Goin’ up the county: getting ready for Wild Goose 2013

Folks, I am beyond excited to be preparing for my very first Wild Goose Festival.  For those of you may not know, The Wild Goose is a Celtic metaphor for the Holy Spirit. The festival is a convergence of justice, spirituality, music and art pulled together and made more than the sum of their parts by the Holy Spirit. The festival is rooted in the Christian tradition AND open to all regardless of belief, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, denomination or religious affiliation.

This invitation directly from their site says it all for me

What the Wild Goose community believes is best discovered through shared experience. There is no litmus test beyond an open heart. There is no creed required beyond a willingness to meet respectfully across lines of difference, to share wisdom and listen to each other’s stories, and become more than the sum of our parts. We’re just getting started. The best way to discover what we’re about is to come to the festival. But if you’d like to read more about our aspirations, check out what some friends of ours in the UK have been doing for a few decades at Greenbelt; they inspire us and their commitments resonate with our own.

Ultimately, Wild Goose provides space for courageous, imaginative, and participative social justice work, creative expression, spiritual practice, and astonishing music.

We are called to embody a different kind of religious expression than has often dominated our institutions and culture.  We believe that the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better; so we refuse to merely denounce the shadow of the tradition and abandon it. Instead, we humbly seek to both tear down and build up, walking a path that embodies love of God, neighbor, and self.

We dream of a movement where everyone is welcome to participate. We are intentionally building a space in which we invite everyone to value, respect, and fully affirm people of any ethnicity, age, gender, gender expression, sexual identity, education, bodily condition, religious affiliation, or economic background, particularly the marginalized. We are committed to fair trade, gift exchange, ecological sanity, and economic inclusion. We strive for high standards of mutual respect, non-hierarchical leadership, and participative planning.

We invite you to join us.

I will be facilitating a Pecha Kucha (Google it, it’s way cool!) a session exploring sexuality.  I will be joined by a fantastic panel of presenters representing faithful and diverse voices as we unpack connections between the Good News and good sex.  If you’ve spent more than a minute checking out my blog I bet you can imagine the energy this session will be electric! As much as I am excited about sharing this session with folks, I am even more excited about a weekend of fellowship and fun basking in the words, music, prayers and laughter of a field full of friends new and old.

And as I think about my stay in the Hot Springs area of North Carolina, hanging out with a whole campground full of hippy-dippy Jesus freaks like myself I start to hear (in the back of my mind) this song from the Woodstock era (and the Woodstock film). Laugh if you will, I just do!

I also hear this song that makes my heart sigh…

Now for something incredibly important!  My home away from home while at Wild Goose will be this funky little pop-up camper.  As I have been inviting people to stop by for a visit I realized that this space of hospitality needs a name – preferably of the tavern variety.   I asked a few people to suggest some names but I just can’t seem to narrow it down so I wonder if  you’d like to help out by voting or even suggesting a name of your own.  So I invite you to check out the little survey below and help me name my little pop-up public house!

A really important survey

And last but not least –  a discount!

If you have not yet registered but are still thinking about coming I have a little something to share – 20% off registration! Just click here and follow this link to the discounted registration page and you will automatically receive 20% off the current registration rate.

I hope to see you there!