We Are Stardust. We Are Golden.
Never mind our personal politics, we in the Women’s Ordination Conference have to be jubilant: A Black and Indian-American woman is on the ticket for the highest office in our land!
Catholic Church hierarchy: Take heed. Equality and inclusion are coming your way – fast. Your medieval misogynistic mindset is on notice, and you cannot hold out forever. In the immortal words of Frank Sinatra, “If we can make it there, we’ll make it anywhere.” Meet our shining new example!
It’s actually appropriate that I am quoting lyrics today because August 18 is the 51st Anniversary of the last day of the 1969 Woodstock Festival of Peace and Music. I know it was an often muddy, squalid, rowdy, hedonistic event, but it was also full of joy and love and optimism and celebration – and music, oh the music. Some of it rocked your soul, and some of it tore your heart out. Try listening again to Jimi Hendrix’s electric guitar screeching out a wrenching Star Spangled Banner.
I mention this anniversary not only because of the day and because I love the thought of celebrating in a big way the rightful rise of a woman to power and prestige in this country (Imagine how we’ll rejoice when it also happens in our Church!), but also because I just came across the lyrics to Joni Mitchell’s poetic song Woodstock and suddenly saw them through new eyes, a renewed spirit of hope, and a reminder of our goal. As you read, please try to put the raucously wonderful version by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young out of your mind and substitute instead the more plaintive deeply evocative version accompanied only by piano by the singer/songwriter herself.
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
I’m going to camp out on the land
I’m going to try an’ get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
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 to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it’s the time of man
I don’t know who I am
But you know life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
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 bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil’s bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
back to the garden
In the song, the woman and man walk side by side on a journey; she next to, not following behind, him. They are going together to free their souls, to sweep away the fog obscuring a world they dream of creating, and to slot themselves into something momentous that will give purpose and direction to their lives. They are there to learn and grow and rejoice.
And rejoice they do, for when they get there, they find they are not with a few other seekers but with multitudes, “half a million strong”, all hungry for the bread and wine of music to affirm their visions and feed their souls. As they join into a magnificent communion together, they understand finally that they are “stardust”; they are “golden”; they are from the same “billion year old carbon” – all one; they are caught in the “devil’s bargain” – each one. And they can combine all that they are and all they can be in completing the monumental task the world presents them: getting back to the garden of Eden as it was before the fall.
It’s a heady mission; some would say too heady, lofty idealism rejecting sober realism. In fact, Joni Mitchell’s version itself often comes across as somewhat of a dirge, a lament for what was lost instead of found, for what did not happen, for how this vision and this task came up short.
I think, though, in these moments when justice and equality and inclusion triumph however fleetingly, we do need to take another moment to remember that such exhilaration always comes with a task: of righting ancient wrongs, of protecting hard won gains, of recognizing and resisting encroaching evils, of repenting, reconciling, making reparations, and on and on. It’s not easy getting back – even if all genders are side by side – to the garden ( and in these days of environmental crisis, we literally do need to restore and recreate our earth itself as garden).
But no institutions should be able to stop us and no discriminations against gender or race or ethnic identity should limit our power, for, remember, they will be up against people who are “stardust”, who are “golden”. No wonder we infuse in our missions such rejoicing!