Somewhere between Kool-Aid and thuribles
Photograph by Pixabay via Pexels
Rev. Justin Cox
I am a low-church Baptist. Lord knows I’ve tried to be something else.
I tried megachurches when they were all the rage. Their smoke machines burned my eyes, their penal substitution atonement theories hurt my ears. I never fit their mold.
I wandered into a few red-door churches.[i] The folks there welcomed my seeking soul in the way they do everyone — without question and with love. I was intrigued, thankful, and relieved.
I didn’t have the heart to tell them I hadn’t a clue what “liturgical” meant. Or that I didn’t own a copy of Thomas Cranmer’s “Book of Common Prayer.” When they talked of Ordinary Time, I grinned and nodded like the idiot I was (and am).
In the end, I went back to what I knew.
I was reared in rural churches, fought over by Methodist circuit riders and Baptist preachers who had other full-time jobs on the side. The kind that could pray you into heaven and fix your clogged sink on the same afternoon, as long as it wasn’t the Sabbath.
Mine were the churches that served off-brand Kool-Aid during Vacation Bible School. The sort of place where the Women’s Circle did all the work throughout the year, but the Men’s Brunswick Stew fundraiser garnered all the attention and praise. Where just about every family was connected to one another through marriage or conflict, and the closest its members ever came to visiting the Holy Land was a baptism tank below a stained-glass image of the Jordan River.
Such was my raising, and I was warned to never get above it.
Still, sometimes I find myself flirting with those denominations and traditions that are not my own. I look with a wandering eye, remembering Jesus’ warning about plucking it out if it caused too much trouble.
Such was the case at the Wild Goose Festival.
Known to the initiated as “the Goose,” the summer gathering is a combination resting somewhere between a cloister visit and Phish concert. It's been calling the lost and burned out since its inception in 2011.
The location has changed over the years, but the pilgrims have always come, searching for the sacred and smashing the idols of institutional religion. For some, it’s the purest form of church they’ve experienced in years. For others, it’s reason enough to start a prayer chain.
Seekers and nonconformists aren’t the only presence there. Vendors, food and beer trucks stretch out into the field located on Van Hoy Farms in Harmony, North Carolina. Years earlier, this was the site of the World Championship Fiddler’s Convention. The sounds of mountain pickin’[ii] are now replaced with unconventional prayers and impromptu drum circles.
Tents of different sizes and shapes band together, repelling the rays of the unrelenting summer sun. Resting underneath, one can find discussions ranging from shadow work to panels on the rise of Christian nationalism, with presenters including John Pavlovitz, Jennifer Butler, and Angela Parker. Under the music tent, we enjoy the talents of Flamy Grant.
Last year was my first visit to the Goose. Me and mine journeyed there from New England, lured by curiosity and a phone call from an organizer.
We came. We saw. We were changed.
I’m fine with some things remaining a mystery. I’ve come to learn that God is often found in such places — in the highest of sacraments and in the lowest of ordinances.
The trip was filled with one virginal encounter after another, nothing rehearsed. We appreciated the absence of an agenda and branding. My family was blown from one place to the next by the Spirit.
Each morning when their eyes opened, my children pulled me into the Art Tent. It’s a crafter’s dream, filled with scrap paper, scrap wood, scrap yarn, and enough glue guns to ensure a stigmata on small hands.
“Ow! I got some on my finger,” said my oldest.
Blessing her heart, I assured her, “It’s all part of the experience.”
She blessed me back with words I’m sure she learned from her mother.
Her mother, my spouse Lauren, would have her own moments. She was ordained at the Goose after we found enough ragamuffins to form a church without walls, tithes, or committees. Our connections to one another rested on that which we believed would transcend distance and weekly attendance — love and fellowship. This is my grassroots faith.
Afterwards, Lauren told me, “We need to plan and come back next year. I believe we’ve found our people.”
And so we did.
While not seasoned Goose goers, we weren’t rubes. We knew where to find certain things and people. And while not fully ready to let go of a hotel’s indoor plumbing, we did pitch a tent, bring a cooler, and a couple of solar-powered fans. We reconnected with those we knew and remembered. We bumped into some who we’d only ever known from social media posts and Zoom calls.
The times were good. The highlights memorable. Applying sunscreen with small children a constant challenge.
No matter what, when you leave the Goose, you leave with stories. The ones I’ll remember from this year fluttered out from under a decorated tent every night around 8 p.m.
That’s when the Episcopalians proceeded out and around the camp.
Sometimes you hear them before you see them, speaking or lightly singing a hymn to a tune that my low church ears weren’t accustomed to.
Other times I saw them first. At a distance, their presence could have been mistaken for a swarm of lightning bugs or those fabled will-o’-the-wisp, as they marched with lanterns and flashlights in their hands, beckoning all to come, see, and get lost with them.
Still other times, I smelled them before anything else. Out they’d come, swinging incense in their thurible,[iii] a device as foreign to me as an Apple product.
With complete attention, I’d watch as they moved with confidence. Shadows attached to voices, conviction in their steps, roaming through the dark. I admired them from afar as they stripped down all the formality I associate with their denomination. Something about the Goose appears to free everyone of pomp and circumstance, even the finest of us Protestants.
A few times, my feet shuffled, the fold-out chair I sat in creaked under the shifting of my weight, and my hands went to brace myself as I thought about joining them.
Alas, I couldn’t find the nerve to move.
In the same way I never raised a hand in worship service. Never walked the aisle. Never responded to an altar call.
Invitations of any sort are as difficult for me as a Rubik’s Cube. They are just another puzzle I’m okay with not solving just yet.
I’m fine with some things remaining a mystery. I’ve come to learn that God is often found in such places — in the highest of sacraments and in the lowest of ordinances.
I’m grateful to be formed by one and welcomed, always invited, by the other.
Justin Cox received his theological education from Campbell University and Wake Forest University School of Divinity. He is an ordained minister affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and enrolled in the Doctor of Ministry program at McAfee School of Theology. Opinions and reflections are his own.
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
[i] The phrase “red-door churches” refers to a longstanding tradition of painting church doors red (especially among Episcopal, Anglican, and some Lutheran congregations.) Historically, red symbolized the blood of Christ and signaled that the church was a place of sanctuary. In contemporary American usage, “red-door church” is often shorthand for mainline congregations known for openness and hospitality.
[ii] “Mountain pickin’” is an informal term for traditional Appalachian or bluegrass-style music, characterized by fast picking on instruments such as the banjo, mandolin, and guitar.
[iii] A thurible is a metal incense burner, usually suspended on chains, used in some Christian denominations’ liturgy to swing incense during worship.
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