Category: Events

Closer to Fine – Wild Goose 2013

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“I’m trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
The best thing you’ve ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously, it’s only life after all”
– Closer to Fine, Indigo Girls

I didn’t know if I could do Wild Goose this year. After Mike informed me at the beginning of the summer that our marriage of 13+ years was over, life was turned upside down. I was in shock. I went into survival mode. I haven’t been able to write and I barely knew how to put into words the turmoil I was going through. The idea of going to the Wild Goose, intended to be our family vacation this year, was overwhelming. I’ve always been a private, reserved person emotionally – which has usually simply been code for not being real. But somehow I knew that I couldn’t go to the Wild Goose this year and not be real. For once, to not refrain from being open and honest and fully myself. It’s just that sort of gathering – raw and dismantling.

Wild Goose has been a place where for the last couple of years I have found hope. Hope for the community that despite not knowing if or what it believes still calls itself the body of Christ, but more importantly hope that a better world is indeed possible. The nature of a festival moves one beyond pretense and comfort, where it is easier to see that there is good at work in the world despite the apathy and ignorance that usually cloud our vision. I caught glimpses of that hope this year, but in all honesty I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to grasp hold of those glimpses as they flickered by. Everything was simply too close to allow hope and revolution to capture my imagination this year.

I needed something far more basic. I needed the fantastic community of friends I have developed over the past decade, but whom I only get to see maybe once or twice a year at these events. I needed long conversations over beer, late-night dance parties in the mud, and hot-tubbing until the wee small hours of the morning. I needed to laugh and let go enough to be able to see how deeply real and deeply absurd it was to be up on a stage caked in mud fielding questions about how to talk to teens about masturbation and how BDSM challenges the dangers of patriarchy.

And I needed to stand in a field Saturday evening singing along with the Indigo Girls, as loudly as I could, the lyrics to Closer to Fine and discover that I actually meant them.

148On Friday I had gathered at the beer tent for one of my favorite Wild Goose traditions – Beer & Hymns. Believers and skeptics join together over beer to sing with that wonderful mix of awe, irony, nostalgia, and anger the classic robust hymns of the Christian tradition. Yet not even with a wistful nostalgia could I join in on singing It is Well with My Soul. Of course it is not well with my soul. And the very lines that “thou hast taught me to say it is well with my soul” represent the very aspects of the faith world that I fear the most these days. I’m done being told what to believe, what to feel, how to act, how to process, how to package things up in meaningless but convenient packages. I’m done parroting the faith equivalent of “I’m fine” just because it is expected of me. That pull to appear to accept that all is well kept me from treating my depression for years. I don’t play that game anymore.

But amidst the community at Wild Goose, I found that while I could not sing It is Well with My Soul, I could sing Closer to Fine.

That despite my tendencies to overthink, overanalyze, internalize, and take everything far too seriously I am able to let go enough to just be. Some days that means be okay, other days, be a complete mess. And that’s okay.

So thank you Wild Goose for letting me dance in a field and realize – “There’s more than one answer to these questions pointing me in crooked line. The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine.”

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Wild Goose 2012 Reflection

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The 2012 Wild Goose Festival East wrapped up just under a week ago and I am still trying to process my experience there. As I tweeted as I drove away from the fest, I left feeling exhausted, hopeful, and blessed – that strange combination that reflected the emotional impact of my time there. And it was a truly blessed time. I was honored with the opportunity to speak on The Hunger Games and the Gospel as well as do a Q&A on everyday justice issues at the Likewise tent. I also was able to join Brett Webb-Mitchell on a panel discussion about living with disabilities in religious communities. But beyond those conversations I was able to help initiate, I also found a generous and safe space to connect with friends, wrestle with difficult questions, and dream of a better world. Such spaces are so rare in my life these days, that finding such at Wild Goose was a precious gift.

