Wild Goose Hunting – Day 1 [aka Of Tetris and Ice [ing]]

so the past 4 days the simple way crew headed off to the Wild Goose which is a festival of music and speaking and art and a lot more which happened last year for the very first time [and which was one of the first experiences the beautiful Val and myself had after joining the Simple Way] and so i thort i’d write some reflections on it day to day but nothing too intense because i wanted to be living the festival more than just blogging about it – so these are very simple or very profound insights or experiences of my time at the Goose. Thorts I felt were Irresistibly Fish’like i will stick here and thorts that were more of a weighing up a thing against a thing i will post on my ‘The Simple Weigh’ blog.

Day 1: Wednesday

Dana [our friend from Boston who had come thru to help us drive to the Wild Goose] walked across just after 6am so we could start the unenviable task of trying to fit a crapload of stuff [don’t get me started!] into a not crapload of space. and [with some baptist-music-and-drama-team-pickup-packup flashbacks to give me a movie-slow-mo-montage type encouragement] we totally dominated. absolute masterclass of a pack and i celebrate years of Tetris & occasional dabblings of Jenga at having inspired the feat.

the second standout memory of the trip was a tub of dark chocolate icing [or ‘frosting’ as they call it. these americaners are crazy (thought Asterix)] and a chopstick. cos when you’re needing a distractionary and energy-inducing treat to keep you awake and alert while driving a ten hour trip, that will do the trick [aka ‘git her done’] right there.

to continue to day 2 hit this spot, and by ‘hit’ i mean ‘click’ but your mouse, not your fingers cos that would be silly…

free, free, i’m free…

arr, so last nite of crew before baptist summer camp 1 (1000ish young people) arrive and my friend Craig Fincham leads a devotion/crew-building moment and confesses some stuff to the team and God who has been loudly whispering (well i have been incessantly converting His calls to a whisper so as not to pay too much attention to them) to me decides this is a moment of truth (MOT) moment to SCREAM at me – okay buddy, choose this day whom you will serve… i knew i had to and it sucked a lot (cos of the impending disappointment and hurtment that i knew tbv would experience and of course – once again – the embarrassment of not being big or strong or real enuff with this thing i’ve been struggling with for most of this last year, or maybe more accurately not ‘struggling with’…

and so i had to (take 2) confess that once again i got caught up in online pokering and while last time i confessed i left a back door which enabled me to fairly easily slide back into it, i knew this time it had to be kill kill kill (which is not easy cos i really enjoyed playing online and it gave me both an escape and an outlet for my competitive vibes) and so i have come home and deleted the software, this time with the knowledge that i cannot start again if… it is gone, finished, and i know that it won’t be a problem again in that regard cos the only reason it was able to become a problem again was cos i left a backdoor…

and so it was tough and it sucked to have to admit to her i’d been caught up in it again, but at the same time it was amazing and incredible and much needed and it really was (again, you’d think i would have learned last time) like getting a huge chunk of my life back again (and time which i need for book-writing so super stoked and excited for everything the time will free me up to be and do) and it was SO INCREDIBLY TIMED cos i knew deep within that as much as i was ready for summer camp and the workshops i had prepared and to serve and so on, that i wasn’t and i absolutely needed that moment to happen so i could stand in front of 1500 young people absolutely compromise free and not hiding my secret sins while admonishing them to be free of theirs.

burden lifted. thank you God. thank you lovely wife for your grace and forgiveness and lack of judgement.

thank you God for 15th chances… help me not to need a 16th… free me from my addictive personality that quickly gets my feet wrapped up and entangled with sin or distractful things which masquerade as not sin.

hebrews 12.1-3 starts with ‘therefore since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw of everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles…’