Fringe Festival

For those in Rochester, we have been enjoying the annual Fringe Festival over the course of this week and next. There are really some amazing performers, shows and experiences that this festival offers.

Many who know me know that the Silent Disco is, perhaps, one of the annual highlights for me. My wife, Lynne, and I meet up with friends, put on the headsets and dance the night away.

What I love about the Silent Disco is that if you don’t have the headsets on, you’d think the folks who were dancing were a bit out of their minds – singing and dancing to songs that only they can hear. Reminds me of the old phrase, “those who hear not the music think the dancer mad.”

The gospels invite us to a different sort of “fringe festival.” Jesus kept the company of those on the edges of society, and his way of being in the world was often at odds with the status quo. And not unlike the Silent Disco, he danced and sang to a music that not everybody could hear (or wanted to hear).

As followers of Jesus, we are invited to locate ourselves on the fringes. We’re invited to hear the music that others may not (or choose not to) hear. We’re invited to do things that don’t compute or don’t make sense according to what has become “normal” and “acceptable”. We’re invited to “subvert the dominant paradigm.” Yet we do this not just to be contrarian. We do this in the service of advancing love, equity, compassion, justice, radical inclusion and dignity.

And we can do this every day – no matter who or where we are.

While it is a bit lengthy, I’d invite you to sit with this excerpt from Wendell Berry’s poem called the “Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front“. It speaks to much of what I have raised here and, I think, gives us the urging to live out the gospel message in whatever context we find ourselves.

“So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in [their] lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.“