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2015 Contributor

The Beauty of Peace: Art At Wild Goose 2015

By 2015 Contributor, 2015 Festival, Goose News

troy bThere are more ways to explore peacemaking than just through music and speaking. This year, our theme will permeate through every segment of the festival, including the visual arts. In fact, there are some ways that peace can only be explored through art.

“In curating the theme Blessed are the Peacemakers, we noticed that peacemaking included everything from making peace, to reconciling worlds to being prophetic in the world about what is at peace or at war,” explains Troy Bronsink. Troy is this year’s art content leader for the festival.

So, what will you see at Wild Goose this year? Here’s a small sampler.

1. Stations of the Cross: Mental Illness

Mary Button Stations of the CrossAs you walk around the the festival you’ll notice Mary Button’s installation, Stations of the Cross: Mental Illness. Take some time so see how her artwork both tells a story and creates space for new encounters with what it means to be at peace, long for peace, and make peace.

2. Live Art!

You’ll also see the work of Dan Nelson who will be painting the festival at the Live Art Tent. Take time to talk with him about your experience of peacemaking as he listens for the voice of the Goose and depicts this powerful weekend and burgeoning community through his art.

3. The Art Tent Gallery & Beyond

dewayne barton and artThere will be work from at least five artists in the Art Tent Gallery with very different perspectives and approaches as well as hosts who can walk you through an experience of that work. Stefan Gustafsson and Fred Wise are two of the artists that will be featured there. Stefan is from Sweden and his works involve lengthy processes of mingling minerals and pigments to explore reconciliation and differentiation. Contrast that with the work of Fred whose watercolor and oil paintings depict stories of struggle and mystery. Art will appear around the festival as well. For example, DeWayne Barton, pictured above, will have a sculpture on display somewhere on the grounds.

4. Maker’s Space

DSC_0338We’ll have a maker’s space for you to participate in making materials for the Art Liturgy on Saturday at 2 pm, which will include a large acoustic stringed instrument orchestra. So bring your guitar or banjo if you have it!

5. Thoughtful Discussions

menewhorizonsThis year, author and long time friend of the Goose, Frank Schaeffer, will be showing some of his recent paintings. Also on Saturday, he’ll be in conversation with A’Driane Nieves (pictured above) about the role of our own stories and family’s stories in making and reading art. Nieves’ work is a reflection on her experiences as a mother, a woman of color, someone who has battled with mental illness, and as a minority in the growing liberal city of Austin, Texas, all lived through the perspective of faith. Her work has been featured in regional and national #blacklivesmatter forums and she’ll be including a recent book of works and excerpts from her blog.

6. Art as Spiritual Practice

Patrick MahonThere are other artists showing this year who identify their work as direct spiritual practice. Cassandra Lawrence develops art with worshippers and within worship to enable participants to corporately participate beyond words. Patrick Mahon is a contemplative and student of Merton. (One of his photographs is pictured above.) His photography is intended to cultivate peace within the viewer, calling you not to simply “see” but to be present in the seeing.

Slow Church in the face of Deep Injustice?

By 2015 Contributor, 2015 Festival, Goose News

Last year I was pleased to be at Wild Goose for the first time and to talk about my book Slow Church (co-written with John Pattison), and how the Slow Food movement and other burgeoning Slow movements might offer wisdom for us as we seek to cultivate community in the patient way of Jesus. One of the questions that I was asked at Wild Goose last summer was: “What is the meaning of Slow Church in situations that demand urgent responses: e.g., situations of deep injustice?” This question echoed through many of the conversations that I’ve had about Slow Church over the last year, especially in the wake of racial injustice in places like Ferguson, MO, Staten Island, NY, Baltimore and most recently McKinney, TX. The question was a central one in several conversations I had with my friend Brandon Wrencher (an African- American UMC pastor in rural NC). We decided to co-facilitate a conversation on this question at Wild Goose next month.

Brandon_WrencherA post of this sort is entirely too brief to tackle a question of this kind of significance. However, I do want to offer a couple of thoughts that I believe are vital to answering this question. My first thought in answering this question is that an essential part of what we are calling Slow Church is it is not enough simply to respond to crisis situations, but we must be ever attentive to how we respond. Or in other words, our means must fit the ends that we seek. In this regard, I am reminded how vital prayer vigils were to the Civil Rights movements, as a way of preparing marchers to bear witness non-violently to the sort of peace and justice for all humanity that we have been called to in Jesus. On a similar note, I recently heard Rev. Traci Blackmon, a UCC pastor and community leader in Ferguson, tell the story of an elder in that community who in the midst of the marching and the escalating tension between police and protestors would daily drive up to a parking lot near the protest zone, and set up tables of abundant food and serve whoever was hungry. This Eucharistic sort of story reminds us of the space that the table – and especially a table that is seen as the Lord’s Table, at which anyone is welcome – creates for getting to the basic roots of humanity (e.g., the need to eat) and for conversation in which we begin to know and trust others.

