The second annual Wild Goose Festival will take place this summer just outside of Durham at Shakori Hills from June 21-24. Come join me for a great experience. Here's a short video from last year's gathering.
Peace,
Milton
Once upon a time, a guitar was a guitar. No qualifiers were needed. Then along came rock and roll and amplification and we needed more than one word to describe the stringed instrument because there was more than one kind. Thus, what had always been a guitar became an acoustic guitar to set it apart from its electrified cousin. The history of language is full of such stories. As I have sought to reflect on something I noticed in my reflections on the Wild Goose Festival, I found myself running into some of the same language – or at least that’s the way it feels to me.
I’ve kept thinking about the number of people I met at the festival who described themselves as being a part of an “intentional community,” which had several meanings but did not, at least for the folks I was talking to, have much to do with the historical faith community that is the church. Some had names for what they were doing; some even saw their gathering as the beginning of a new movement. All of them seemed earnest and committed and working hard to make faith matter. And most of them were younger than me, so I tried to look at the generational divide and the changing face of American Christianity and any other related issue I could think of and then I kept coming back to my acoustic guitar and the same haunting question: why didn’t they consider the local church to be an intentional community?
Yes, I know there are things about the church that need to change whether we’re talking about the church universal or the old stone building on the corner, and week in and week out for two millennia those who gather to gather to ask the Lord’s blessing are how our faith has gotten handed down. Intentionally. I think about our church here in Durham, about the two sets of parents – each with twins – who get to church more Sundays than not, about some of our elderly folks who face severe physical challenges just to get out of bed and hardly miss a Sunday, about those who are committed to choir and to our summer feeding program and our various ministries to the homeless and poor in our community, about those who take meals to others in need of food and fellowship, about those who just returned from a week of tornado relief work in Birmingham. For all of its faults and things that need to change, our community is shot through with intentionality, and we are not the only ones.
A quick survey of Christian history reveals a number of shortcomings and sins of the institutional church across the centuries, and it also shows how the Body of Christ has intentionally incarnated the love of God in some fairly amazing ways. Both the past and the future of our faith have thrived on new wine and new wineskins, so I glad to hear folks talking about their theological and ecclesiastical explorations. The church on any level has never had a corner on the truth. Those who are in the first generation of a new intentionality have yet to stare down what every faith community from the very first disciples on down have had to come to terms with: self-perpetuation.
In Acts, one of the first things the twelve disciples did was to vote on a replacement for Judas. They didn’t have much of a structure or any church by-laws with which to contend, but somehow they felt they had to have twelve to go on. So they voted. Those who had been asked to drop what they were doing and follow Jesus to a new thing brought in Judas’ replacement by institutional action. Then came the deacons to make sure the widows and orphans were taken care of. Then people began to realize the twelve weren’t going to live forever. You get the picture. Any institution, Christian or otherwise, that lives beyond its first generation of participants will see self-perpetuation become one of the primary values of the group. That, however, doesn’t automatically make it something other than intentional community.
Once again, the richness of what our faith can mean is in the creative tension between the community Christ intended that we illustrate every time we take Communion and the revolution he called us to foment within the very institution we call home. We are called to be intentional about being together and tearing down the house at the same time. Our faith and our community will not thrive without radical change any more than it will survive without a deep reverence and connection to those who came before us. I didn’t stay in the denomination in which I was raised and even ordained because I wanted to the primary emotion evoked by my faith to be something other than rage. So I found a home in the UCC. I also remain deeply grateful for my Baptist heritage and for the connections I still find there.
The question I want to take back to my church from all of this is, “In what ways have we allowed our community to become unintentional?” What have we taken for granted? How has our familiarity blinded us to what God would do in our midst? What do we hang on to for no reason other than we haven’t chosen to let it go? At the same time, I would like to go back to some of those to whom I spoke at the festival and ask, “What does intentionality mean to you?” Why does it need to be expressed at the expense of the church? How do you imagine what you are doing will look like in fifty or a hundred years?
If we are all serious about intentional community, we will listen to one another’s answers, make room for both change and history, and be deliberate in our love for one another most of all.
Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.
Peace,
Milton
Sunday evening I sat down to dinner with friends from Durham after I had made my last run to the airport of the day to drop off folks heading home from the Wild Goose Festival, which was held at Shakori Hills near Durham. Saturday was my friend Terry’s birthday and I wanted to eat dinner with him. Around the table with us were Ginger, Lori (Terry’s wife and fellow driver for the festival), and other friends John and Sonya. I’m not sure how long I had been sitting at the table before I fell asleep – for the first of at least three short naps during dinner. After four days of driving and listening and talking and being a part of the inaugural event, I finally ran out of adrenaline.
