{"id":14949,"date":"2026-09-05T17:56:29","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T21:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/?p=14949"},"modified":"2026-09-05T19:45:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T23:45:46","slug":"wild-times-at-wild-goose-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/?p=14949","title":{"rendered":"Wild Times at Wild Goose Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I’m writing this from a hotel room in Statesville, North Carolina, having left Wild Goose Festival<\/a> for the day – because a crazy storm swept through. The Festival is at a campground, and most of the venues are big tents. I didn’t see any tent blow over, but many of the contents of tents went flying.<\/p>\n

This gives me time to write up my experience of the festival. There’s still a half-day left tomorrow, but I’m going to talk about what I’ve experienced so far.<\/p>\n

And I’ll start with the way the day ended. I was leading an “experience” in the Writer’s Workshop tent when the storm hit. About ten people had come (Yay! My first time, so I wasn’t sure anyone would come.), and I was taking them through writing their own psalms of lament<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We had just finished writing the fourth part, the Entreaty – where, after you’ve done your complaining, you ask God to act. Then the storm hit! So perhaps somebody prayed too hard? \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

I’m very thankful that I got to do most of the session – the rest of the events for the afternoon got cancelled. However, I’m bummed that we didn’t get a chance for people to read the laments they’d written. If anyone who was at the session finds this post – I’d love for you to post your lament in the comments!<\/p>\n

I did get some nice comments among the participants, but we were mostly fleeing at the end! (I felt guilty that I wasn’t a little more helpful in packing stuff up. I got kind of frantic in the storm and got to a place with a wooden roof.) I’d been looking forward to hearing more from them, but anyway, I’m glad I got to do it at all.<\/p>\n

Now let’s back up to the rest of the conference. It’s been amazing. HOT, but amazing. (Another theory is that someone prayed a little too hard that it would cool down!)<\/p>\n

I’ve met some authors whose books I love. Diana Butler Bass<\/a>, Frank Schaeffer<\/a>, Richard Beck<\/a> (I’m in the middle of his new book), Kristen Du Mez (I’m in the middle of her first book and have preordered her new book), and Billie and Paul Hoard<\/a>. I’ve been soaking up thoughts about being a person of faith in today’s world, surrounded by like-minded people. I’ve met beautiful people when eating, when in line, when riding on the shuttles. I attended a pre-conference on prayer from an indigenous practitioner’s perspective that opened my heart.<\/p>\n

Today some authors I’d hoped to meet were among the sessions that got cancelled. But hey, that’s a lot right there.<\/p>\n

There was one session, though, that rocked my world and is sending me back to reading the Gospel of John. I want to talk about that.<\/p>\n

It was presented by Diana Butler Bass and Elizabeth Schrader Polczer, both in academia (though Libbie was simply a singer before she met Diana).<\/p>\n

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It started for Libbie when she was researching for a song about Mary Magdalene. She looked at the earliest manuscript of the gospel of John, which is the gospel that has the most to say about Mary Magdalene. The manuscript is from the Second Century CE. She saw in that manuscript that in John 11, someone had crossed out the end of the name Mary and inserted a theta, changing it to Martha.<\/p>\n

Long story short, she did lots and lots more research, ultimately getting a PhD. She found much, much more evidence, both from manuscripts and from writings of the church fathers, that an earlier story of the raising of Lazarus has him with only one sister, Mary. And this Mary, in the book of John, is likely Mary Magdalene, the same one who was the first witness to Jesus’ resurrection.<\/p>\n

Why would someone have added a sister? Mary and Martha are also mentioned in the book of Luke, but there is no mention that they have a brother, and they don’t live in Bethany. But “Martha” in John 11 makes a confession of faith, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.” In the other gospels, the only one to make a confession is Simon, who is given the name Peter, the Rock.<\/p>\n

If it was really Mary Magdalene who made the confession, then Diana pointed out that in the book of John Mary does the five tasks of the church: She served Jesus, confessed Jesus, anointed Jesus, witnessed Jesus, and proclaimed Jesus.<\/p>\n

And that brings me to another tidbit from Libbie’s research. It turns out, there was no village called Magdala in ancient times. The current site people visit had a different name and was associated with her centuries later to give pilgrims a place to visit. The most likely meaning of Mary Magdalene is Mary the Tower – kind of like Simon the Rock.<\/p>\n

This rocked my world. I’m from a quirky background, and one of the quirks was that my parents paid me to memorize Scripture. The book of John was one of the first books I memorized, around the time I was in eighth grade. And John is interesting. Because Mary (and Martha) and Lazarus become super prominent figures in John 11 and 12 and then disappear. And Mary Magdalene is super important at the Crucifixion and then especially at the tomb when she is the first to see the risen Christ – but she kind of comes out of nowhere.<\/p>\n

What if those Marys are the same person? Suddenly, John becomes a much more unified book. And a woman is a central figure.<\/p>\n

And I’m going to be sitting with that.<\/p>\n

Here’s an article about Libbie’s research<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Her website is elizabethschrader.com<\/a>. Do check out her credentials. Her research is getting footnotes added to the Jewish Annotated New Testament as well as the authoritative edition of the Greek New Testament, published in Germany. (I forget the name; I’m not a seminary student.) I didn’t go over how her research had these things coming up over and over in early writings. This isn’t just some crackpot theory, but has solid evidence.<\/p>\n

So that’s one of the things that will be haunting me in a good way from Wild Goose Festival. And there’s still a morning to come.<\/p>\n

Edited to add: I talked with someone who’d been there after the storm. He said some tents did get blown away. That there was even a not-too-faraway tornado. I did see a fallen tree blocking a dirt road on the way off the property. However, as far as we know, no one was hurt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m writing this from a hotel room in Statesville, North Carolina, having left Wild Goose Festival for the day – because a crazy storm swept through. The Festival is at a campground, and most of the venues are big tents. I didn’t see any tent blow over, but many of the contents of tents went […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-praying-with-the-psalmists","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14949"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14957,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14949\/revisions\/14957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}