A second thought in response to this question is that we live in an interconnected creation. Deep injustice is never merely a problem to be fixed, but is interwoven in intricate ways with other forms of injustice. One of my favorite theologians, Dr. Willie James Jennings of Duke Divinity School, emphasizes, for instance, that the racial injustices that are on the front of many of our minds today, had their origin in the early modern era in the social, economic and ecological injustices of human disconnectedness from land and place.

This complex web of injustice that has given shape to modern life as we know it in the twenty-first century eludes easy solutions, and might even be so massive and deeply embedded in life as we know it to tempt many of us to give up hope. The hope that we need, and the hope that lies at the heart of Slow Church, is the possibility of an alternative community, a community that embedded in the struggles for justice, but one that that is oriented toward the hope of God’s reconciliation of all things in and through Jesus. Our fundamental call as churches is not to be networks of religious individuals, but rather to be communities rooted in our particular places that are seeking to offer an alternative to the rampant injustice of our age. We should walk alongside our neighbors who are having injustice heaped upon them, and lament these injustices with them, but our primary call as churches is to imagine and to begin to embody in our life together a social order that is defined by the conviction that God desires peace, justice and reconciliation for all humanity and all creation.

These thoughts, I realize, hardly begin to scratch the surface of the basic question of Christian faithfulness and the deep injustices of our world, and especially when our concepts of Christian faithfulness – as Willie Jennings and others have argued – have threads of injustice interwoven into them. And so, I challenge you not to lose hope in the face of overwhelming injustice, but to continually seek to embody an alternative community that is rooted in the person of Jesus, whose life, teaching, death and resurrection was the very epitome of peace and justice.

And I invite you to join with Brandon and myself as we host a conversation at Wild Goose about these essential and unavoidable questions.

C. Christopher (Chris) Smith is a part of the Englewood Christian Church community on the urban Near Eastside of Indianapolis and is senior editor of The Englewood Review of Books. The co-author of Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus (IVP Books, 2014), he is currently finalizing a new book entitled Reading for the Common Good: Toward the Flourishing of our Churches, our Neighborhoods and the World.

Making Peace with the Church

By 2015 Contributor, 2015 Festival, Guest Post

lane_author-photo_compressedLike all good anthropologists, I started research for my new book Lessons in Belonging from a Church-Going Commitment Phobe with a list of questions, not answers. Why is it so hard to belong to a local church? How do we know when we’ve found the one, and if there is no “one,” how do we make do with one that’s good enough? Can we really share flesh in Christ and not get eaten alive by one another? And when does a church go from being an imperfect one to a toxic one? Will we ever be able to make peace with a church that’s not a place of peace for all?

I am not a natural born peacemaker.

Although Erin means peace in Gaelic, I like to tell people my name is more aspirational than prophetic. At the age of five, I fought with the Catholic Church to receive my First Holy Communion two years early. At eight, as part of my parents’ divorce proceedings, I went before a Jewish arbitrator, argued, and lost my right to choose my own religion. At fourteen, I rebelled against the court orders and attended a non-demoninational church in which the Holy Spirit – and the handsome boys – set me aflame. When I married a Methodist pastor at age twenty-two, some friends worried I’d been domesticated. Four years later – and still happily married – I legally returned to my maiden name because his “just didn’t feel right.”

Making peace with the church and its people has been lifetime work for me. Despite my generation’s reputation for being a bunch of affiliation-averse, individualistically-inclined, spiritual-DIY-ers, I think many of us have struggled to make peace with the church not because we don’t care about this community of Christ-followers but because we care it’s done well – with excellence and creativity and accountability. The late poet John O’Donohue called this type of intense lover of the church the “artist.” We often think of artists as living on the edge of culture, the innovators and free thinkers, but O’Donohue described the artist this way: “He inhabits the tradition to such depth that he can feel it beat in his heart, but his tradition also makes him feel like a total stranger who can find for his longing no echo there.”

The artist makes her home not on the edge of culture but amidst her own near-constant heartbreak.