There are, of course, the expected complaints about the festival. It was brutally hot (and that is coming from a Texan). I never ceased to be sticky, sweaty, and stinky and there were bugs everywhere. Camping in a field where every action (and parenting attempt) is on constant display is stressful and uncomfortable. And, as with many religious gatherings, there could have been greater diversity. For the first hour I was there as I nearly passed out trying to set up a tent in the sweltering heat, I was in a panic mode wondering why I was stupid enough to subject myself to the discomfort and imperfection of it all again this year. Yet as I entered into the experience of being a part of this crazy wonderful gathering, those issues (although ever-present) faded in significance as I found myself fitting into a place where I felt I belonged. It would be hard to give an all-encompassing report of the Wild Goose since all I have is my particular experience of it, so all I can initially do here is describe a few of those points that provided that resonance of belonging.

  • I saw people moving past the trivial distractions of the Church to attempt to live authentically in the way of Christ. Last year Wild Goose was a new thing in search of its identity. It was edgy, it was controversial, it was hip. None of that mattered this year. The point wasn’t to have debates over controversial issues, but to do the real work of the church. So collectively it seemed like the festival grew up, got over its fears and struggles to define its identity and decided to stop feeding the infighting within the body of Christ and start being Christ instead. I’m sure there were some people upset by that act of maturing, but I doubt many of them came back this year. There also were far fewer people there who just came to be seen in their own sessions but who refused to attend and learn from other sessions. Being in conversation and humbly letting others speak into our lives was more the norm this year. Wild Goose grew up. I personally found it refreshing to be a part of something that didn’t direct all its energy at defending the rightness of one particular theological ghetto. It was also nice to be amidst people who spent more time living in the ways of the kingdom of God than they do making theological excuses for why the church needn’t bother following the way of Christ. There was also no need to grow any particular church or hold tight to a denominational allegiance. This was a truly ecumenical gathering of Catholics, Mainliners, Evangelicals, and Emergents coming together beyond their tribal boundaries. This is not to say that hard questions weren’t wrestled with at Wild Goose or challenges to privilege issued, but it was done (as far as I could tell) from a respectful and welcoming attitude. I needed to see that to regain some faith in the structure of church itself.
  • I got to see my children thriving in community. Last year at Wild Goose we were the hovering parents. Our kids had to be in eyesight at all times which severely limited their ability to make friends as well as our ability to attend sessions and have conversations. This year we, for the first time in their lives, let our kids roam free. Like children from past generations who roamed the neighborhood finding friends and adventures alike, the safe space of the Wild Goose gave our kids the opportunity to be a part of community on their own. I saw them come alive as they made the experience their own. From my son donning his Batman cape and finding a wooden stake somewhere so he could roam as “Vampire Slayer Batman” as we sipped boxed wine and made fair trade s’mores at our tent with friends to my daughter finding quartz rocks on the path and trying to get the food vendors to accept her “diamonds” as payment for ice cream and lemonade – they had the time of their lives. Yes, we got a few disapproving reactions from other parents there and I heard a family was asked to leave the supposedly “open-table” Eucharist because their kids were playing nearby, but I am grateful for this opportunity my kids had to be children in a way kids these days rarely do – and that there is a space for that within a community of faith.
  • I was able to be moved by a worship experience for the first time in a very long time. While there were opportunities to enter into worship provided throughout the festival – ranging from contemplative prayer times, to interactive creative worship, to liturgies, and even a good old-fashioned hymn-sing (appropriately held at the beer tent), it was the final Sunday morning worship processional that had me literally choked up with the beauty of being a part of the community of the body of Christ. Proclaiming that every worship processional should in fact be a parade of celebration this call to worship consisted of a ringleader and band leading a parade through the festival grounds as the people of God with painted faces and waving banners danced and sang out “When the Saints Go Marching In.” There was a blessed relief in being amidst a group of people who weren’t worshiping just to be fed or to consume a religious good or who don’t see the rituals as church as the limit of worship. There also was a deeper joy in having been through the festival and hearing of the passion of this sliver of the church to truly live in the ways of Christ by seeking justice for all and loving the whole world sacrificially that made me actually want to sing “Oh how I want to be in their number when the saints go marching in.” In the back of my head I heard all the critics’ voices telling me in that moment that worship must be solemn, that we had sacrificed tradition for novelty, that we were simply being foolish. But the sense of utter rightness and overwhelming hope I saw as I danced along with those committed to marching against injustice in the name of love drowned out the toxicity of those messages I am usually surrounded with and I was able to experience God again. I agree with Bono that the right to be ridiculous is something I hold dear – sometimes it takes foolishly resisting the trappings of church in order to find the strength to resist the injustices of culture. It set my soul free and dismantled the box we so often force God to dwell within.

