Sacred
Space in Saugerties
It
is, if you stop and think of it, quite remarkable that a rock concert
should capture as such attention as the recent Woodstock event. But
that is because the original Woodstock had assumed proportions far
larger than those of a mere rock concert. And not only in the fond
memories of the aging Baby Boomers. I'd say about twenty minutes into
the original concert it had become apparent that Woodstock was but
the focus for larger issues, larger sentiments,
larger realities.
Woodstock,
I think, would not have cast anything like the same mythic shadow
over a generation had the concert been held in, say, the Astrodome or
Madison Square Garden. Of course, the reason it wasn't is that no
such space could hold all the people. But then
again
they didn't expect but a fraction of the people who showed up, did
they? What made the difference was the fact of retreating into the
wilderness. I guess it would qualify as a wilderness, given the lack
of amenities on Yasgur's Farm. Back home, Rock music and its
counterculture could serve as little more than a Walter Mitty
fantasy. It was escapism, a daydream. You might get aboard the
Crystal Ship for a Journey to the Center of the Mind. But you still
had to face your parents, your teachers, your boss. Pretty much the
kind of inert scene you can see in the movie Dazed and Confused.
But
suddenly there was a place you could actually get up and go to, a
place called Woodstock Nation. It was like a giant Hippie commune.
What it lacked in time, lasting only a weekend, it made up in
magnitude. And what happened there was what always happens in
spiritual retreats and exoduses into the wilderness: the ideals one
gave lip-service to in daily life, the ideals one wished one had
the opportunity to live out, suddenly became possible because there
was suddenly a world in which they fit, a game for which they
provided the rules. All the Hippie slogans about freedom, peace,
love, sharing, and nature assumed a tangible presence, conjured by a
group of pilgrims in the wilderness, creating a temporary bubble of a
world.
But
the disappointing thing about such mountaintop experiences, whether
church retreats, T-groups, or Iron John weekends, is that they come
to an end. One must descend the peak and go back to the valley below.
And the ideals don't work any more. It takes two to do your Tango,
and you can't find a partner. The challenge is to find some way to
translate those ideals, seen in full shining force on the mountaintop
(or at Yasgur's Farm), into some meaningful form down in the grey
dimness of the mundane world. Debates rage about the legacy of
Woodstock and the generation it epitomized. Do we owe Woodstock AIDS
and Crack? Social and moral irresponsibility? Or do we owe to it a
keener scrutiny of government and big business, a greater emphasis on
peace and sharing, a tendency to humanize social policy, a wider
tolerance and pluralism? Probably some of all of the above. And don't
get me wrong. On that weekend in 1969 I was home drawing a comic
book, reading H.P. Lovecraft, and going to church (you see I haven't
changed a bit!). I'm no nostalgic Flower Child trying to romanticize
things, but it's obvious the idealism of Woodstock was not far
removed from radical Christianity. As a teenaged evangelist, I used
to "witness" to these "hippies" and heard them
often say that if Jesus were to come back right there and then, it
would be the hippies who would listen to him, not the church-goers.
And I have no doubt this is correct. The rest of us are too at home
in the world, too rooted, with too many vested interests to listen to
someone who tells us to turn the other cheek and give away
our possessions.
And
they weren't kidding. Remember the Jesus Movement? It was no accident
that only a year or so after Woodstock we witnessed the birth of a
movement of Hippies for Christ, Jesus communes and Rock bands,
long-haired and grooving on the Gospel. I guess they did
accept him! Of course, many went on other religious trips too, like
one of the Chicago Seven (I forget which) becoming a devotee of Guru
Maharaj Ji and the Beatles of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Why
did this happen? Some sociologists say it was a matter of the
addictive personality: some Jesus freaks used to sing "Jesus
made me higher than I've ever been before." They stopped using
heroin but merely switched to the opiate of the people. And their
original
radicalism
got lost somewhere in the process. They stopped being concerned with
international peace in favor of "real peace with Jesus."
Free love turned into loving Jesus. The Dionysian Hippie revel
somehow transubstantiated into an Apollonian regimen that
used
the old Woodstock slogans in a secret Orwellian form. And much of
this movement has fed right back into mainstream fundamentalism. In
seminary in the latter half of the 1970s I knew many who had been
converted in the Jesus Movement, but now they were straight and
voted, as likely as not, Republican.