I have never been to the Wild Goose Festival before. But I suspect that among this group of faithful rebels, hearts are raw. I want to know about these hearts, the reckless hearts, the brave hearts, the skittish hearts, the open hearts. Author Parker Palmer points out that the word heart as its most ancient comes from the Latin cor and represents that hidden wholeness within each of us that holds together the intellectual, the emotional, the bodily, the imaginative, and all our ways of knowing. This heart stuff isn’t for the faint. If we want to be true peacemakers with the church and others, we must first make peace within our selves.

I don’t have answers for how exactly each one of us is called to do that. I’m hoping that’s what we can share and explore at the festival breakout session together. But I do know that each of us has a choice in how we will respond to our heartbreak. We can either let it take us out of the action in favor of a simpler life where we belong without question or question without belonging, or we can let it lead us into a more wholehearted life in which the contradictions of our faith open us to the death of illusions, the suffering of community, and the resurrection of our real selves as members of God’s household.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” – Matthew 5:9

Erin S. Lane is author of Lessons in Belonging from a Church-Going Commitment Phobe and co-editor of Talking Taboo: American Christian Women Get Frank about Faith. Confirmed Catholic, raised Charismatic, and married to a Methodist, she facilitates retreats for clergy and congregational leaders through the Center for Courage & Renewal. To find more of her writing, visit holyhellions.com.

 

More Great Speakers/Artists

By 2015 Contributor, 2015 Festival

We’re pleased to present you more of the inspiring speakers/artists you can look forward to hearing from at this year’s festival. Read on to learn more about Yara Allen, Julie Clawson, Tony Kriz, Micky ScottBey Jones, Bec Cranford-Smith, Troy Bronsink, Sandhya Rani Jha and Rev. Yolanda!

Yara AllenYara Allen
Yara Allen is a seasoned cultural artist and longtime activist from Rocky Mount, NC. She is considered the “Theo-Musicologist” for the Forward Together Moral Movement. She performs movement songs that connect the cultural arts movement of today to movements of the past while integrating spoken word/poetry and the visual arts. Ms. Allen is also a Moral Monday arrestee and organizer with the NC NAACP. She is currently working on a manuscript for a book of social justice poetry.

Julie ClawsonJulie Clawson
Julie Clawson is a mom, writer and former pastor who lives in Austin, TX with her two kids and two cats. Julie is a huge sci-fi/fantasy geek, wannabe foodie, theology nerd, social justice advocate and board game fan. She is the author of Everyday Justice: The Global Impact of Our Daily Choices (IVP) and The Hunger Games and the Gospel (Patheos Press).

Tony-KrizTony Kriz
Tony is husband to Aimee, father to three courageous and creative boys, unofficial ambassador of his beloved Portland, devoted to his neighborhood, honored by his communal household, and a friend to the religious and irreligious alike. Tony is a neighborhood theologian who leads with personal confession, asking the questions that others are not willing to ask, and orchestrating epiphanies that surprise audiences. His honest writings, including his most recent book ALOOF, are helping people live an authentic faith.

Micky J WEBMicky ScottBey Jones
Micky ScottBey Jones is a “contemplivist” leader and organizer who hosts & facilitates conferences, trainings and online conversations, writes & speaks on a variety of topics including burnout, race & justice, theology from the margins, and curates contemplative spaces/activities. Recently named one of the “Black Christian Leaders Changing the World” in Huffington Post, Micky trains & encourages missional practitioners and faith-rooted activists through TransFORM Network as the Director of Training and Program Development.

BecgooseBec Cranford-Smith
Bec self-identifies as a Bapticostal Misfit. She has been attempting to escape southern fried religiosity her whole life, but she really likes the Jesus guy and that Kenosis stuff. She works at one of Atlanta’s largest homeless service agencies as the volunteer guru and catch-all. Her favorite part of the job revolves around challenging stereotypes of homelessness and working with large groups of young people – mostly missions students.

troy bTroy Bronsink
Troy Bronsink leads retreats for creatives, social activists, and faith groups. He serves as Director of Outreach and Communication with Northminster Presbyterian Church. A singer-songwriter, he often speaks or plays music at camps and conferences, making the most of opportunities to build deeper collaborative relationships between creatives. His discussions of “Church as Art” grew into a discussion of “Life as Art”, which led to his book Drawn In: A Creative Process for Artists, Activists, and Jesus Followers.