I could ramble on and on about the wonderful people and conversations I had at Wild Goose. It was a place that revived hope in me for the body of Christ in our world today. And I find myself infinitely grateful to have spent a few sweltering and uncomfortable days amidst these saints in order to catch this glimpse of the Kingdom manifest in this world.

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Wild Goose Festival 2012

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In just a few short weeks my family will be making the journey cross-country to the Wild Goose Festival in Shakori Hills, NC (June 21-24). This festival of spirituality, justice, and art is in its second year and we are excited about returning. My kids especially have been asking since last summer when we would get to return. This year I will be leading a discussion around the themes I explored in The Hunger Games and the Gospel as well as participating on a panel focused on people with disability in the church.

Over the next few days (until midnight May 27th) any of my readers who are interested in attending can get a 15% discount off the ticket price by entering the promotional code CLAWSON at – http://wildgoosefestival.eventbrite.com. I can’t wait to get there and I look forward to seeing some of you there.

To help you get glimpse of what the Wild Goose Festival is all about, here’s a bit from my reflections on last year’s gathering –

I love the use of the Celtic “wild goose” as the symbol of this gathering exploring creativity, justice, and spirituality. It evokes that other distinctly Celtic idea of peregrinati – journeys or wanderings of an undefined but spiritual nature. It is the wild goose flying where it will, exploring new territories and discovering new horizons amidst even the everyday and the familiar landscapes of home. The Celtic monks followed that call of the wild bird on their peregrinati, journeying with the spirit on undetermined paths. They served, and worshiped, and reflected along the way but often had no real goal or destination beyond the journey itself. They embodied Tolkien’s famous “not all who wander are lost” phrase, for it was their wanderings – their wild goose chases -that held the meaning in themselves.
…
If anything, Wild Goose was a gathering of those who dream of a better way. A better way to be human, a better way to be the church. Not in a “we want to be better than you” sort of way, but more of a deep felt recognition that the world is not as it should be. It was that wrestling with trying to live into the lives God created us to live that became the conversation at Wild Goose.

While the church of course has a long way to go in regards to becoming balanced and healthy in such ways, it was encouraging to get a small taste of what that might look like at the Wild Goose Festival. I can’t speak for everyone there, but from the conversations I was a part of it truly did seem to be a gathering of folks who deeply dreamed of a better way. People who desired for our faith to mean something tangible. People, who, as Richard Rohr said there, don’t want to settle for the easy shallow faith of merely worshiping God – putting God on an idealized but distant pedestal to be admired but not known. They want to follow God in ways that transform their lives and therefore the lives of others as well. People who desire to follow God in ways that bring about justice, that seek to restore broken relationships, that always orient around caring about the needs of others. But also people who don’t trust in their own strength to do such things, who know the world and the church are messy, and that we need time for lament and repentance as part of our experience of following Jesus.

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Crazy, Holy, Hungry Ones – My Wild Goose Reflection

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I went to the Wild Goose Festival for the community. Meeting for the first time this year in the hills of beautiful North Carolina, Wild Goose was a gathering focused on arts, justice, and faith. I went eager to reunite with old friends and to finally translate a few virtual relationships into reality. Oh, I was excited to hear David Wilcox and Jennifer Knapp and learn from respected Christian leaders, but it was the gathering of friends that drew me and my family to the fest. And while it was the community that brought me there, it was the communal experience of commitment that defined my time there. Those lines posted above from Carrie Newcomer’s song “Where You Been,” sum up perfectly the experience that was the Wild Goose Festival.

