Flyin’ with the Wild Geese

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The spectacle of Houston, America’s fourth-largest city, under water and partially in ruins should serve as a sharp wake-up call to America in terms of the challenges it identifies and presents.

First, it doesn’t matter whether one believes that climate change is human-produced, at least in part, and thus subject to being mitigated, or not. The fact of the matter is that America is showing itself catastrophically vulnerable to what nature seemingly increasingly is getting up to. There was Hurricane Andrew in Florida, Katrina in New Orleans and now Harvey in Houston and Louisiana. Something clearly needs to be done for America’s Southeast.

That raises the question of whether America wants to shift its priorities and start spending money on fixing our infrastructure or adjusting it to meet imminent future challenges — or whether it wants to continue spending on endless wars and nation-building in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Should it be building to try to assure the stability of the Ashraf Ghani government in Afghanistan and the Haider al-Abadi regime in Iraq or getting rid of Bashar Assad’s rule in Syria? Or should it be fixing the water supply in Flint, Mich., and New York City’s subway system?

There is waste and foolishness in our actual responses to disasters. A shocking amount of the money of the Federal Emergency Management Agency gets spent on rebuilding dwellings and businesses more than once in exposed areas. One element in a new look at America’s vulnerability to storms, floods and other natural disasters should be on seeing to it that areas in danger don’t get rebuilt as if the danger were over.

Apart from the major review of America’s priorities that the disaster in Houston demands, there will also be the nearer-tohand challenge to the federal government to somehow get past its absurd gridlock. Money must be found and voted to deal with the Houston challenge. But the Republicans and the Democrats, Congress and the president, must also pass a budget, raise the national debt ceiling, and at least begin work on what is left of President Donald Trump’s agenda, including, particularly in light of what is happening in the Southeast, the big infrastructure bill he pledged.

If nothing else, Americans’ focus on the tragedy in Houston, and their generous response to the needs of the suffering people there, should make their tolerance of more wrangling about health care and money-fueled lobbying about a new tax law run thin.

The country has much bigger problems at home than North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, migration to Europe and keeping American Navy ships from running into other ships. Because of misplaced priorities, things at home are in much worse shape than they should be. Dealing with the problems at home is not impossible, at all, but it will require a larger vision of our country on the part of our ostensible leaders.

Unless you live under a rock, most days are lived with an undercurrent of stress and distress. When it seems the political charges and countercharges cannot get worse, we have the incident in Charlottesville and its aftermath. Surely people of faith will come together to actually love their neighbors. Yet too many refuse to acknowledge the prejudices they harbor in fear that the neighbor they claim to love might somehow be “different” and threatening.

Caught up in this daily swirl, I look for ways to balance the distress with the need for relief, gratitude and joy. The Serenity Prayer (Google it if you don’t know it) is a good starting place. But the challenge for prayer is to allow the prayers to invade everyday actions rather than being a few pious moments of good intention, too easily forgotten. For anyone not a hermit, solitary times of renewal are not enough; we need to share both sorrows and hopes with others who are on a similar pilgrimage.

This past July my wife and I joined several hundred “progressive Christians” at a campground in North Carolina to be part of the Wild Goose Festival. I have heard the event called a Christian Woodstock — not a bad description. Participants were united in their pain that large numbers of white evangelical Christians have abandoned their demand for personal morality in favor of a crude and bullying political agenda. At a deeper level, these Wild Geese were united in a desire to explore a faith that believes personal salvation and working for social justice must go hand in hand if one is to truly follow the Jewish carpenter.

We were largely strangers to one another, yet we celebrated a community of faith! We sang and danced, heard sermons and lectures to inspire and challenge us, worshiped and listened for the Spirit of God. This kind of community is more than the bland description of some group of individuals who exist near one another. What we achieved was at least a strong glimpse of the kind of community that, in the New Testament, invited the exclamation “see how they love one another!” None claimed perfection; all recognized how difficult it is to actually live out the intention to love God and to love your neighbor as oneself.

True community requires an openness of heart and mind. Many came to the event lonely or hurting. The fact of the matter is that no one escapes pain, but the typical response is to hide and deny for fear of how others might respond. In community, there is opportunity to share burdens and to find understanding and support. Sharing a problem is not seen as whining or complaining — if there is a caring listener, a strong bond of understanding may form and become a step toward healing. But not only burdens need be shared, there is also sharing of REV. GARY BATCHELOR Jim Powell of Young Harris David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness. Sharing these fruits of the Spirit offers a pathway toward lifting a burden, toward resolve and growth and toward making a way for gladness in all kinds of circumstances.

Community celebrates diversity. We are not all alike! The Geese believe that God loves all those differences and that they are built into creation from the very first day. God’s people should celebrate diversity, not fear it. So at least for the three days we were together at the festival, skin color did not matter. Sexual identity did not divide. Different religious backgrounds were unimportant. Different ideas and different stages of faith were opportunities for conversation and curiosity. Millennials and retirees prayed, danced and laughed together. Flyin’ with the Wild Geese offered a great time to give our biases a shove into the background for a while. What a breath of fresh air to celebrate community, openness, and diversity with new faith friends!

My special interest lies at the intersection of religious faith and culture. I write as a Christian minister who claims a faith that cannot be honest if it ignores destructive social, political, or religious issues. I am certainly distressed by the rigidity that so often characterizes evangelicals and by the political idolatry that many have so willingly embraced. It is a faith that is far too negative. I am also deeply distressed by the increasing numbers of people, especially those who consider themselves “liberal/progressive,” who reject or simply ignore religious faith. The basic liberal ideals of inevitable human progress toward a utopia are far too naïve. The folks who fed my soul at Wild Goose avoid both these extremes of dysfunctional faith.

I can only speak for myself, but I appreciate the experiences of progressive Christianity presented at the Wild Goose Festival. Like all labels, the term offers a very general description that is open to many questions about details. In a diverse community of openness one can question as well as stand firm. In such a community, one’s faith walk may be enriched by the scholarship of a highly-educated seminary professor, by stories from a believer (or non-believer) of a different race or social class, or by the enthusiasm of simple faith lived in service to God and mankind. The Wild Goose experience is a faith not defined by fences, and not promised an easy, safe flight into the future. Yet it is a faith that flies freely into God’s big, wide world. FLY!