When I think back on my years attending the Wild Goose Festival, I think of walking.

The first year I attended, I came to speak with a friend. I was still a somewhat conservative but curious evangelical, recovering from my hardcore fundamentalist roots. My friend and I participated in a pre-festival retreat for the speakers, and I remember sitting and listening to Frank Schaeffer, a fellow recovering fundamentalist, speak (or more accurately, rant) and wondering what I’d gotten myself into. Frank felt angry to me, and wherever I was going, I didn’t want it to be an angry place. I was troubled.

Later that evening, long past dark, the retreat ended with a prayer walk through Shakori Hills (where the festival spent its first two years). Gareth Higgins handed me a flashlight, and we all began to slowly venture into the night, a flashlight here and there to help us along. It was hard to see much of anything, but as we walked, silent except the scuff of shoes on the dirt path, my eyes began to adjust. I realized that Frank and Genie Schaeffer were walking beside me, following the light of my flashlight.

And I knew in that moment that we were walking the same path in a much larger sense. My journey would not look quite like theirs, nor theirs like mine. But we had found ourselves here, walking alongside one another and doing our best to find our way forward.

Our paths crossed several times that weekend, and I began to know the whirlwind that is Frank and the calm that is Genie. I heard Frank talk about struggling with the anger he’d brought with him from his fundamentalism, of not wanting his granddaughter to know him as that “angry man.” I sat with Genie in the heat of an afternoon as we talked of transitions and changes and grace.

As year followed year, I’ve walked with many different people at the Goose, renewing friendships and adding them. As I moved farther from traditional evangelicalism, I found new “elders” for my life when the old ones could no longer understand the path ahead of me. I can’t count the times I’ve greeted someone and heard the reply, “Where are you headed? Can you walk with me?” And wherever I was headed, my answer is almost always yes.

I walked alongside Vince Harding one hot afternoon, and was left with an embrace and blessing I will always remember. I’ve walked many times now with my friend Nathan, a young man who I saw come out publicly for the first time during the Q & A of a Goose session, and who the next year told me about his new boyfriend and plans to start seminary. I’ve walked the Goose with Paula Stone Williams, a fellow recovering fundamentalist and one of the bravest people I know. I’ve walked with a newly-out and newly-single father and helped wrangle his two young children.

These days, it’s the first thing I do once I’ve settled in – begin walking the paths looking for friends. Looking to learn what the Goose will have to teach me this year. As the years have gone by, I attend fewer and fewer sessions, my time filled more and more with conversations along the way.

I’ve walked with heroes and strangers. I’ve hugged friends as we’ve passed, and had the joy of introducing and connecting people. This year, I look forward to walking with friends I’ve yet to meet in person, as well as an old friend of my parents who I haven’t seen in around thirty years. I’m eager to see friends from around the country whose faces are dear to me and too rarely seen.

The Wild Goose is far more than a destination; it’s a journey each one of us walks in our own way. And for a few days in July, we have the gift of walking together.

I’m thrilled to be speaking at this year’s Goose July 13-16! Join me and save 25% off weekend pass with the code BEMYGUEST.