If anything, Wild Goose was a gathering of those who dream of a better way. A better way to be human, a better way to be the church. Not in a “we want to be better than you” sort of way, but more of a deep felt recognition that the world is not as it should be. It was that wrestling with trying to live into the lives God created us to live that became the conversation at Wild Goose. As part of that, one theme that kept resurfacing in the talks I heard was that of learning to be open to the full range of human emotions and experiences in the world. The typical Christian impulse in our country is to dwell upon the joyful aspects of life and faith. We put on the mask of pretending all is fine to the world. We hold church services oriented around worship, praise, and the uplifting parts of scripture. While there is nothing wrong with doing those things, they don’t allow the faithful to reflect the fullness of reality. As the great civil rights activist Vincent Harding pointed out in his talk, there is pain and suffering in the church. Institutional and social evils such as racism and the inequalities it produces affect the body of Christ – harming both those who commit and who suffer those sins. To pretend that all is well when all is obviously not well is to pretend at joy – not to experience it in reality. As Harding commented, to ever be able to truly laugh, one must also be allowed to honestly weep for all the pain and suffering. Pretending that all is well or to deny that the suffering exists harms our souls, preventing us from being whole healthy people. In his talk Soong-Chan Rah also called for the need to remember the words of lamentations in our churches. The Western church has exorcised such biblical passages of lament from our services, lectionaries, and prayer books, and we would do well to be reminded from the global church (that knows far more about experiencing suffering) that recognizing and lamenting our sins and pain is part of what it means to follow God.

While the church of course has a long way to go in regards to becoming balanced and healthy in such ways, it was encouraging to get a small taste of what that might look like at the Wild Goose Festival. I can’t speak for everyone there, but from the conversations I was a part of it truly did seem to be a gathering of folks who deeply dreamed of a better way. People who desired for our faith to mean something tangible. People, who, as Richard Rohr said there, don’t want to settle for the easy shallow faith of merely worshiping God – putting God on an idealized but distant pedestal to be admired but not known. They want to follow God in ways that transform their lives and therefore the lives of others as well. People who desire to follow God in ways that bring about justice, that seek to restore broken relationships, that always orient around caring about the needs of others. But also people who don’t trust in their own strength to do such things, who know the world and the church are messy, and that we need time for lament and repentance as part of our experience of following Jesus.

It can be easy to talk about such things, and I know I’ve done my fair share of talking before. But what I appreciated about the Wild Goose festival was that it forced us past the point of posturing to a place of transparent honesty. At most of our church gatherings, conferences, or cohorts we can easily erect a façade of self and allow others to see only what we desire them to see of who we are. We can talk grand ideas, look as pious/hip/committed as we desire, and then escape back into our solitary lives without anyone glimpsing our rough edges. But there is something about camping in close proximity in sweltering weather in fields crawling with ants and ticks, where the nearest water is a spigot several fields away, with your communal shit stinking up the port-a-potties and your children sleep-deprived from the excitement of camping and the loud bands that play into the wee small hours of the night that violently rips away any façade one might have attempted to hide behind. Everyone sees you crawling disheveled out of your tent in the morning desperate to concoct a coffee-like-substance over your tiny camp stove. Everyone hears you yelling at your kids to stop (literally) bouncing off the tent walls and go to sleep. And I’m pretty sure half the people there witnessed my tired, hot, and hungry children having a grand royal meltdown in the food area one day at lunch. It was just a few days, but it was real.

So when we came to worship together and share our passion for following God in transforming ways in this raw state of discomfort and exhaustion, it was more than just talk. We were those crazy, holy, hungry ones who believe in something better. It was a glimpse of the Kingdom of God that went far beyond just friends gathering to have fun together at a festival or to posture at caring for others. It was a gathering of the most committed Christians I know – those who long to follow God wholly. And that gave me great hope for the church. I had to laugh when I read after the festival that some opponents were deriding the festival, questioning our faith and referring to the event as Apostate-palooza (because *obviously* anything to do with art, camping, and justice can’t possibly be Christian). Yet I realized that they were right in a way. This was a gathering of apostates of the church as it has become – a often meaningless and impotent entity beholden to civil structures of culture and politics that cares more about power and privilege and shoring up hollow rituals and traditions than it does about loving others and believing in God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Wild Goose was a gathering of those crazy folks who are committed to a better way. We are apostates of meaningless religion, ready to strip away the facades and get at the real work of following God.

