Wild Goose Chase

This weekend should be a very good one for me.  You see, my hubby and I are going to this event.  Wild Goose is a four-day event that is publicized as "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."  (I love the all-inclusiveness of it.)


What is also exciting to me about this event is that I will be surrounded by people who are like-minded.    Long-time readers of my blog know about my spiritual struggle when I moved from Florida to Virginia.  Although Florida is in the Bible belt, it is not considered a "red" state, so the strange mixture of religion and politics was quite a shock to me.  Everyone in my community was friendly enough, but everyone I met assumed I was a Christian, with one of the first questions being, "Do you have a church home?"  This was no problem for me as 1) I knew they were being polite; 2) I am a Christian; and 3) I had already identified a church to attend.  However, the assumption was also that I held certain political beliefs.  What was worse, the general consensus seemed to be that it was actually un-Christian to have different beliefs.


Those were dark days for me.  I began to question whether or not I could call myself a Christian as it seemed I didn't fit the mold of what that means.  (Also, having studied medieval history, I was reluctant to give voice to my doubts and questions as I had read too much about what happened to heretics.)  During my search for "truth," I stumbled upon a web site and print magazine called Sojourners, run by a pastor named Jim Wallis.  I immediately subscribed to the magazine and pored over everything on the web site.  Hallelujah!  There were people like me out there who were Christians.  I found much comfort in this knowledge and also began to read books and blogs by the authors featured in the magazine.  


Now Wild Goose is almost upon us and I'm going to finally get to see in person some of those authors and activists whose words were like life-rafts to me.  People who know it's okay to have questions and not answers, who care about real people and not just about Bible verses, and who know that Jesus teaches that love trumps everything.


Here's a little video preview for the event: