The Rainbow Gathering in Thuringen:
August 30-September 3, 2007

"Welcome Home" the banner pronounced as I sauntered up to the first fire on the trail. After two full days and nights of travel, I had finally made it. A nice young woman with a huge growth on her chin, unlike any I had ever seen before offered me a cup of coffee, and I received the invitation gladly. I sat and made conversation to get my bearings, and then helped break wood for the fire before making my way up the trail to the heart of Rainbow Land.

Charles Dickens once wrote a book called, A Tale of Two Cities. I don't know what it is about, but I picked up a book by St. Augustine called The City of God. This book speaks of the Fall of Rome and the coming of the Holy City, Jerusalem. In the Bible, one could make an argument that it could be summed up by the stories of Babylon and Jerusalem. This is particularly evident in the final chapters of Revelation where you see the whore of Babylon finally receiving her due punishment, and the whole city cast down with her. Immediately following, you see Jerusalem coming down from out of the clouds. So I wonder if Charles Dickens may have picked up the same theme when writing his book, Tale of Two Cities. Anyway, this theme is at the forefront of Rainbow. There is the rest of the world, which is Babylon, and then there is Rainbow, which the family sees as a refugee camp longing for its home, the Holy City of Jerusalem.

How can I descirbe Rainbow for those who do not know? I don't think I could do so very well, and if I tried, I would probably get it all wrong and really piss off some who know better. So I will save my descriptions for verbal introductions with those who may ask. Instead, I should like those who are curious to try some of thier own web research. Wikipedia may come in use for this. This said, I can offer the following expressions of my personal experience, along with its contrasts to the four previous gatherings I have attended in the US:

It was about a 30 minute walk uphill to the main gathering. On the way up, I met a very nice woman with her bike and husky whom I shall call Katrina. We walked along the trail together until it broke off to a spring. Parking her bike, we walked down the steep, slippery, small mud trail to the mouth of the spring which had been tapped with a run of one inch grey electrical pvc conduit. After filling our water bottles, we returned up the steep muddy incline for the bike and then on up the mountain. Comming to the top of the mountain, few people passed us along the way exchanging nods as they went. The best I can say for the visual account of these people was that it seemed to be an opposite demographic from that which you find in Babylon. There were people dressed in nice, middle class, store bought camping gear. But the predominant fashion appeared to be a conglomerate of that which is second hand and man made. The majority were barefoot. Near the end of the trail, there was a fork off to the left which we took and then another break to the left which lead muddy through the woods. These turns off the main trail were marked with arrows made out of sticks, and rocks stacked into small towers indicating the way one should go. Coming out of the woods, we had to pass through a freshly harvested and bailed hay field. While crossing the field, a tranquil and inviting tint village began to emerge. There were mostly tents and tarp structures clustered here and there throughout a great meadow on the mountaintop. Scattered throughout the tents more numerous than I had seen at previous gatherings were tipis. We walked on down the main trail, passing the camps and greeting some of the people as we went. It struck me how quiet this gathering was. By this time I am used to hearing someone screaming as loud as their obnoxious hoarse voice will let them, with profanities, as they scream "Got a cigarette? Need a cigarette? Nic at nite!" I am also used to a more violent and harsh sort of front gate as alcohol is not allowed into the gathering, and only along the fringes. In the states, A-camp (as they call it) runs welcome home. So all alcohol must be consumed on the other side of front gate. In the national gathernigs, incomming family with their clean tents and balanced back packs are greeted all along the way to 'wherever they find to camp' with hugs, harty exclamations of "Welcome Home!" and "Lovin' you." These greetings were scarce. Katrine consoled me saying we are really happy you are here, but we are also German, so we don't just come out and say it.

I think all the gathering except for 'Welcome Home' pitched their tents up in this big meadow (actually several meadows including main meadow at the center.) We walked on along the main trail and by this time could just about see the whole meadow from where we stood, along with all its campers and tents. The trail lead to the center of the gathering where there was one main big kitchen cooking the food for the whole gathering. Usually there are several kitchens smaller kitchens handling food distribution to their local campers and whoever else that may come buy. But this was a smaller gathering. I think I am used to small gatherings of around 3000. This gathering might have been somewhere between 600 to 800. So everyone could be fed by this kitchen. It provided two meals. Breakfast, which was around noon- Babylonian time, and dinner which was sometime in the early evening.

Across the main trail from the giant tarp structure of the Kitchen, was a very nice looking yurt that functioned as the main community center for the Hare Krishnas. It is my fear that the Krishnas owned that gathering. If you are Krishna, you can be proud. I don't know, too much about Krishna, but it seems like there influence was everywhere, from their community yurt with worship rising out of it into the night, to so many songs around the main meadow fire, to their music and songs of worship providing the sound track at each food circle I attended, including the prevalence of their musicians for the procession of the 'magic hat'. (For the Babylonians reading this, the magic hat is passed around at the end of every food circle. It is essentially an offering taken so that there would be food for the gathering at the next food circle.) I must admit, I envy the yurt.

Journeying on down the main trail, we passed through Main Meadow where the big fire was going, the musicians including jimbay drumbs were chanting through some celebrative track. Passing the fire, Katrine, and her hound Cerius, lead me to her community tent. There I met her boy friend and others who had found warmth and hospitality in that harth. I put down my bags, made a stretch and looked around ...'Rainbow!' I thought.

"FOOD CIRCLE!" was the next thing I heard. "Oh!"Katrine said, "We made it up just in time for breakfast."

It is not my intention to labor through the rest of this narrative. I merely constructed it to set the scene on which the next several days were played. Now with further discription and less narrative, I wish to communicate the following:

I really enjoyed Rainbow. It was cold and rainy and miserable. But I had a great time. I left a shirt down at welcome home and rode Katrine's bike down to get it after that first food circle. I could only walk back up the trail, because the handle bars on the bike worked themselves way too loose for steering. The rain had begun as I finished my decent. As I walked back up with the busted bike close to some Asian girl under her orange umbrella, the rain came hard and I arrived back at Katrine's camp completely drenched just after the rain stopped. So, Every day I waited for the sun to come out. It was August, and I expected some nice warm days where I could charge my iPod in the sun, read under it's bright rays, and dry out my cold - damp everything.

This was my first Rainbow without Jesus camp and going completely alone. I tried Rainbow once before with one other brother, and in just two full days I could not wait to leave and do something completely Babylonian like get a hotel, sit in the hot tub, eat Mac Donalds, and spend a day at Epcot. That experience was filled with unfortunate travellings from fire to fire only to sit and listend to a series of crude and completely uninteresting vexatious vapors of sex, drugs, and how the government sux. I had heard that gatherings in Europe were different. I had heard that they were actually darker, with more focus on workshops then being just a big and loud party in the woods. The report of European gatherings being darker with their many spiritual workshops put a good warning in my heart. Though I found the reports to be true, I found the people to be more genuine and kind wrather than vexing and vaporous. There were intelligent conversations, warm and generous hearts.

So I spent three nights in the woods, and I saw fruit there. It was tender and precious fruit. It was not necessarily the fruit of conversion, but the fruit of the spirit. I want to talk about temperance. I saw the temperance of the Lord moving in the heart of a beautiful young girl from Poland who my heart breaks for. I will call her Annalii, and we met one day while I was reading the Bible in my hammock. She approached me that day on her way from collecting water in the spring. She complimented me on the little camp I had contructed from my rainfly and hammock. She inquired of my day, what I was doing, what I was reading. I read her just a bit of the Psalm which was opened before me, and spoke of the amazing one that is God. She told me she did not know what she thought of God, and said that she grew up occasionally going to mass with her family. I told her that it is not easy to form an opinion about God. He is too amazing to conceive of easily. I sensed hurt and betrayal in her heart and in her history. She seemed so sad even though she wore such a beautiful smile, the smile itself seemed to carry sadness in its form. Our encounter was short, but somehow so meaningful. On my final day of the gathering, I was going to pack up my camp, and she was leaving too. Though her camp was not so far from mine, this was the only other time we saw each other. We spoke. She told me she was leaving too, and just seemed so dreading of her departure. She drank up a long and lingering embrace in my arms, and it felt not as me but Christ himself embracing her through me. I prayed a blessing over her and gave her a brother's kiss on the forehead. Again, this was such a tender moment. I walked on to my camp amazed, and at a wonder for what the Lord was doing in Annalii. She comes to my mind still in the passing of my days. I may be walking along a road, off to the exploit of some errand. In the moment that my mind may be idle or liesurely, often the Lord calls me to attention on him and to the call of many prayers by first bringing to my heart Annalii.