That was my Wild Goose experience – leaving me raw and tired and strangely full of hope.

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Being Spiritual in a Crazy Busy World

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So this post is part promotion and part reflection. The promotion part is to get the word out about a conference I will be a part of at the end of May – the 2011 Montreat Signature Conference. Held May 29- June 1 at the Montreat Conference Center near Ashville, NC, this year’s theme is “Being Spiritual in a Crazy Busy World.” The conference looks to be a refreshing as well as inspirational time of spiritual rest, reflection, and challenge.

The conferences invites attendees with the assertion – “You are called out of the chaos of your crazy busy, constantly moving, overextended lives to a place grounded in the imagination of God.” I was asked to lead workshops on everyday justice issues as part of the conference and I appreciate the opportunity because it reflects to me a valuing of the idea that in truth everything is spiritual. I think that truth is something that most of us intellectually affirm, but which often doesn’t get translated into our day to day reality. We so narrowly define what it means to be spiritual that we end up constantly feeling disconnected from God because we can’t sustainably live what we have defined the spiritual life to be.

We all have of course heard of the mountaintop experiences – moments of spiritual connectedness that generally come from times of retreat or focused devotion. I don’t deny that those are spiritual moments, but the reality of life is that we cannot live constantly in those moments. And if we expect all spirituality to mirror the intensity of the mountaintop, we will inevitably be disappointed and feel far from God. We blame ourselves, or our church, or our culture for our distraction and disconnectedness, but perhaps the real problem is our definition of spirituality.

We have come to see spirituality as something set apart from the mundane aspects of everyday life and so become frustrated when our lives seem to get in the way of connecting to God. But God is not found in just the moments of devotion or prayer, or in the communal gathering for liturgy, or in voices lifted up in song. Those are all great tools for helping us concentrate on God, but God is the God over all creation, not just the systems the church has developed. A crazy busy world isn’t the antithesis of spirituality; it is simply a setting where spirituality can be manifest. Grounding ourselves in the imagination of God and redefining spirituality to include all aspects of life is what I think is needed to help us get over our constant struggle of feeling spiritually disconnected.

Embracing spirituality in the whole of life means understanding that even the acts that make our life crazy busy are spiritual acts. Waking up in the morning, making breakfast, and getting the kids off to school are spiritual acts. Rushing from meeting to meeting and facing project deadlines are spiritual acts. We are spiritual people in relationship with a spiritual God; everything we do therefore is a spiritual act. What matters then is if we are living our everyday life in a way that moves us closer to God or further from God. When we choose our clothes, or commute to work, or interact with our kids are we becoming more Christ-like and caring about the things God cares about or not?

Rethinking spirituality as an every moment of the day sort of thing opens us up to having God work in our lives in out of the box sorts of ways and moves us beyond the unsustainable “mountaintop experience” mentality. Embracing that we are always connected to God though is both comforting and infinitely more challenging. Everything being spiritual means we can’t shove God aside to just Sundays, or believe that God doesn’t care about what we eat or how we vote. Everything means everything. Sure, we still need times of reflection, communal worship, and retreat from the ordinary in order to help us refocus, but when every action of every day becomes a choice for God, our spiritual lives will unavoidably be transformed.

So I look forward to this conference where we will explore how to both take the time for rest and reflection as a spiritual practice and how to learn to see the world not as the enemy of spirituality but as instead the very place where our spirituality is developed and lived. It should truly be a time to leave behind the old paradigm of our crazy busy lives (in more ways than one) and discover a sustainable spirituality.

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Big Tent Christianity – A Place Without Fear

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In about a month (Sept. 8-9), a national conference will take place in Raleigh, North Carolina, called Big Tent Christianity: Being and Becoming The Church. In the spirit of setting up revival tents to see where the Spirit is moving, this conference is gathering voices together to explore what it means to be the body of Christ – all of us under one big tent. And yes, I’ll be perfectly honest, there are a lot of Christian voices not represented (or woefully underrepresented) at this conference. I hope that at the conference the fact that not everyone is included under the big tent is humbly acknowledged. But the conversation is important nonetheless and holds the potential for helping the church as a whole embrace our diversity and differences.