SandhyaSandhya Rani Jha
Sandhya Rani Jha serves as Director of the Oakland Peace Center, a collective of innovative non-profits working to create justice and peace in the city of Oakland and the Bay Area. Sandhya’s passion is liberation ethics as an academic field and as a lived experience in urban communities. She has published Room at the Table: Struggle for Unity and Equality in Disciples History, a book about people of color in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and co-wrote (with Ben Bohren and Paula Bishop Pochieca) And Still We Rise, a congregational study of transformation. Sandhya is an anti-racism/anti-oppression trainer with the Disciples of Christ, a regular public speaker and preacher.

Rev YolandaRev. Yolanda
Born in Muscle Shoals Alabama, Rev. Yolanda has been performing as a drag queen singer songwriter and Radical Faerie for over 20 years with roots in Country Gospel music with a strong spiritual foundation. Rev. Yolanda’s music ministry is “Rev Yolanda’s Old Time Gospel Hour”. S/He brings a message of Non Duality into every event by merging GLBT and Mainstream Popular Culture with Integrated Spirituality. With a soulful voice, a message of oneness, great costumes, and a wicked sense of humor, his/her shows and CDs emphasize love, beautiful melodies, interesting stories, and a bit of inspiration.

2015 Featured Speakers

By 2015 Contributor, 2015 Festival

From Ferguson to Baltimore to Pakistan, upheaval, violence and injustice are shaking the world. In the midst of this turmoil, what does it mean to be a peacemaker?

This year, Wild Goose Festival goers will heed the call and fearlessly dive into that conversation with the theme Blessed Are The Peacemakers.

Please join us in welcoming John Dear, William Barber, Alexia Salvatierra, Robyn Henderson-Espinoza, Brian McLaren, Frank Schaeffer and Romal Tune as our Featured Speakers at Wild Goose 2015! Read on to find out more about these powerful peacemakers, who not only talk about peace, but also practice it!

John DearJohn Dear
John Dear a Catholic priest and internationally recognized voice for peace and nonviolence. He served for years as the director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the largest interfaith peace organization in the U.S.  Author of The Nonviolent Life, Dear has been arrested over 75 times in acts of civil disobedience against war and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

william_barber


William Barber
William Barber is North Carolina NAACP president and organizer of the Moral Mondays movement. A full-time pastor at Greenleaf Christian Church, he’s volunteered countless hours to champion social change because he believes there is no worship without commitment to justice.

Salvatierra,-AlexiaAlexia Salvatierra
Alexia Salvatierra is the author (along with Dr. Peter Heltzel) of Faith-Rooted Organizing: Mobilizing the Church in Service to the World and the founder of the Faith-Rooted Organizing UnNetwork. She is a Lutheran Pastor with over 35 years of experience in congregational and community ministry, and has been a national leader in the areas of working poverty and immigration, including the co-founding of the national Evangelical Immigration Table.

brianmclaren2010aBrian McLaren
Brian D. McLaren is an author, speaker, activist, and networker among innovative Christian leaders. His dozen-plus books include A New Kind of Christianity, A Generous Orthodoxy, Naked Spirituality, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?, and We Make the Road by Walking. He is a senior fellow with Auburn Seminary, and a board member and leader in Convergence Network and Center for Progressive Renewal.

Robyn Henderson-EspinozaRobyn Henderson-Espinoza
Robyn Henderson-Espinoza is a queer Latin@ who negotiates layers of agnosticism as their faith orientation. Believing that the ways of Jesus are tangible ways of enacting radical social change, Robyn strategically deploys theologies and ethics of radical difference to disrupt the hegemonic structures that reproduce multi-system oppressions. As an anti-oppression, anti-racist, Trans*gressive genderqueer, Robyn takes seriously their call as an activist theologian and ethicist to bridge together theories and practices that result in communities responding to pressing social concerns.

FS Portrait 2Frank Schaeffer
Frank Schaeffer is a New York Times bestselling author of both fiction and nonfiction, including Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God. Frank is also an artist and prolific painter. The New York Times described Frank thus: “To millions of evangelical Christians, the Schaeffer name is royal, and Frank is the reluctant, wayward, traitorous prince. His crime is not financial profligacy, like some pastors’ sons, but turning his back on Christian conservatives.”