Now, after a day to make the last two airport runs, sleep, and reflect on what I saw and heard, I am grateful to have been a part of an amazing weekend and I want to encourage anyone on the receiving end of this post to do what you can to be here next year. Some of the people who will help make my case can be found in the links that follow: Beth Nielsen Chapman, David LaMotte, Michelle Shocked, Tom Prasada-Rao, David Wilcox, Vince Anderson, Julie Lee, Derek Webb, Ashley Cleveland, Psalters – to mention some of the musicians; Rabbi Or Rose, Bowie Snodgrass and Samir Selmanovek from Faith House Manhattan, Darkwood Brew, People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, NC Peace Action, Lilly Lewin, Gabriel Salguero from Lamb’s Church in New York, Colin Richard from Plant with Purpose, Vincent Harding, James Forbes, Tim Tyson, the Void Collective, and Eliacin Rosario-Cruz. My list is far from exhaustive.
The wild goose is a metaphor for the Holy Spirit drawn from Celtic Christianity. The organizers brought everyone together to see what might happen more than force a specific design on the time, other than scheduling it full of folks with dreams and ideas to share. I kept thinking of the closing lines of Mary Oliver’s poem, “Wild Geese”:
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,Since I was the transportation coordinator, I had more conversations in the van going to and from either the airport or the hotels in the bustling metropolis of Siler City than I did in actual sessions, and I came away challenged and encouraged by what I saw and heard. Perhaps the strongest impression I had is that the Next Big Thing in Christianity is not going to be a big thing. By that I mean, I met a number of people who were doing great, small work. Yes, they wanted to change the world and they were doing it one song, or one conversation, or one tree planting at a time rather than seeking to fill stadium-sized sanctuaries or to bounce their ideas off of every satellite they could find. I met a number of people who described what they were doing as being a part of “an intentional community” and far fewer that talked about being a part of a church. (I’m not sure how to unpack that difference just yet, but I noticed it.) And, though there were a fair share of people with publishing deals and books to sell, I felt more folks were seeking to be faithful more than famous.
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
If you haven't already heard, consider this your invitation.
The inaugural Wild Goose Festival is happening at Shakori Hills camp ground, not far from where I live here in Durham, North Carolina. Here is how the folks putting on the festival describe it:
The Wild Goose is a Celtic metaphor for the Holy Spirit. We are followers of Jesus creating a festival of justice, spirituality, music and the arts. The festival is rooted in the Christian tradition and therefore open to all regardless of belief, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, denomination or religious affiliation.
In adopting the image of the Wild Goose we recognize that in the current climate of religious, social and political cynicism, embracing the creative and open nature of our faith is perhaps our greatest asset for re-building and strengthening our relationships with each other, with our enemies, with our stories, our texts, and the earth. In that spirit, in a festive setting, and in the context of meaningful, respectful, and sustained relationships, we invite you to create with us!They have worked hard to put together a lineup of folks to engage, encourage, and challenge. The speakers and musicians include Beth Neilsen Chapman, Michelle Shocked, Rev. James Forbes, Brian McLaren, Phyllis Tickle, Richard Rohr, Jay Bakker, David Wilcox, Derek Webb, T-Bone Burnett, Jim Wallis, Tom Prasada-Rao, Over the Rhine, Billy Jonas, Nancy Sehested, Shane Claiborne, Vince Anderson, Aaron Strumpel, Vincent Harding, Liz Janes, Agents of the Future, Denison Witmer, Alexie Torres-Fleming, John Dear, Pete Rollins, Richard Twiss, William Barber, Ed Dobson, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Diana Butler-Bass, Jim Forbes, Lynne Hybels, the Lee Boys, Ashely Cleveland, Andy Gullahorn, Sarah Masen, the Reading Brothers, Lawson and Lobella, David LaMotte, Chip Andrus, Marcus Hummon, David Boone, Rich Hordinski, Tracy Howe Wispelway, Darkwood Brew, Chuck Marohnic, Trent Yaconelli, David Bazan, Dudley Delffs, Anna Clark, Karen Bjerland, Nathan George, Nelson Johnson, Scott Teens, Tony Campolo, Soong-Chan Rah, Doug Pagitt, Donald Shriver, Peggy Shriver, Matt Pritchard, Sean Gladding, Bart Campolo, Frank Schaeffer, Peterson Toscano, Gareth Higgins, Derrick Tennant, Mark Yaconelli, June Keener Wink, Joyce and Peter Majendie, Ted Swartz, Angela Carlson, and Vic Thiessen. (Sorry -- I couldn't bring myself to make all the links.)
