Panegyris

Last weekend we went to a folk music festival in the forest.
As we walked up a dirt trail through the trees outside of Pagosa Springs we were greeted by a lively doe and her spotted fawn.  They saw us from a distance and ran over to the hill beside us to watch us climb the trail.  It was a good welcome.  

We knew we were getting close when we could hear the picking of stringed instruments and singing.  The trail ended in a large camp full of smiling people sitting around campfires playing music together.  We made our way to the entrance tent.  The lists were checked and the bracelets put on our right arms by a smiling helper in an almost formal welcome ceremony.

We wandered through the open glade towards the sound of the main music stage, moving through another narrow passage where we were asked to leave behind any drinks from the outside, only to be presented freely with clean water on the inside.  Once inside we saw a smiling friend, his eyes wide with excitement as he showed us around.  Dancing over here, shelter over there, kids playing freely down here, good beer under that tent, food up there.

The music was amazing, fun, and full of energy.  The highlight was the Oh Hellos, who had nine people on stage with band members running and jumping around throughout their long set.  Music from a fiddle complemented an accordion, a banjo mixed with two drum kits, and all the varied instruments blended together to lift us all out of our chairs dancing.  The raucous set ended with the whole band lined up humming the tune of Come Thou Fount in beautiful, haunting harmony.  The whole experience echoed for me the climax of the Silver Chair when Jill finally came out of the underworld right into the middle of an all-night Narnian forest festival under the moon, during the first snow, with music and dancing and a complex game of throwing perfectly timed snowballs between dancers.

Being part of this festival reminded me of the unique beauty of festal joy.  It is what we Christians aim for Sunday after Sunday in what could be called Resurrection-Fest; where we gather to sing, worship, hear about, and eat and drink in celebration of the death of death in the death of Christ, and life into the ages through his resurrection.  And then with all of this still ringing in my heart, I happened to read that we "have come to mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel."  Mysteriously, in Christ, we are already there with the angels in panegyris, in "festal gathering."  Soon all this darkness will be shaken loose and we will open our eyes and find ourselves, like Jill, in the middle of the greatest festival the world has ever known.  We will have dumped out our tepid water, and will be welcomed to drink deeply from the river of life forever.  There everlasting joy will crown our heads in the presence of the Chief Musician.

*Image credit: Folk West, http://www.folkwest.com/#!home/zoom/mainPage/i01mcc