This post is part of a Synchroblog meant to jumpstart the conversation regarding what this “big tent Christianity” looks like. Participants in this synchroblog were asked to reflect on – “what does “big tent Christianity” mean to you? What does it look like in your context? What are your hopes and dreams for the Church?” There are dozens of different ways I can think of to respond to those questions, but what really resonates the most with me is the idea that big tent Christianity holds no place for fear.

In Psalm 23, when David speaks of how God guides, protects, and comforts him, he mentions that God prepares a table for him in the presence of his enemies. This isn’t some twisted comfort through schadenfraude or mockery of others – this is being able to sit at a table with one’s enemies and share a meal in peace. This is an image of what it will be like in the New Heaven and the New Earth when the entire body of Christ sits down at the banquet table of the lamb. Unitarians and Baptists. Catholics and Fundamentalists. Emergents and Neo-reformed. We will all eventually sit next to each other in peace.

I don’t say that to imply that our differences are insignificant or our theologies unimportant, but to affirm that we have no reason to fear the presence of the other. We can exist under this tent together.

But all too often we avoid even listening to the voices of others for fear that they might corrupt us, or (worse) confuse us. We want to hold on so tightly to our little piece of the truth that we demonize everyone else and inoculate ourselves against their influence. So there are college students who are told (usually by their youth pastors) to stay far away from Bible and religion classes in college for fear that all that historical criticism will affect their faith. They fear any knowledge that might force them to change. Or there are the pastors who get fired from their church for having a book by an emergenty author on their shelves. Fear of new ideas creeping in shuts down the pursuit of knowledge or the ability to question. At our old church, we were taken to task for exposing the youth there to different Christian traditions because it might cause them to choose to be something other than Baptist. There was fear of anything but the known. And many fear listening to the voices of postcolonial, or liberation, or feminist theologians for fear these voices of the margins might challenge the way things have always been (as defined by one’s particular western tradition).

Instead of learning from each other and admitting that we all follow our own particular and highly imperfect cobbled-together streams of Christian tradition, we demonize each other out of fear. We make up words like heresy or syncretism to avoid having to actually listen to those around us. We have lost the ability to value what we value and yet still sit and break bread with those with whom we disagree. This Christianity looks like a bunch of small tents scattered across a plain, each trying to keep its distance from the other and to defend its territory at all costs.

So that’s why I love the idea of a big tent Christianity. It represents the place where we can come as we are (with beliefs fully intact yet held humbly) into a place where fear is banished and we can sit in peace with even our so-called enemies at the table of the Lord. It’s where we can be the body of Christ.

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Urbana 09

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Urbana09

So I am spending a few days this week at Urbana 09. I never made it to Urbana when I was in school, so it’s fun to finally get to experience this massive event. There are some 16,000 people attending and thinking about doing missions and translating Christ’s incarnation into our daily lives. It’s overwhelming, and it’s been a long time since I’ve been a part of anything this full of crazy energy, but I’m excited to see what happens. And I’m looking forward to finally getting to hear from people like Ruth Padilla DeBorst and Shane Claiborne.

I will be part of a panel on missional worship in the church, leading two seminars on seeking everyday justice, and doing a booksigning in the bookstore. So if you are here at Urbana, I invite to to stop by and chat!

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Human Trafficking, Justice, and CSI

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csi nycsi nyI’ve gotten used to popular TV shows going the after-school special route and highlighting some issue or another.  Granted, it boosts their ratings, but it also brings attention to issues that need attention.  So I was intrigued this past week when the CSI franchise did a story-arc across all three shows that focused on the issue of human trafficking.  It pulled no punches.  They showed the horror involved in trafficking and what a complicated system it is.  From moving girls around to sell for sex, or as wombs, or for body parts there are a lot of people making money off of the exploitation of others.  And there are so many people involved in such a large and complex system, that there are no easy solutions to the problems.  The CSI’s weren’t able in other words to solve the crime and and have all the perpetrators behind bars by the end of the 60 minute episode.  The writers were smart enough not to trivialize the issue by giving it a neat solution.  But they were also smart enough to make trafficking about real people.  These girls aren’t just nameless faces – they are someone’s daughter.  And even if those working for justice can’t fix the entire system, they can do something to help one girl, and that is significant.

