I really did want to go to the Wild Goose Festival. I wanted to meet virtual friends face-to-face for the first time. I would have loved to have met Mike Morrell, Steve Knight, and others for the first time. Hearing Jennifer Knapp would have been sweet, too. I would have enjoyed meeting many new people for the first time. It would have been great to have connected with my virtual friends who made the journey to Wild Goose.
But there was U2, and a symbolic Christmas gift from my son.
I had two tickets for a U2 concert in East Lansing Michigan on Sunday, June 25. These were not just two tickets. They had rich symbolic meaning for me: they were given to me by my son as a Christmas gift to attend U2 with my friend, Jennifer. Jennifer and I have done a lot of things together, have traveled on all-day trips together, but this was the first four day trip.
Wild Goose is a Celtic metaphor for the Holy Spirit. I felt I was given a great gift of deep freedom ("where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty"). To attend U2 in East Lansing with Jennifer was an act of deep social freedom and beauty.
Deep beauty is when a married man and a single woman as friends can do a four day weekend mini-trip with U2 in the heart of their plans and the married man have the enthusiastic blessing of his beautiful wife to do so. I do believe chaste love in friendship is a powerful witness of beauty and love in the kingdom. Sexism between men and women is not supposed to be. That's not the way it's suppose to be. Sexualization in friendship is not suppose to be. The way of the Spirit in friendship between men and women is the way of love. The Spirit is doing some wild, beautiful things in our culture where there is so much sexual/gender ambivalence between men and women.
I know of close friends who plan to some mini-getaway excursions enjoying each other's company for a few days or even longer. It's quite an ordinary thing for friends to travel together. This was however, a married man and a single woman. In my nine years of friendship with Jennifer this was a first for us. We've taken all-day trips before around the Midwest and have been back before day's end. This was different. We were planning to be gone for four days. Sheila (my wife) sent us off the first day by writing on my FB wall: "Have a beautiful, bountiful, blessed, bouncing, bodacious time y'all!!" It doesn't get any better than that!
With so much violence and abuse toward women it is good, beautiful, and safe maintaining friendships in groups of more than two. There is definitely a place for that. But just as there are marriages where men and women learn to embrace each other mutually within the "privacy" of their relationship, so too, men and women can learn to trust each other without an adult chaperone present for every step in their friendship. For some, adult men and women friends can only meet when a chaperone is present at the office, in a car, or at home. Ethics of deep, personal caring, of deep trust in the immediacy of the other member of the opposite sex are far ranging in the realm of the Spirit--far broader than the bedroom of husband and wife. This is deep freedom. Marriage is not the only form of deep intimate caring between sexes. So thanks to the gift of my son Jonathan, Jennifer and I planned a four day weekend.
Friday: I drove to pick up Jennifer at her office. We had planned to leave by 1:00. I stopped by one of her favorite places, Chick-fil-a, and got nuggets for her, sandwiches for me. I pulled up to her office and we load her stuff into my car. We embarked. For several hours while I drove, she read Mary Dorian Russell's, The Sparrow out loud to me. Our destination was Grand Rapids, specifically Steve and Susan Matheson's. They opened up their home to us to stay with them Friday night. We had such a great time with them.
Saturday: Jennifer and I got up early and head off for Pere Marquette River which is about a 90 minute drive from Grand Rapids. We capsized the kayak early on in the trip. I hurt my back in the process. We decided to not kayak the rest of our scheduled time. We got into the car and talked about what to do for the rest of the afternoon. We decided to go up to the Sleeping Bear Dunes. It was our first time up there for both of us. Beautiful.
In the early evening we connected with a FB friend, Vanessa Horn for dinner in Traverse City. We met at this restaurant overlooking the bay. Beautiful view, gorgeous city. We had a wonderful visit with Vanessa and then made the 3 hour drive to get to East Lansing. Jennifer resumed her reading of The Sparrow.
Sunday: We woke up pretty early in order to get in the waiting line for those who have general admission tickets for U2. But one of the blessings of the day is that we got to stay the entire day in line under a big tree shading us from the sun. Here is what it looked like looking ahead of us.