Often, coupled or nearly directly after praying for Annalii, I think of Expat. I actually hate it that I should not use his real Rainbow name here. He has a really cool name, but I will be telling some of his story, and it is his story. I really should get his permission before posting it, but I don't know how to get in touch with him yet (though I certainly have plans too.) Expat was the only other American that I met at the gathering. It was really cool sitting with him and shooting the breeze home grown style, with all the American and American Ranibow humor. We decided that this must have not been our first gathering together, but that we must have been to the same gathering in Ocala one of those times that the 'Bad Doser' was giving everyone DOC and telling them it was LSD. The result was people going crazy, even some falling into camp fires and not knowing they were getting burned. Eventually, CALM (rainbow clinic) had to start duct taping victems up to trees and nursing them off the awful high. Expat intimately knew one of those trees. After years of hitchhiking and wild life in the states that has virtually spun him out of the US, he found himself in Germany. He now is dating a girl in one of the more well known fun cities in Germany, while busquing for a living. He has also been drinking...ALOT. He said that just before he made it to the gathering his drinking had gotten so bad that it had greatly affected his use of the WC. Essentially, he realized he was at the end. He was going to die. He concluded that he would never make it back to the states and into treatment in time, and the German health care system is great but will do nothing for illegal aliens, so his only hope was to get out to a gathering which is alcohol free. So he came with virtually nothing. Someone gave him a tent, and someone else a sleeping bag, and others coffee, and this and that. A portuguese woman who spoke a hard to follow english, nursed him to health with the aid of lots of water. By the time I met him he was sober, happy, and shittin pretty. His parents are missionaries, and just a month earlier, he said he had been very angry with God. Some pastor from Victory outreach who had been passing out tracks in the city made him the pastor's project since he was such an anomaly... being able to quote the Bible backwards and forwards and all. Well Expat says that the pastor began to wear him down, so just a couple of days prior to my conversation Expat rededicated his life to Christ, 'for about the thousandth time.' He was not shy about it either. Though very rough and unrefined, he would give people big'ol smiles in the woods and tell them that Jesus loves them, and he was proud to announce often that he was a Christian. Expat and I hit it off swell, so now my heart swells up everytime I think about him.

So I say that I loved my time at the gathering. I enjoyed it so much that I could consider living in rainbow for the next few years. It has much of what I am looking for. Before I moved to Asheville, I was praying for a church that could culturally relate to squatters and the (political) counter culture, which I could set up as a home base in the states. I wanted it to be somewhere north of Houston where it was colder. I thought it would have been nice if this church was in the mountains, and often wondered if it could also be in a small town, just so I could get a taste of small town life. Well then, as most of you know, the Lord gave me Life House in Asheville. Since landing in Europe, I have begun to develope a similar prayer. I am now looking for a community in Europe where I can stay for a season as a place where I can serve the community in exchange for a place to sleep and food. It would be cool if this was a secular community where I can surround myself with unbelievers to love and learn from as I serve them hoping that in some my service may one day manifest itself as the very flesh and blood of Christ consumed in their memebers. Well, consider Rainbow; a spiritual community that is primarily pagan, where I can sleep outside (outside is definitely a bonus, as I wonder that houses may be obsolete), eat with the honest exchange of working in the kitchen or doing other jobs to pull weight in support of the community, and I can even take all the time I need for solitude and giving myself to the study of the scriptures, reformed theology, and classic literature of the church. I don't have to ask anyone to join, I just join...going from rainbow to rainbow, also working scout camps and clean up camps. This could really work well. Considering the stories presented in this and the previous blog, it is evident that the Lord wanted me here at this gathering, and I wonder if he might call me to many more in progressive succession.