They also hit the (obvious) nail on the head in trying to explain why this happens.  Basically because the demand is there.  Trafficking isn’t just some evil crime committed by sociopaths, it’s done by corrupt and greed guys who know that there is a high demand for human flesh.  If the businessmen at conferences in Vegas weren’t looking for sex on demand then kidnapping, abusing, raping, and breaking women into submissive prostitutes wouldn’t be such a lucrative business.  But evil and injustice continue to exist because we demand it.  From cheap sex to cheap clothes or candy, we demand that others be oppressed for our benefit.

At one point in the CSI episode, the bad-guy of the week, a Russian pimp (played by the amazing Mark Sheppard), tried to justify why girls supposedly choose to be prostitutes.  He said, “inside, [all women] are whores. They will love to hear the things they want to believe – they are so beautiful, so fascinating, so special that they deserve the best of everything, the finest clothes, champagne, and jewels that money can buy.  And you know how you get the whore to emerge? Tell her there is an easy way to get all of this.”  His words were ironic coming after the unfolding story of girls being kidnapped, drugged, raped, beaten, and murdered by traffickers.  Instead of describing the girls, they more accurately described the traffickers and the johns.  But they also describe all of us who have found easy ways to get whatever we want even if it is at the expense of others.  We will sell our souls because we believe we deserve the best of everything.

The sad thing is, there are no CSI’s out there working to put us behind bars so that the oppression stops.  We are not going to be punished for benefiting from crimes like human trafficking and slave labor.  And we wont be rewarded either for choosing to step outside of systems of oppression.  There is no carrot or stick when it comes to making a deliberate choice to love others.  We just have to decide that we care enough for someone else’s daughter or son to stop demanding that they be oppressed so that we can have everything we desire.

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Thoughts on Christianity 21

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So I’ve been trying to figure out what in the world to say about Christianity 21. It wasn’t a straightforward conference so it’s difficult to narrow down what exactly I want to say about it. It was intense, exhausting, uplifting, and encouraging all at once and I am still attempting to process it. (traveling immediately to Dallas the next day to go see U2 didn’t help with the exhaustion thing, although it totally carried on the spiritual high). So I’ll just throw out some of the things drifting through my mind about it.

In the lead-up to the conference I was part of numerous discussions regarding the need to give the stage so deliberately to a group of women. I get the desire to be at a point in the conversation where women’s voices don’t have to be highlighted but are just a normal part of things. Or to be at a place of if there is a Christian conference where the main speakers are women people don’t assume that it’s a women’s conference. I’d love that, but we aren’t there yet. I think C21 moved us forward in that direction, but women’s voices had to be highlighted this time in order for that to happen. mark spencerAnd I love that men who typically speak at these sorts of conferences came instead to serve at this one – doing all the behind the scenes stuff that we women often end up doing. Jay Bakker, Shane Claiborne, Spencer Burke, Mark Scandrette, and Gareth Higgins came to serve and help out. And as Doug Pagitt joked, to see the end of their careers as the privileged ones given the microphone at these sorts of events. Bono is right – women are the future and after this conference there can be no excuse for not inviting women to lead sessions at conferences because gifted intelligent women are out there. (and as a total aside the money quote from the weekend came from Shane Claiborne. I was talking to him about how he had “killed” my husband in a game of assassin as Wheaton College and he said “I love Assassin, I have to get my violent tendencies out somehow!” Awesome.)

