Wild Goose Festival - A Spirit of Life Revival

Awake my soul! I'm back from the inaugural Wild Goose Festival in Shakori Hills, North Carolina and feel like I've been restored and refreshed at a good old fashioned tent revival - granted, the kind of tent revival that includes a parody of tent revivals... but we'll get to that later. Overall, I had the most amazing time and got to hear (and even talk to!) some of my all-star favorite religious thought leaders, both known and previously unkown to me, including: Brian McLaren, Phyllis Tickle, Shane Claiborne, the Darkwood Brew team, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Diana Butler-Bass, James Forbes, Paul Knitter, Richard Rohr, Jim Wallis, David Bazan, Jay Bakker and Frank Shaeffer. That's some damn-good Christian name dropping.

Over the course of three days, two campfires and one unquenchable thirst to experience as much as I could, I was able to: get career advice from Jim Wallis, talk with Brian McLaren about Unitarian Universalism, sing all my favorite hymns at top volume with beer, listen to the story of Genesis told in the oral tradition, witness an unplanned snake handling by a brave woman, take communion while singing bluegrass folk songs, meet more people living in "community" than I ever knew lived in "community," cry at everything that came out of Shane Claiborne's mouth, laugh uproariously at everything that came out of Jay Bakker's mouth, appreciate Buddhism in a whole new way, participate in a quacky tent revival as if it were 1911, lose all sense of time in contemplative prayer and ::inhale:: be baptized by a tatted Lutheran. Only 364 days until next year!

In the midst of all the busyness and excitement I started hearing two central messages rise above the din as if the festival were making a point to me - here's what I heard:

1. We are entering the epoch of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Life. Phyllis Tickle made the point most explicitly - painting the picture that there was the time of the Father that we see most clearly in our liturgical traditions like Catholicism, Anglicanism and Lutheranism; the time of the Son which came about in more modern forms of Protestantism such as Baptistist and Pentecostal traditions, but now -  with our postmodern appetites, our multicultural and multifaith societies - now is the time for the Holy Spirit. The festival itself is named for a Celtic metaphor for the Holy Spirit - and we were all chasing the wild goose this weekend. The implications for this are huge and it will take more time to unpack them.

2. New Monasticism is big... really big. I volunteer weekly at a Catholic Worker house but even I was unprepared to how many young Christians are living in community - or looking to live in community - these days. And not all of it is as radical as it sounds, I learned that there are many ways to live in community, some of which look like being in really intense small groups while others are the sell all your possessions and live next to crack dens kind. All of it life-giving and all of it walking the talk of Christian discipleship. I realized, personally, just how much I need to find accountable and transformational community in Atlanta.

Those are my initial take-aways. I'm still processing and reveling in all I learned and experienced. I look forward to your thought and reflections on the Wild Goose Festival and the future of Christianity - whether you attending the festival or not! What do you think? Is this the time of the Spirit?

Check out other bloggers reactions to the Wild Goose:

• Lee Smith - Goose Bumps: Opportunities Everywhere for Offense. A Fair and Objective Review
• Ryan Hines – 30 Years Later – “Controversy” at Wild Goose
• Karyn Wiseman – Flying With the Goose
• Kyla Cofer – I went to the Wild Goose Fest and came back in love
• Brian Gerald Murphy – Born Again (Again) at Wild Goose
• Chris Lenshyn – Chasing the Wild Goose
• Cherie at Renaissance Garden – Wild Goose Return
• Deborah Wise – Wild Goose Chasing

Immigration and Exodus

Today was the second week of a summer Bible study that I'm helping to lead on the book of Exodus and immigration issues. We're reading the entire book over the course of the summer and hoping to glean from it some of the emotional truths about cultural identity, leaving one's home and sojourning for the promise of a milk and honey land. So far I'm loving it - and realizing a few things:

1. Our Bible study, which is part of a universalist group at my church called One Love, is uncannily drawn towards names and topics having something to do with Bob Marley songs: One Love, Exodus... I may suggest a Songs of Redemption theme next...(kidding!)
2. It is not very often that folks read the books of the Bible as complete books - and failing to do so is entirely our loss. "Qohelet" over at the Times & Seasons blog has written a great post about this.
3. As the eternal English major, I will never be able to satiate my appetite for unpacking the Bible stories in new ways. It is just way too much fun!

As for what we are learning about immigration - it's hard to encapsulate. We're a tight group of deep thinkers and there is no shortage of ideas that bubble up in our hour together.

However, one idea that I loved in particular from our conversation today was thinking about Moses' wife Zipporah's role in circumcising their son and thus taking on the cause of the Hebrew people in a very symbolic way. In that moment, with the bloody cleaver in her hand, Exodus is showing us us that immigration is quite literally not cut and dry - that families are enmeshed in different cultures and cutting ties with a place can be culturally, spiritually and emotionally bloody. Maybe this is what she means when she touches the foreskin to Moses feet and calls him the "bridegroom of blood." She was probably thinking to herself - there's no going back now. And there wasn't. There isn't.

If you are interested, one of our group members has created a nice blog where she is posting relevant news articles about immigration and migration issues in Georgia. Check it out here: http://migrationgeorgia.blogspot.com/ You can also join us every Sunday morning at 9am at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta. Hope to see you!

The Face of God and Serving the Least of These

One of my favorite Mumford & Sons songs opens with the words, "Serve God love me and men" - no punctuation. It reminds me of Matthew 25:40, when Jesus teaches us that he is among the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned and the outcasts - and it is through service that we not only find salvation - but also see the face of God.

I've been thinking a lot about service lately - I work in the service sector and personally I serve whenever I can at a Catholic Worker house here in Atlanta, caring for the infected and neglected feet of the homeless. The community there has such powerful symbols and artistic representation of this God-within-the-lowly theology - from the Fritz Eichenberg print of Jesus in the Bread Line to the hispanic crucifix on the wall. These representations push me to reimagine God - thinking beyond the bland panentheism that I am naturally drawn to. It's not enough for me to say God is in all things - the image of Christ in the bread line is far more powerful. One softens my gaze -the other focuses it. One is a poem, the other is a calling. And I think that's what Jesus was getting at in Matthew 25.

And with that focused gaze, I realize how much more work I have to do as a Christian. The other night was a perfect example:

I was hanging around after clinic with our homeless guests in the living room with nothing prescribed to say or do. No feet to wash, no buckets to bleach, just people to pass the time with. There were also two little kids there with us. They live with their father, sleeping in a truck, and are frequent guests of the community. We were all having a lot of fun with them - they were jumping up on the sofa cushions and running around with their toys and books - reading words from their Spanish children's dictionary. It was all very fun and incredibly adorable.

But what struck me so much was how they made absolutely no distinction between me, a volunteer, and the homeless men. Anyone else would have seen a difference and altered their behavior based on the judgement they made - either avoiding the homeless, or treating them especially nicely so as not to be perceived as avoiding the homeless. But these kids just saw us all as people - all of us equally fun to play with.

And I realized that that's how God sees us - all of us sinners and saints together. I hope that someday I can get closer to that place of openness and caring. I hope that someday I can more easily see the unobscured face of Christ. Until then, I know that the only way I'll get there is to keep serving and keep practicing.