And There Was Rain: The Expectations and Reality of a Wild Goose Chase

by Charity Erickson

Whatever there is to be said about Wild Goose Festival 2013, my strongest impression will remain that I was mildly damp for its entirety.

Before I left for the festival I had many romantic fantasies about what it would be like: camping in a beautiful mountain setting with friendly hippies, passing food and stories and beer around the campfire. But instead, at the end of most nights I found myself trying to dry out my tent, watching episodes of New Girl on what was left of my laptop battery, scarfing chips and hummus while nursing my beer alone.

I’m not complaining (except for the incessant moist-ness of North Carolina; I’m definitely complaining about that)—when I’m at home, I relax into the evening by watching TV on my laptop while I prepare dinner. It’s what I like to do. In retrospect, I was in a state of denial when I decided to camp out in the first place. My imagination had recommended camping to me in a way that had no connection to reality; it hadn’t mentioned the nightly throb of screaming cicadas, port-a-potty stink, dead flashlight batteries and shoe-sucking mud.

I sat quietly in my tent on Thursday night, and as all my campfire visions faded into the ether I realized: I loathe camping.

This was the first of many instances of thwarted expectations I encountered over the course of the festival. When I made it down to Friday morning’s first Main Stage gathering—an “Elder’s Session” with Krista Tippett, Phyllis Tickle, Vincent Harding, and “honorary elder” Speech from Arrested Development—I looked out over the sea of camp chairs and was shocked to see not a horde of young, bearded radicals and hippy-dippy mamas; instead, attendance was dominated by Baby Boomers, and older.

And as I discovered in the next session—a workshop where participants engaged in conversations about race and difference, led by Dana N. Courtney and Alexia Salvatierra—most attendees were not the Shane-Claiborne-inspired, post-evangelical types that I expected to encounter. They were, by and large, mainliners.

Is it horribly ignorant, and rude, that I was stunned (and perhaps slightly disappointed) to realize that I—a charismatic, evangelical, pseudo Christian-Anarchist—had come to the woods looking for a transcendent spiritual experience…and found myself at a mainline conference? I came to the festival thinking I was going to a meeting of like-minds; what I found was that I was feeling increasingly on the outside of the festival culture—and increasingly critical of it.

Lest one think I was glaring through sessions, arms folded and silently judging, I found the actual content of the festival to be incredibly moving and engaging. I wept through Philip Yancey’s (sometimes bordering on politically-incorrect) talk about God’s affection for the imperfect; I sniveled through Nadia Bolz-Weber’s characterization of the faith as one of defiant hope; I boo-hoo-hooed as Frank Schaeffer told a beautiful story about being blessed by an extremely conservative church community; I teared up as Melvin Bray (a favorite new-to-me voice at the festival) spoke about what happens when we miss opportunities to respond to God. Over the course of four days, I was consistently the mess at the back of the crowd. Usually this means that I’m enjoying myself. Also, that I am tired.

The source of my criticism has to do with the festival’s culture. There was a lot of discussion about racial reconciliation, which fit with the theme “Re-Membering the Body.” But I didn’t see it addressed in practical ways. Several speakers made reference to the fact that non-Western, non-white Christianity is increasingly Pentecostal—Phyllis Tickle, Alexia Salvatierra, and in a more critical way, Brian McLaren. (Hear his fascinating story here from 25:00-28:45.) But the culture of the festival was not one that was welcoming to charismatic worship styles.

Despite the festival being named for the Celtic understanding of the Holy Spirit, the general attitude of the festival was apathy—and sometimes, antagonism—towards the way that most of the world’s non-white Christians understand the Holy Spirit. Most Christians worldwide believe in miracles, healing prayer, and “spiritual warfare.” All this was, to me, significantly absent; instead, there was liturgy fandom (which I want to understand, but don’t totally get yet.)

I recognize that it isn’t evil to appeal to a population with a distinct culture. As Brian McLaren responded when I asked how the culture of liberal Christianity could find a point of connection with non-Western Pentecostal Christianity (video linked above, 44:50,) holding cultural (and spiritual) distinctives with love and integrity can enrich relationships between those with differences.

And if race hadn’t been such a topic of concerned conversation at the festival, I might not have noticed the weird dissonance between what the festival-goers claimed to want, and what they actually enjoyed. If a gathering of Christians aims to be a force for bridging the cultural/racial divide and yet its worship practice consists of Beer and Hymns, Johnny Cash on the banjo, and contemplative prayer—not to mention the ubiquitous cracking of jokes at the expense of worship choruses—it’s hard not to see its concern as disingenuous, or at least, an expression of deep denial.

If multicultural Christian fellowship were to be a true priority for Wild Goose, it would take more than inviting a diverse selection of speakers. The entire culture of the festival would need to change—the music, the worship, the location. A multicultural Wild Goose would have a totally different identity—one that, perhaps, the people who currently attend would not enjoy as much.

