On Sept. 19, 1981, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel recorded their first live album in Central Park, New York.
More than 500,000 people packed into the park for their first performance in 11 years. The album was released on Feb. 16, 1982 and the concert was broadcast on HBO for years.
The concert was a benefit performance, with proceeds helping to refurbish Central Park. Subsequent airings of the program during fund drives have helped public television stations raise money.
Simon & Garfunkel broke up at the height of their popularity, after the release of their fifth album, Bridge Over Troubled Water.
Their reunion show was 38 years ago, this year Paul Simon retired from touring.
Simon & Garfunkel were probably part of the soundtrack of your life.
Time marches on for all of us, including for the nearly 77 year-olds Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. But, in many ways, music is a type of time travel — taking us back in our memories to other times in our lives.
Songs are the signposts of our lives and over time, they can take on or lose significance.
We change, move forward, become better versions of ourselves as we learn lessons and grow into our potential.
Some of us don’t grow, we allow fear and sadness to limit who we can be. Disappointments compound and we look back on a life of missed opportunities.
This isn’t as God intends.
We are made in the image of God. We are made for motion and progress.
In Exodus 3, Moses encounters a bush being eternally consumed by never-ending flames.
11But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
12And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”
13Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”
14God said to Moses, “I am who I am.c This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ”
15God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord,d the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’
“This is my name forever,
the name you shall call me
from generation to generation.
“I am who I am,” also translates into “I will be what I will be” or “I am becoming that which I am becoming.”
The constant motion of fire, of the sun, of the tides, of the blood coursing through our bodies, and of the smallest atoms, are the motion of the universe. The vibrations of music is the sound of God in motion.
Music, the story of our lives, the moments that make up the infinite passage of time, are all part of God in motion, becoming.
God invites us into the process of becoming. Draws all us of towards the energy of Creation.
Let us not focus on the past or resist the power of change, but let us actively engage in the process of becoming that which we are becoming.
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