Rick Meredith

We’re very disappointed with the recent actions of the North Carolina legislature has voted to deny equal protection under the law for our LGBTQ friends and neighbors.

The Wild Goose Festival is committed to doing everything we can to remain a welcoming and safe space for all who attend. While we can assure everyone that our space at Hot Springs is safe and welcoming we want to call on the Wild Goose community to work to make every space a safe space – everywhere, all the time.

We encourage you to make your voice heard. Tonight in Charlotte and Raleigh at 5:30 PM and in Asheville at 5:00 PM there will be rallies against this legislation (NC House Bill 2) and we want to encourage Wild Goose folks who live near these places to attend. And to our Wild Goose family around the country, please consider making your voice heard as well! It’s time once again to stand with our LGBTQ friends and neighbors for equal protection under the law.

 

The Wild Goose Festival is just a few months away. Preparations for events like this are best begun early, because participation is the name of the game.

Transformative Festivals like The Wild Goose are transformative, because everyone comes as a participant, and not simply as a spectator. Participants are those who live by the ancient description of the spiritual person, “doers of the word, and not hearers only.” They are transformed by their own participation. The participant also initiates surprise in a festival, and in doing so brings transformation to others. Everyone expects the band on the stage to perform, but they are surprised by the beauty of a well-made costume, or the skills of someone juggling to the music. People expect to hear something helpful and challenging during a lecture, or a workshop, but are surprised by the vibrancy of a spirited debate, or the simple eloquence of a life-changing story. People enjoy the food and drink in festivals, but are even more pleased by the camp inviting them to share in fish tacos, or a homebrew.

Simple preparations such as costuming, preparing decorations for your campsite, bringing something to share with others, and finding ways to express your own creativity are all that are required to turn a festival from an event of talking heads, and fulfilled expectations into a wild surprise of exceeded expectations, and interactivity.

The Wild Goose is wild because of you. Spend a little time considering how you will be bringing your wild this summer, and help us keep the Goose wild.

In the spirit of this year’s Wild Goose Festival theme, Story!, we invite you to submit an original song to the Wild Goose Songwriting Contest.

Be a part of the collective exploration of heart and soul asking: What are our shared narratives? How have they shaped us – in our joy and in our suffering? How do we challenge the destructive narratives in the presence of a growing wave of fear, violence, and control? Can one person’s story of success be another’s story of oppression? How do we see the truth in the mash-up? Help us think beyond limits and tap into what Richard Rohr described as “ too big and too deep to be merely ‘understood’ or taught.”

Submissions will be accepted through April 30th. The winners will be announced by June 30th and will perform at the festival (July 7th-10th) in Hot Springs, NC with Phil Madeira hosting.  Categories for submission include Gospel, Americana, Pop, and General.

Grand Prize is a lovely Republic 317 mahogany Parlor Resonator guitar presented to the winning songwriter at the Goose this summer.

Click here for more information.

We are excited to announce Wild Goose’s Pre-Festival Mystic Action Camp from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on July 7th, preceding the opening ceremonies for the Festival itself. This pre-festival offering is brought to you by co-curators Adam Bucko, Holly Roach and Teresa B Pasquale and the generous sponsorship of the Center for Action and Contemplation. Mystic Action Camp will integrate dialogue and practices which intersect contemplative spirituality and activism brought by wisdom teachers from both Christian and interspiritual traditions.

Our world sits on the precipice of a new age of both spirituality and activism, one in which we are beginning to learn the essential interconnection between these two arenas of hope and healing to manifest activism that is grounded in the Divine and contemplative spirituality which is able to be activated in and for the goodness of God in the world. We are in a process of making and becoming a bigger tent of faith and action. We are the makers of the next iteration of tent revival in the world — a tent we carry with us, manifest in our lives and faith contexts, and where radical love and liberation are the root motivations, liberation for all of us, or none of us at all. Join us under this bigger tent to dream, pray, and live into this new tent of action and contemplation.

Click here for more information about Mystic Action Camp or buy tickets here.

 

America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America, the newly released best-selling book by Jim Wallis, Sojourners President and Founder, forms the foundation of the timely interactive series we’re proud to announce he’s curating at the 2016 Wild Goose Festival!

The book is getting enormous traction – Amazon ran out of stock on the first day, it made the Barnes & Noble online top ten, and is number 8 on the Washington Post Top 10 Best Seller list – in just its first week of release.

Join Jim in the conversation at the 2016 Wild Goose Festival (July 7– 10, Hot Springs, NC) as we challenge our community to be more than consumers of information – to be co-creators of a world in which we want to live! Wallis says,

“This conversation—leading to action—on racial justice and healing is critical for the Wild Goose and urgent for the country at this moment. I’m really looking forward to vital discussions and discoveries on the ‘Bridge to a New America’ with the Goose community this summer! Where better to have that discussion?”

By the way, Amazon has re-stocked and Barnes & Noble is still counting. We encourage you to read and to recommend this important book to literally help launch the conversation that is so painfully timely right now!

Imagine taking a walk through five notes on why justice and peace are profound values to hold if we choose to live our lives with passion, commitment, integrity, justice, hope, and love. You’ll have that opportunity at Wild Goose Festival 2016, as Emilie Townes presents, “Justice Notes.”

The Wild Goose is thrilled to welcome Emilie Townes, Dean and Carpenter Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, to the festival this year! Dean Townes is a widely recognized leader, a creative innovator, a clear and certain voice in the pursuit of justice and she will be an important contributor to our community. Dean Townes is the first African American to serve as Dean of the Vanderbilt Divinity School and the first Black woman elected to the presidency of the American Academy of Religion (AAR). The Durham, NC native is an American Baptist clergywoman. She holds a Ph.D. in Religion in Society and Personality from Northwestern University and a Doctor of Ministry degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School. She has taught at Yale Divinity School, Union Theological Seminary, and Saint Paul School of Theology. Townes is the author of four books, including the groundbreaking Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil and editor or co-editor of four books.

“We must choose righteous anger that does not excuse inequities, does not tolerate poverty, does not sanction false hopes.  Righteous anger takes to the ballot box, encourages us to claim the responsibility of citizenship and educate ourselves about the issues of the day and also the ways we can address them, works as communities united with a vision that refuses to accept a weary status quo that allows a few to flourish and the rest struggle to survive.”

Read Emilie’s blog.

Professor Emilie Townes speaks of Jesus’ righteous indignation and our need to be angry in the face of injustice.