The Wild Goose Chase

by Nathan Brasfield, Director of Youth and Community Ministries

 

The beginning of both the novel True Grit and its 2010 film adaptation by the Coen Brothers features a quotation from Proverbs 28:1: “The wicked flee when none pursueth.” I watch this movie every Thanksgiving (a pure coincidence that became tradition), and it has always made me think about what the righteous (or, at least, the relatively non-wicked) do if the wicked flee when no one is pursuing them. Do they simply, and quite naturally, not flee when someone is not pursuing them but flee when someone is? Or, in a more curious move, do they not flee when someone is pursuing them? (A further option still is that I have been putting way too much thought into this every holiday season.)

 

Putting this question aside for the moment, I have just returned from my third time at the Wild Goose Festival. The story goes that the festival got its name from an old Celtic symbol for the Holy Spirit, pictured as such because the wild goose, like the Spirit, is untamable, mysterious, and uncontainable. In my last Calvary blog post, I termed an experience I had in September 2015 (a few months after my first time at the Wild Goose Festival) “Wild Goose Part II.” Now I’d like to say a bit more about Wild Goose Part I.

 

In July 2015 I headed to a campground in North Carolina for my first Wild Goose as a closeted Christian, knowing that I would not see anyone I knew there and assuming that—in this strange and relatively more progressive environment centered on “Spirit, Justice, Music, Art”—I would be able to try on a different posture, one of openness and vulnerability. I might even, I imagined, have the opportunity to lightly acknowledge in conversation with new friends that I was gay—no big deal. In any case, regardless of my expectations, I certainly didn’t anticipate that going to this event would deeply and irreversibly change my life.

 

While the full story of what actually happened during that first Wild Goose is still too much to detail on this blog, I do want to say more here about how it was primarily at the tent sponsored by the Episcopal Church and with the people connected to it that I was given what I needed most at that time: a community in which I could fully be myself, as it was becoming clear that my story would not be one of coming out to just a few but of coming out to the largely non-affirming world I inhabited in its entirety. 

 

At the time, this was unthinkable, and the community that was there for me through it included 2025 Calvary Lenten Preaching Series speaker Paul Fromberg. The night before the festival ended, under the Episcopal tent as live music blasted from the main stage, Paul sat with me in my fear. The next day at Morning Prayer, as the festival began to come to a close and I would return to my normal life on a new trajectory into the frightening unknown, I sobbed louder than I ever have as he held me and repeated over me phrases that he would later call a “healing prayer”: “You are so beautiful. You are so loved. You are so frightened. You are so brave.”

 

I attended the festival again the following year, in 2016, after I had come out to my family, my friends, and my church, and I returned with joy. I saw some of the same people I had seen the year before and updated them on what had happened, which was—I think largely because of the story I had to tell—not nearly as bad as I had once feared. I even got a goose tattoo on my leg. And then, because of how my life unfolded, I didn’t return to Wild Goose until this past week, a full decade later.

 

This time, I returned to the Episcopal tent with a different relationship to it. Having been confirmed as an Episcopalian myself at Calvary in November 2024, it felt like I had come full circle. Whereas I had enjoyed nothing but welcome and friendship at the Episcopal tent before, this time I came with the full intention of participating in the rhythms of Morning Prayer, noon Eucharist, and Compline, and early on it became clear that there was a need for people to step up and make these services happen. So I quickly found myself lighting candles, greeting guests, handing out BCPs, and leading services. In the language of the rich tradition of Christian hospitality that I had received there, I realized that I had gone from guest to host, from being welcomed to welcoming others.

 

My question for you is: in our own Episcopal tent here at Calvary, do you see yourself as guest or as host? How are you pursuing as you have been pursued? 

 

What I didn’t say in my last blog post about that key experience of what I called “Wild Goose Part II” (involving an amazing encounter with a stranger in a Seattle coffeeshop a few months after my first Wild Goose) is that I texted Paul right afterward (with a choice word removed from this quotation), “God is stalking me.” I think about the Proverb quoted in True Grit and the possibility that at least when I am being pursued by the mysterious, untamable, and containable spirit of God, I am doing the right thing by giving myself up to the wild goose chase.

 

I hope you’ll consider joining me at next year’s Wild Goose Festival, September 2-5. Let me know, and we can coordinate lodging and travel. And as always, please let me know if you have any questions or ideas about how to go from guest to host at this Episcopal tent known as Calvary.