Just as I discovered when I arrived at my sodden campsite, what is ideal to the imagination takes on a much different form in reality. Wild Goose, as it is, probably shouldn’t expect to lead the charge in the Church’s conversation about race—it’s not a hospitable place for open and honest discussion on that particular topic. And you know what? That’s ok. Wild Goose has become a home and haven for those who have been alienated from Christ’s Body in a number of different ways; just because it is not the best venue for pursuing racial reconciliation in the Church doesn’t mean it isn’t serving a desperately necessary function.

The solution to this problem is honesty. Honesty about who we are, what we like, and how far we are willing to stretch ourselves to achieve a desired goal. For me—a hand-waving, amen-shouting Charismatic—and the majority of Christians worldwide, the festival would be more culturally comfortable if it had a greater emphasis on the Pentecostal understanding of the Holy Spirit (and if it was held closer to a Starbucks.) But if what would be meaningful to me threatened the inclusive, free, and delightfully weird identity of the Wild Goose community, it would be a travesty—a thunderstorm over the campfire. And that wouldn’t be fun for anyone. 

Charity Erickson and her husband Lance live and work together in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Check out her blog for more of her writing and follow her on Twitter @CharityJill. 

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. 

You might also like:

• Warrior Christ: Why Fox News Should Love Reza Aslan's Jesus
• The Memory of Violence
• The Power of Sacrilege (or, God Said Haha)

A Work In Progress

by Ryan Hawk

We are all a work in progress; that’s the true reality of sanctification. At no point do I ever fully understand the faith I claim or the church to which I belong. There are mysteries that are simply unknowable, mysteries in my heart which are unknown even to me.

I have been on a journey. My faith has moved: a path which has taken me from the inherited certainties of my childhood to a place of questioning and skepticism; a post-evangelical landscape where our former assumptions are scrutinized in the harsh light of our newly discovered realities. And on this journey, certain questions continue to dog my steps, questions I never would have heard without starting down this road, questions about meaning, and identity, and privilege, and what it means when I am still not certain.

I look around at my fellow travelers. In this place full of evangelical refugees, we are quick to mock and caricature the traditions from which we’ve emerged. There is anger. There are wounds. These caricatures are birthed out of legacies of pain. Yet some of our stereotypes, we make unfairly. 

We are all a work in progress.

It is rare that I meet someone of my age who doesn’t have painful stories about the faith of their youth. Whether it be the doctrines that bound us, or the church leaders who preyed on their followers, or who let us down when we put full faith in their promises. The church is flawed because people are flawed, and it will be so until the new creation. 

That may not be optimistic, but it’s true. And this means I am flawed too. I am part of this same flawed body. Though I have left the institutions of my youth, it continues to be a part of the church universal. I cannot run away. I cannot forsake them. If I am critical of them (and I must be critical of them) I must never be so without the virtues of love and grace.

A professor of mine in seminary once taught me about the “ladder of inference.” It is a series of unconscious assumptions shaped by our context and experiences, which allow us to move from perceived facts to a conclusion or action. As a result, we are a shaped by all that has come before; it does not allow us to start over. We are molded by our history, our education, our place of birth, our families, our churches and their teachings. Whether we have attempted to relinquish those assumptions and move onto something new, or whether we continue to hold to them, they still shape us profoundly. We can’t escape that fact.

The church has failed many of us. But does this mean that Christ has failed us as well? Do the missteps of the institution invalidate the authenticity of faith? This is where hope comforts. If the church is to be like Christ, then there are plenty of reasons to say that Christ has indeed failed, but hope assures us that the stumbles along the way do not negate the journey. It’s a path, and we are climbing.
 
Failure on this journey is not found in the stumbles and falls, no matter how many times they occur. Failure is assuming that one has arrived, to make camp long before the end – when we grow comfortable by trading certainty for certainty; replacing the inherited assumptions from our youth with the new-found assumptions of our adulthood – when we feel justified sitting back, and mocking those who “haven’t arrived.”

But we are all on a journey; we are all a work in progress. And that compels us to seek truth with humility, to love with empathy, to extend mercy without condition. Challenge yourself. Read something you disagree with; talk to someone who doesn’t see eye to eye with you, because even those we disagree with must be looked upon with grace; they, too, are a work in progress.

Ryan David Hawk is a recovering cynic living in Colorado who looks good in a hat. His writings cannot be found anywhere because he struggles to deal with the pressures of blogging after trying and failing too many times. He sometimes uses Twitter and can be followed @ryandavidhawk.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. 

You might also like:

• On Macklemore, Webb, and Being Safe for the Whole Family
• What We Talk About When We Talk About Rob Bell
• On Cynicism (Or, Beware the Ides of March)