she wrote the song in tears.
Woodstock
by Joni Mitchell
Well I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him where are you going
And this he told me
I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm
I’m going to join in a rock ‘n’ roll band
Got to get back to the land
Going to try and get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
We are ten billion year old carbon
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel like I’m a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it’s the time of man
And I don’t know who I am
But life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
We are ten billion year old carbon
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bomber jet planes
Riding shotgun in the sky
Turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
We are golden
We are caught in the devil’s bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
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I like that song. It captures a certain kind of yearning. A yearning to get back to the Garden — the Garden of Eden where we can walk with God in the cool of the day.
But it’s a song without any answers…only yearning.
We are stardust. All the elements of physical matter are formed in the “factories” of the stars. But we are more than matter, we are also children of God. And oh how we long to find Him and walk with Him again in the garden. But in the end we are caught in the devil’s bargin. That deal that went down with the devil in the garden of our fall.
Woodstock could not fulfill the hope it evoked. All Woodstock could really offer was sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. And these are nothing more than the standard paltry substitutes for what we are created for: Life in the Garden, life with God.
Most of you have heard of Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Here’s someone you’ve probably never heard of: Bob Ayala. Bob Ayala is a blind singer-songwriter whose work I’ve admired for almost thirty years. He’s not very well known and his older albums are not even available on CD (and that’s a shame). His 1978 album Wood Between The Worlds is one of my favorites (though I haven’t heard it for years…I have it on vinyl, but no turntable). On the title track, Wood Between The Worlds, Bob Ayala points people to the place where the hope of Woodstock can be realized.
Wood Between The Worlds
by Bob Ayala
Swaddled in darkness
Came forth the Light
Greater than the world
He was born in
And clay was the covering
Over the Glory
That was greater than the world
He was born in
Jesus
Jesus
Brought up by a carpenter
He took wood and some nails
And built a bridge between the worlds
And He stretched out upon it
And reached up to Heaven
On the wood between the worlds
There’s blood on the wood between the worlds
That can wash away your sin
There’s blood on the wood between the worlds
That can make your life begin
_________________________________________
The hope of Woodstock: To find our way back to God and the Garden.
The Wood between the Worlds: The way back to God and the Garden.
There are people all around you with the “Woodstock yearning” in their heart. They’ve got to get back to the garden.
Do you know about the wood between the worlds?
Do you know the way back to the garden?
Maybe you can help someone find their way home.
Peace,
BZ