We got in line, put a blanket out; I sat in a small portable chair. We had to wait for 10 hours. We did many things while waiting. Jennifer continued to read The Sparrow to me. We played a couple of games of travel scrabble. This was Jennifer's day for that. She scored 69 points on one word! "Draining" is the word!! You can see it in the picture below.
Even though there were 200 people ahead of us, we were able to get the spot inside the circle we were hoping for. The concert was awesome. For me, it was the best overall concert I've seen from U2. It was amazing--and I thought the others were amazing!
But there was something special to this one. Part of it, no doubt, had to do with our location. It was my first time in the circle. There is nothing like Bono beltin' it out a mere 10 feet from you. Yes, we saw Rob Bell and his family in attendance. U2 was simply amazing this night. I was so glad we went.
After the concert ended just a bit after 11, we walked back to the car and traveled to Grand Rapids.
Monday: We headed back. On the way, we stopped at the sand dunes in lower Michigan. We both took naps on the beach and leisurely rested before driving back.
Here are other posts on Wild Goose:
- Anna Snoeyenbos – Wild Goose Festival – A Spirit of Life Revival
- Lee Smith - Goose Bumps: Opportunities Everywhere for Offense. A Fair and Objective Review
- Ryan Hines – 30 Years Later – “Controversy” at Wild Goose
- Karyn Wiseman – Flying With the Goose
- Kyla Cofer – I went to the Wild Goose Fest and came back in love
- Brian Gerald Murphy – Born Again (Again) at Wild Goose
- Chris Lenshyn – Chasing the Wild Goose
- Cherie at Renaissance Garden – Wild Goose Return
- Deborah Wise – Wild Goose Chasing
- Custodianseed – “every day they eat boiled goose”
- Will Norman – Back from the Wild Goose Fest
- Martin at Exiles in NY – Greenbelt and the Wild Goose
- Kerri at Practicing Contemplative – Waterfowl in My Life
- Allison Leigh Lilley – Chasing the Wild Goose and Catching the Wild Goose: Thanks and First Thoughts
- Abbie Waters – Jessica: A Fable
- Steve Knight – Why Wild Goose Festival Was So Magical
- Tammy Carter – Visual Acuity and Flying
- Michelle Thorburg Hammond – I heart Jay Bakker and Peter Rollins
- Matthew Bolz-Weber – Remembering Wild Goose
- Paul Fromberg – Celebrating Interdependence Day
- David Zimmerman – Wild Goose Festival: A Recap
- Dan Brennan – U2, the Wild Goose, and Deep Freedom
- Mike Croghan – The Wild Goose is Not Safe
- John Martinez – The Table
- Callid Keefe-Perry – Gatekeeping the Goose
- Eric Elnes – The Inaugural Wild Goose Festival: Recovering Something Lost
- Shay Kearns – The Power of a T-Shirt, Apologizing to Over the Rhine, andPublic vs. Private (Part One)
- Glen Reteif – Duck Duck Goose
- Peterson Toscano – I’ve Been Goosed, What I Carried Into Wild Goose, and What I Blurted Out at Wild Goose
- Seth Donovan – About More than “The Gays”
- Exiles in New York – Greenbelt and the Wild Goose
- Tammy Carter – Visual Acuity and Flying
- TSmith – What I’ll Take From Wild Goose
- Dale Lature – Wild Goose Reflection
- Steve Hayes – Wild Goose Chase?
- Minnow – Grace Response
- Christine Sine – Encounters With A Thin Space
- Jeremy Myers – Giving Up the Wild Goose Chase
- Robert – Thoughts On the Inaugural Wild Goose
- Anna Woofenden – Slippery Slope Reflections
- Wendy McCaig – Loosing The Goose
- Joey Wahoo – Into The Wild
- Rachel Swan – goosed
- Patricia Burlison – I Called Life
- Jason Hess – While At the Goose
- The Bec Cranford – Wild Goose
- Anthony Ehrhardt – Chasing The Wild Goose on Independence Day
- Unfinished Symphony – #5 – The Last Post … for a while
Well, that also explains why Bono wasn't at Wild Goose. :)
Maybe next year you'll both make it.
Posted by: Practicingresurrection.wordpress.com | July 05, 2011 at 09:41 PM
sounds like a great trip! Jealous you got to see U2!
Posted by: Tammy Carter | July 10, 2011 at 07:05 PM