You might not be familiar with the story of the Wittenburg Door. Tallulah wasn’t. That’s the door that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on to. You remember those, right? The 95 protests against the Pope’s selling “get out of purgatory free” cards so that he could build the Bascillica of St. Peter? Yeah, so that was kind of the start of the Protestant Reformation and all.
So flash forward like about 500 years, and picture yourself living in Fulton, Mississippi, where the Baptists were going directly to Heaven and everyone else would at least have to change planes in Atlanta. Imagine you thought there was something wrong with this picture but did not know quite where to place your finger. The magazine “The Wittenburg Door” may have helped you figure that one out. For friends of mine, it was like finding a secret society in the midst of a culture that was going off the rails.
And it’s not as if the culture has found it’s track yet. There’s still a need for a place where people who question what the hell is going on here to come together and be strengthened by our fellowship. We need to know that God still loves us weirdos. That was one point that Rosa Lee Harden made as she told about hiding copies of “The Wittenburg Door” under her mattress.
In her fundraising pitch at Wild Goose, Rosa Lee said that these places were important for our children and grandchildren to have so that they can grow up without feeling alone. But there was more, she said. We need voices like “The Wittenburg Door” and places like Wild Goose so that we can become who we truly are, and that’s who our children and grandchildren really want to know.
I was floored. The truth of it broke me open like a rock that gave forth water to Moses. The people who love me, especially my wife and my daughter, love me. Me. I don’t always love me, but they still want to know me. I couldn’t speak, and I stumbled away to some place where I could sit with this knowledge for a minute.
After ambling down a road of packed mud, I found myself in the Wild Goose chapel. Between fits of sobbing, I looked up and saw apples and pieces of paper tied to strings which hung from tree branches. There were messages on the pieces of paper from children, confessing the things about which they felt guilty. One said “I called God ‘stinky'” and I thought, “me too, little brother, me too.”
God still loves me, and I know that. Then again, God is God, and I have come to expect that kind of unconditional love from my Higher Power. What I did not expect was to find that another person could love me that way too. She has, in fact, been loving me that way for a lot longer than I have been aware. (I’m kind of slow on the uptake.) And now there are two of them! I’m surrounded! Thank God!