Bastille Day

I had the opportunity to participate in a awfully fun event on Saturday: Bastille Day! Sarah's Fairmount neighborhood celebrates the storming of the Bastille from the French Revolution a block from her new apartment right outside the Eastern State Penitentiary. This year was their 13th annual celebration, and I'm told it's gotten bigger every year. My best guess says that over 2000 people were there from 2-6PM to enjoy the booths, hear the music, and watch the reinactment. They had a real working guilletine!


My involvement was from helping my church Liberti. We had a meeting a week ago at our pastor's house discussing our involvement in this event. Since one of Liberti's goals is to join into things the neighborhood is already doing, we wanted to show our support and raise awareness of our church in the area. Our brainstorming led to the idea of making stocks and taking people's pictures for free--then posting the picture on our website for people to download. Over 500 pictures were taken, and people were pretty happy with the idea. I got to help organize the event for Liberti, which was our first time participating in the annual event. We all agreed we HAVE to do it again next year.


Another element to the booth was the confessional. Not the usual confessional you'd might assosciate with the Catholic Church. Inside, we had our pastor confessing the sins of the church to people--apologizing for things like the crusades, the church's idleness during the Holocost, treatment of gay/lesbians, justification of slavery, etc. As a leader in the church, our paster said he wanted to own up to those sins and ask the forgiveness of the person in the confessional. Our paster was so excited about people's reactions and the conversations that ensued! One guy said he didn't realize what Christianity was all about: "I had no idea!" A Jewish woman cried as she said she had never heard someone apologize for the church's lack of response to the Holocaust. There was no doubt that God blessed the conversations that took place, and it was pretty cool to see our pastor so fired up about it.


All in all, it was a very exciting and encouraging day. Not only did I get to experience over 2000 Twinkies raining from the sky when Marie Antoinette said "Let them eat cake," but I got to wear a Liberti t-shirt and talk with people about our church. What a fulfilling day!