Wild Goose Festival 2019

What a beautiful day!  You can see our blessed greeting in the morning as we approached the festival grounds - God’'s promise of love for all creation.  The beauty of that rainbow carried careful strands of hope throughout my day. We began with the gifted music leadership of Mark Miller!  He led us into the message from William Barber who charged us to unite as the flames and wind of a moral Pentecost sweep through our land so that we rise for the poor and the marginalized.  Standing with a great cloud of witnesses who have shown us the way in the midst of great struggle, they too had to rise as the rejected to redeem hearts and systems of oppression. How and where will we stand in solidarity, unite and be a stepping stone in the moral Pentecost?  The strands of hope continued to guide my day with wisdom from Barbara Brown Taylor and a financial workshop. I participated in a workshop with Rev. Darci Jaret as she led us through a practice of visual narrative pastoral care that moved my soul and gave me creative ministry ideas! And then things got interesting as I encountered Bushi Yamato Damashi among the trees as he spoke of the making of a Christ Sangha (Buddhist understanding of community).  His calming energy and gentle presence was an invitation to encounter wisdom in a new way for me. He encouraged us to work at coming back to our true selves. One way to find that, he says, is to engage in Buddhist practice of mindfulness and full presence and then to live out Christ’'s truth of love. Together Beth and I concluded our day with Mark Miller and Draw the Circle Wide. What a day of hope and blessing, promise and challenge!