While I was at the Wild Goose Festival two weeks ago I talked with several speakers and authors about hate mail. We all get it and respond in ways consistent with who we are. One of the authors I know answers every negative correspondence with a short pithy quote appropriate to the comment. That takes a lot of work. Another publishes what the person says, along with their name. That’s an approach, I reckon. None of the people I was with at the Goose respond that way. They mostly respond as I do.

The second I can tell I am being attacked, I stop reading. Life is too short to respond to people who have already drawn their conclusions, truth be damned. Ninety-nine percent of the evil in the world is done by people who are 100 percent convinced they are right.

If I am challenged, but not attacked, I will respond, though not until I have taken the time necessary to seriously consider the challenge. Often, there is at least a kernel of truth in what they are saying. Though it is painful to acknowledge that kernel, I know of no other way to grow. M. Scott Peck said the path to wisdom is through the brambles and thickets of stringent self-examination and openness to challenge from the outside.

Remaining open to challenge is good. To allow yourself to be attacked is fruitless. My experience is that those doing the attacking are not the people doing the work of stringent self-examination, or open to challenge from the outside. From their perspective the problem is always the actions of others, never their own. There is no value in reading the words of those who always see the problem as “out there.”

It is worthwhile to be open to challenge. The hero of all great myths is the person willing to go where others will not go, which sometimes means facing the parts of themselves they do not want to face. It is a willingness to spend three days and three nights in a dark place. For Jonah, it was the belly of a whale. For Gilgamesh, it was a cave. For Jesus, it was a borrowed grave. Of course the ancients understood the symbolism. There is no moon for three nights every month, and those are the darkest times.

Fighting the mother of Grendel In his own dark place at the bottom of a cold and forbidding lake, Beowulf had to come to grips with the fact that his hubris had caused the death of the king’s best friend. When he killed Grendel, Beowulf confidently told the king he had solved his problem. In reality, Grendel was not the problem. The mother of Grendel was the problem. As David Whyte says, our problem is not the thing we fear. It is that which gave birth to the thing we fear. In Beowulf’s case,  the mother of Grendel was his own hubris. Beowulf had to fight her for three days and three nights  in the dark, cold, forbidding waters of her lair. He rose from those waters wiser, though exhausted.

Jonah had to learn that saying no to the call of God never works out so well. When you reject the call of God, you do so at your own peril. It took three days and three nights in the belly of a fish to know he was called to Nineveh, like it or not.

Every ancient myth includes a time in which the hero must face themselves in the mirror. They must own their abiding shadows, those parts of themselves that have always been a problem and will always be a problem. Only after they have completed that work is the hero able to move on.

Once you have faced your own abiding flaws, you can be okay when others name them, though it is always painful. Having them named means that once again, they have escaped from the basement and done their damage. You must get to work putting them back in the basement, where they can do as little damage as possible. Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer comes to mind. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

There are six words I will not speak – “I am too old to change.” If you are too old to change, you are too old. When I hear people speak those words, I wonder when they gave up? When were they so wounded they could not recover? When did they abandon the belief that getting out of bed in the morning includes facing your entire self in the mirror, not just the parts you like.

Being open to challenge creates wisdom. Being attacked does not. It only generates despair. When you are challenged, turn inward and discern the truth that might exist within the challenge. When you are attacked, build a wall. Protect yourself. Create boundaries. None of us can withstand an onslaught of terrible words, particularly when they have been designed to wound us as deeply as possible.

I will continue to be open to being challenged. On the other hand, I will not subject myself to attack.

And so it goes.

I’ve just returned from the 2023 Wild Goose Festival. I have attended the festival every year since 2016. When I attempt to describe the Goose, I always fall back on the same language – The Goose is where Woodstock meets liberal Christianity.

This year’s event was the second at VanHoy Farms in Union Grove, North Carolina. I still prefer the old site in Hot Springs, North Carolina, nestled among hardwoods on the banks of the French Broad River. The biggest advantage of the Hot Springs location was the shade. The biggest disadvantage of the Union Grove location is the lack of shade. It was hot, very hot. And humid, very humid.

I always enjoy the program, but the main reason I go to the Goose is for the conversations. I get to hang out with friends, most of whom are very accomplished and have a lot to teach me. Each evening we sit around the lobby of the hotel, drink bourbon, and discuss the state of the church and the nation.

This year I suggested to the curators of the festival that they create a Wednesday evening event for speakers before the festival began. I suggested they form three groups and move through three different campfires, where the attendees would hear three experts talk about three topics relevant to the times. I had been a part of such an event with current Hollywood television writers last fall, and found it to be wonderfully stimulating.

They took me up on my suggestion and I was one of the speakers, focused on why transgender issues have become such a hot topic in the US. Another speaker talked about the spiritual nature of psychedelics, and another about climate change. We each gave the same presentation to all three groups, then engaged the attendees in conversation about shifting the narrative on all three topics. It was a wonderful evening. They’ve already decided to do it again next year.

During the festival itself I did a longer presentation about our current political environment. It was a full venue with lots of Q&A. I was encouraged that so many people want to figure out how to help the trans population.

My second presentation during the festival was on developing resilience. I’ve done a corporate talk on the subject, but only virtually, so I’ve not been able to interact with an in-person audience.

People often say children are very resilient. The truth is that children are not resilient. Children develop coping mechanisms to get by, but those coping methods do not foster resiliency. They foster survival. The problem is that people take those childhood coping mechanisms into adulthood, and try to use them to create resiliency. It doesn’t work. The reason is simple. They are the coping mechanisms of the helpless, and adults are not helpless.

In therapy, a big part of my job is to help clients throw away their old coping mechanisms and replace them with tools to develop resilience. The resiliency talk I did at the Goose was based on the old English myth of Beowulf. I loved putting the talk together, and it was satisfying to see people respond so favorably.

My last event at the Goose was a podcast with John Pavlovitz, Mark Sandlin, Amantha Barbee, and Sheri Pallas. Now, that was fun. I am an Enneagram Two with a social instinctual subtype. I love nothing more than to try to improve the lives of others and help them reach their full potential. Social Twos are comfortable doing that in a crowd or one-on-one. I had plenty of both types of opportunities at this year’s Wild Goose.

A key to aging well is to continually reinvent yourself. I remember a co-worker from my college years who said 25 years after graduation that he had not changed one tiny bit. I said, “I am so sorry, that must be difficult.” I’m not sure he understood that I did not think it was a good thing that he had not changed.

One of the joys of the Goose is that there are plenty of people in attendance who are around my age. Most of us have been on similar journeys that took us out of the denomination of our youth, through the dark night of the soul, and into the light again, more humble, but also more confident. If we work all the way through difficult times we gain wisdom, the place in which great confidence and great humility come together.

After multiple speaking engagements, hosting my family for a wonderful holiday visit, investing hundreds of hours in the most recent TEDxMileHigh event, and speaking at the Goose, I’m ready to settle into a little slower rhythm for the next month. I will write more, run, mountain bike, hike, and sit by the firepit on the back patio. Four weeks of that kind of pace will be delightful. Anything more than that would be frustrating. I get antsy if I’m not busy.

I told a group of people this week that I am semi-retired. They laughed. I said, “Let me explain. Being semi-retired means I work hard, but I only do work that I enjoy.” For the most part, I am able to avoid the soul-sucking stuff. It still comes up in church every now and again because, well, it’s church. But for the most part, I get to do tasks that enhance my life, not tasks that diminish it.

As for today, I’ll go for a short run, answer a few emails, and start on next Sunday’s sermon.

And so it goes.