How
did this happen? Their Dionysian ecstasy transmuted into
Pentecostal ecstasy, and their morality tightened up. That's no big
deal, just what Freud told us would happen: sublimation of sex into
piety. But where did the anti-establishment stance go? The exªhippie
Jesus Movement divided. Many saw their political radicalism as just
another expression of the same youthful irresponsibility that had
manifested itself through drugs and free sex. So they grew up and
joined the establishemnt. Biblicism had got them used to accepting
authoritarianism anyway, so they were primed for it. They had an
assured welcome from fellow fundamentalists in the churches they then
joined. These were the seminarians I knew. Others became more radical
still, classical sectarian groups, "cults," we like to call
them. These would include Moses David (AKA Dave Berg) and the
Children
of God/Family of Love and the Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation. If you
want to see a grotesque spectacle of aging hippies, take a look at
these groups.
But
back to Woodstock Nation. What had dawned there in that mountaintop
experience, that wilderness retreat, was a religious experience in
its own right. It was the establishment of a sacred cosmos.
Yasgur's Farm became Sacred Space, the place where an epiphany of the
sacred occurred. And this is why we witnessed so much controversy
over the recent Woodstock 94. Why was there all the anger and fear
that it was "not Woodstock, but an incredible simulation"?
That it was being commercialized, bastardized, prostituted? Because
the original Woodstockers feared seeing the Temple
profaned with moneychangers.
Why
was there strife over which was the real Woodstock? You know, there
was the big one with mostly new bands in Saugerties, but not on the
original site (this one got all the press), and then there was the
Woodstock reunion over at the original Yasgur's Farm. A lot of the
original Woodstock acts appeared at this one. The whole thing reminds
me of the side-by-side co-existence (literally right across the
street) of the headquarters of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter Day Saints and the tiny Mormon Church, Temple Lot. It is
the latter who claim to be perched on the exact sacred spot where
Christ will touch down at the second coming, so designated by the
Prophet Joseph Smith. Why the fight? It's Sacred Space. Like the Holy
Land, over which people fight for exactly the same reason.
And
the issue of whether to have a simple reunion of the original Woodstock,
as at Yasgur's Farm, versus a new "Woodstock 94" this is
akin to the debates over Modernism in the churches. Should we update
the liturgy? Use a new Bible? Ordain women? Or stick to the Old Time
religion? It was good for Country Joe and the Fish, and it's good
enough for me.
But
in either case, when Woodstock reconvened, it was a case of the
cyclical recurrence of Sacred Time, the sacred time of origins,
which
renews the world (or at least the worshipping community) when it
reappears, casting its brilliance over the dullness of the Profane,
i.e. mundane, world. It is like Easter, Passover, Ramadan. The
sacred past has come present again, world without end. Is Christ
sacrificed again in the Catholic Mass? Of course not, but it is
a real sacrifice, Catholics insist, because it is the representation
of the one single, once-for-all sacrifice which paradoxically returns
again and again! And so with Woodstock.
Do
you think this is a trivializing analogy? I am taking that risk, but
it is certainly evident that many Rock fans take their music as a
genuine anthem of ultimate concern. Tillich might wonder whether the
gypsy-like Deadheads who crisscross the country attending every
single Grateful Dead concert have perhaps taken up an idol, an
inadequate symbol of faith. But then he might take a closer listen to
some Rock lyrics. Carol and I wrote a book on the philosophical
implications of the music of the Canadian Rock trio Rush. Sometimes
there's quite a lot there, and you'd be surprised at the difference
Rock music can make in inspiring the lives of young people. This is
why Carol has spoken to the folks at Montclair High School about
leading groups for detention kids where they would discuss the lyrics
of their favorite Rock groups as a vehicle for examining issues of
concern to them in the language they understand best.
Even
the miserable and grotesque Elvis imitators are in a tasteless way
functioning like a priest at the Mass, becoming sacramental vicars
of a power that reaches its devotees through a musical cult of
personality. They called Elvis an idol in his lifetime. He is even
more of one now, literally. There is even a Church of Elvis. And
look at the candle-lit pilgrimages taken to Graceland. It's only
the T-shirts that tip you off it's not Lourdes. Tillich was right
again: virtually anything can become a symbol of the Holy for a
culture (or subculture, or counterculture). And that's why the flap over
Woodstock.
Robert M. Price