Tune PhotoRomal Tune
Romal is the embodiment of living beyond the label. After overcoming the setbacks of his upbringing and the destructive choices of his youth, he is now a sought out communicator, community strategist, and education consultant. His platform, one of the most potent and rich stories of hope you’ll ever hear, is redemption. Since growing up in the trauma of poverty, violence, and the inner-city landscapes void of opportunity, he has triumphed to the heights of a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Howard University and Duke University School of Divinity, an ordained minister, and the author of an award-winning book entitled, God’s Graffiti: Inspiring Stories for Teens.

 

2015 Featured Musical Artists!

By 2015 Contributor, 2015 Festival

We are THRILLED to announce the Wild Goose 2015 featured musical artists!

Get your ears and hearts ready for this fantastic line-up: Gungor, Matt Morris, Emmanuel JalTimothy’s Gift with Wild Goose family member Melissa GreeneTy HerndonMelinda DoolittleThe Brilliance, and The Liturgists.
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Gungor
Michael and Lisa Gungor are curators of this Grammy-nominated musical collective. The duo uses their skills as accomplished songwriters and multi-instrumentalists to tell honest and forthright stories – some personal and some allegorical.

Matt Morris
Matt is a world renowned songwriter and music producer who has written with some of the industry’s brightest stars including Sarah McLachlan, Cher, Mary J. Blige, and Justin Timberlake.
Watch Matt with Justin Timberlake on Ellen.

Emmanuel Jal
Emmanuel Jal was born into the life of a child soldier in the war-torn region of Southern Sudan. Through unbelievable struggles, he managed to go on to achieve worldwide acclaim for his unique style of hip hop with its message of peace and reconciliation.
Watch Emmanuel’s powerful TED talk.
Watch Emmanuel’s “We Want Peace” video. 

Timothy’s Gift with Melissa Greene
Timothy’s Gift is an innovative prison outreach that was founded by Ron Miller, and led by Melissa Greene. Through music, they infuse hope and light in the darkest places of our culture. Performers include: Melissa Greene, Abby Lane Hinton, Emily Angarole, Beta Angarole, Anna Register and Lauren Wedertz.
Watch Timothy’s Gift on NBC’s Sing Off.

Ty Herndon
Ty Herndon is an award-winning county music recording artist. Ty has always been all about the ties that bind. You feel it when he’s singing deeply moving No. 1 hits like “What Mattered Most” and “Living in a Moment.” You get it just as much when he’s goofing around with the audience between songs in concert making every attendee laugh. Even in a genre that already prides itself on relatability, he might be the king of connecting.

Melinda Doolittle
Melinda became a household name on season six of American Idol continues thrilling audiences with her powerhouse vocals and charm. Melinda’s love for music is eclipsed only by her love of giving back, as she dedicates much of her time to working with numerous charities, especially those that center on improving the lives of children.

The Brilliance
David Gungor and John Arndt. Musically rich, theologically brave, and emotionally honest.

The Liturgists
The Liturgists is a collective of creators, led by Gungor, working together to make thoughtful liturgical work.

Blessed are the Peacemakers

By 2015 Contributor

We are happy to announce the 2015 Wild Goose Festival Theme: Blessed are the Peacemakers.

From Ferguson to Pakistan, 2014 was a year full of angst and strife around the world and in our communities. When we gather this summer we want to reaffirm our place in the world as people of peace. As we plan Wild Goose for 2015 we are hoping to present a variety of speakers and offerings that will encourage and support us in our vocation as peacemakers.

While we’re still going to cover a wide range of topics at the Wild Goose, the focus of our being together will be on bringing peace to the world. In addition to the inspiring speakers, music and art Wild Goose is known for, we are excited to tell you that we are also going to incorporate more worship experiences this year.

With this theme announcement, we are opening the submission process for volunteer contributors. If you are interested in submitting an idea for a worship experience, talk, performance or art exhibit at the 2015 festival, please fill out our Contributor Submission Form by Saturday, February 28th.

blessed are the peacemakers wild goose festival

Brian McLaren to Return in 2015

By 2015 Contributor, 2015 Festival

We are pleased to announce that festival favorite Brian D. McLaren will be returning to Wild Goose this summer. Why is he returning? As Brian explains, “At Wild Goose, people flock together to celebrate a way of life rooted in faith, justice, creativity, and beauty. It’s like a family reunion where you meet relatives you never knew you had. It’s a wild and wonderful convergence of stimulating conversations, campfires, music, kids, art, lawn chairs, prayer, fun, dance, frisbees, tents, food, sunshine, rain, laughter, and fresh air. There’s nothing like it, and I look forward to it as one of the best weeks of my year.”

Click here to get your 2015 tickets today!

briand-mclaren-2015