We’re thrilled to announce that Diana Butler Bass, Otis Moss III, and William Paul Young will be at the Goose this year, sharing their wisdom, insights, and unique voices with the community. Want to get to know them a little better before the festival? Check out some snippets of their stories and what they’ve been up to lately. (And don’t forget your tickets!)
Diana Butler Bass
On Co-Creation: “Awe is the gateway to compassion. It is a deep awareness that we are creators, creators who work with the Creator, in an ongoing project of crafting a world. If we do not like the world or are afraid of it, we have had a hand in that. And if we made a mess, we can clean it up and do better. We are what we make.”
Diana Butler Bass keeps busy as an author, speaker, and independent scholar specializing in American religion and culture. The late Phyllis Tickle called Dr. Bass’ most recent book Grounded “…a wise and beautiful book. It is, in fact and in places, almost an anthem to the sacred unity of the physical and the spiritual in the formation of human faith and in the maturation of the human soul.” In this discovery of the sacred unity of the physical and spiritual, Dr. Bass notes:
Much to my surprise, church has become a spiritual, even a theological struggle for me. I have found it increasingly difficult to sing hymns that celebrate a hierarchical heavenly realm, to recite creeds that feel disconnected from life, to pray liturgies that emphasize salvation through blood, to listen to sermons that preach an exclusive way to God, to participate in sacraments that exclude others, and to find myself confined to a hard pew in a building with no windows to the world outside. This has not happened because I am angry at the church or God. Rather, it has happened because I was moving around in the world and began to realize how beautifully God was everywhere: in nature and in my neighborhood, in considering the stars and by seeking my roots. It took me five decades to figure it out, but I finally understood. The church is not the only sacred space; the world is profoundly sacred as well. And thus I fell into a gap – the theological ravine between a church still proclaiming conventional theism with its three-tiered universe and the spiritual revolution of God-with-us (Grounded: Finding God in the World-A Spiritual Revolution).
Otis Moss III
Rev. Dr. Otis Moss, III has “civil rights advocacy in his DNA” and built his ministry on community advancement and social justice activism. As Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, IL, Dr. Moss spent the last two decades practicing and preaching a Black theology that unapologetically calls attention to the problems of mass incarceration, environmental justice, and economic inequality.
Dr. Moss says that his father’s role as a civil rights activist “had a huge impact on [me.] I grew up believing it was the call of the church to make an impact in the immediate community and in the world. I also grew up thinking most churches were highly into the community and politically active. It wasn’t until I got to college and realized that there were some churches that didn’t engage at all and that was a part of their theology. There were other churches that didn’t have any concept of prophetic ministry—they thought prophetic ministry was telling the future versus speaking truth to power. That was a shocker to me growing up knowing Andrew Young, John Lewis, Coretta Scott King, Daddy King and Wyatt T. Walker. Every person involved in organizing the Civil Rights movement was part of our extended family and they were connected to the church. I thought it was normal…until I went to college. I assumed the only way you could love Jesus was to demonstrate your love instead of speaking your love. Demonstrate it through how you love those who were the most vulnerable in the community.”
William Paul Young
William Paul Young is the New York Times bestselling author of The Shack, which has recently been adapted for film and is set to release March 3rd. Though The Shack was a story originally written for his six children with no intentions for publication, Paul’s creative re-imagining of the Trinity in the midst of tragedy resonated with millions across the world.
Paul calls his own story “both incredible and unbearable, a desperate grasping after grace and wholeness. These few facts also do not speak to the potency of love and forgiveness, the arduous road of reconciliation, the surprises of grace and community, of transformational healing and the unexpected emergence of joy.
I have finally figured out that I have nothing to lose by living a life of faith and trust. I know more joy every minute of every day than seems appropriate, but I love the wastefulness of my Papa’s grace and presence.”
Can’t wait to see them? Our winter ticket sale is happening now: $229 includes festival admission + tent camping. Hurry, sale ends Sunday, March 19th.
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