all welcomeThe conference itself was intense. There was little down-time, little interaction or workshop time, just rapid-fire hearing from the presenters on what they see as important things to consider for faith in the 21st century. Granted, this wasn’t back to back lecture after lecture. There were some lectures of course, but there was also the telling of stories, short dramas, spoken-word poetry, musical pieces, times of prayer and reflection, conversations on stage, and a fast-paced group presentation pairing reflections with visual images. And as one of those presenters – let me just say that 21 minutes is a really really short time to try to do anything (especially when it is further broken apart into even shorter segments). Hearing a new idea every 21 (or 7 or 5) minutes is intense. With no time for interaction or question, jumping from one idea to another hardly gives one time to wrap ones mind around any given idea. So I am having a hard time summarizing what any one person talked about. I know Sybil MacBath did her thing about praying in color, Alise Barrymore did an amazing poetic speech about growing down. Seth Donovan pushed us to let people show up at church decompartmentalized from our identities and labels. Phyllis Tickle and Nadia Bolz-Weber chatted about the future of the church. Lauren Winner gave a killer list about what Christianity will be known for by the end of the 21st century. And Debbie Blue talked about roadkill and Jesus having an anus (it was beautiful, seriously). I remember the moments and that it was beautiful. And for all the controversy leading up to the event, this was one of the most Christ-centered, Bible and church affirming gathering I have been a part of in a long time.

nadia phyllisAs with most emerging conferences, one of the best parts was just being able to connect with people. I loved meeting friends from the Emerging Women blog and sitting down for drinks with someone I used to argue with all the time at The Ooze some seven years ago. I loved hearing people’s stories and what brought them to the conversation. I even got to spend the plane ride home continuing the conversation with new friends. I was blessed to learn from the Queermergent folks (and I totally apologize again for ditching so early, I was so falling asleep on the couch…). I enjoyed making new friends and getting to reconnect with old members of my tribe.

And I’m sure my rambling here makes sense only in my head, but I just need to get my thoughts out (as discombobulated as they are). But I do know that something significant happened this past weekend. And I was blessed to be a part of it.

Other people who are sharing about the experience –

Christina Whitehouse-Suggs on Drunk on the Wine of New Love

Danielle Shoyer gives a recap

Imago’s blog’s reflections

Tony Jones looks back at the event.

Seth Donovan talks about starting in a new place.

Pam Heatley compared C21 to a tropical vacation

Shula at Sensuous Wife blogs her reaction to the event.

Don Heatley has created an amazing highlight video from the event that really helps capture some of the themes that emerged there.

For more fantastic pictures from the event, visit Courtney Perry’s Christianity 21 photostream (the pictures here are hers, excepting the panorama which is Jake Bouma’s )

and if you want to witness for yourself the amazing live sketching Paul Soupiset did at the event, watch them here, here, here and here

Oh, and I’m super excited about the new publishing house, Sparkhouse, which launched recently. They created a video at C21 about sparking new life into faith communities, it’s pretty neat (I’m the space-y one in it).

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Looking Ahead – Christianity21

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So it’s just about two months away and I’m starting to get really excited about Christianity21. Part of that is of course just being able to go. It’s the “I’m going to the most awesome summer camp ever” feel I get from going to basically any Emergent-related event. I know I am going to have amazing conversations, meet fascinating people, and be challenged intellectually, emotionally, and theologically (not to mention attend the yoga sessions and late-night parties). In short it’s going to be a fun time.

But besides that I am also excited about my fellow presenters. I’ve heard some of these women like Nanette Sawyer, Phyllis Tickle and Alise Barrymorre speak before and think they are amazing. I’ve had chances to hang out with Nadia Bolz-Weber, Makeesha Fisher, Danielle Shoyer, Lisa Domke and Kelly Bean and can’t wait to hear what they have to say. And then there are all the other presenters who I am just excited for the chance to finally meet. I just feel blessed to be able to be there amidst a gathering of so much wisdom.

But most of all I am excited that this wisdom is finally getting the respect it deserves. That these women who have so much to teach us all are the voice of this event. This isn’t a women’s event, it is a Christian event that explores the future of our faith and I find it significant that it is women who are the ones leading that particular discussion. These are voices who have powerful things to say about the future of Christianity, and I hope people take advantage of this opportunity to hear from them.

Anyway, all that to say, I’m really getting excited about Christianity21 and I hope you all will come join the conversation there. If you want more information, head to the event website christianity21.com. Hope to see you there!

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