greenbelt 2008

just back a little bleary eyed from greenbelt festival, as ever a hopeful sign for the church. this year i wasn't co-ordinating worship - that was wonderfully done by ben, ruth and gayle with a brilliant programme. if you want to catch the edges of what is happening in creative worship greenbelt is a great place to go. we (grace) took a service lunch not included that was good fun - unpacking hospitality. the opening created an experience of being in/out when 'members' were taken out of the queue early and given privileged seats at the front in a  members only enclosure. a very 'in' set of notices and utterly pretentious liturgy followed that only members were able to join in before a staged protest led to the barriers being pulled down. all good fun and it certainly was getting a few people irate up to that point! hopefully it will all get written up in the grace archive/smallfire at some point.

unusually for me i didn't take a camera. i decided that i had too much to do to be able to think about carrying a camera and taking photos - yes i know i have broken my golden rule to always carry one. but there are a ton of photos at the official gb flickr pages - too many in fact to digest! and if you follow the tags greenbelt or greenbelt2008 i'm sure you will trace plenty of peoples photos.

i ended up spinning three plates - the grace service (and spontaneous act of worship which i missed) both went well. we (proost) were running a stand, had two events, an ad on the big screen and beer mats in the organic beer tent. i loved the unusual suspects evening and the proost lounge which was a showcase of artists. hopefully we have let a few more people know about proost who will want to subscribe. and the third plate was cms  where we had a dedicated blah... tent with discussions on mission, emerging culture and all that. pretty much every session was packed. i also took part in a discussion with my friend yemi on the difference in african and european takes on spirituality and faith which was pretty interesting.

so... although in theory it was a less busy greenbelt it ended up pretty packed. i got to two things - matthew herbert big band and jenny speaking on gender differences - she was brilliant of course. this may sound weird but the highlight was an evening on the thursday evening before the festival in gloucester cathedral hosted by feig with a meal, stations, and a candlelit labyrinth accompanied by the astonishing sound of two hang drums, the most gorgeous ambient instruments - see this video or this video to get the idea. about 80 people from various communities were there.

it always feels like summer is over once greenbelt is passed and a new season looms once september kicks in...

Comments

[Jenny Brown]

Don't forget to check out some of the video that was captured live throughout the festival: http://qik.com/groups/644

Good times.

[darren]

Doh, we were in that cathedral on the 20th...

[dennis]

The showcase was BRILLIANT, well done guys. I particularly enjoyed the free drink.

[Louise]

Hi Jonny, Just wanted to say 'here, here' to your wife being BRILLIANT at Greenbelt. Loved it. Our church seem to be getting obsessed with the 'Why men hate church' debate. I LOVED it when Jenny said, 'where are the women?' ! Yesss. And why the assumption that all women are loving church and men hating it. What a joke !! Ha ha.

Also thought I'd regale you with my most hilarious Greenbelt moment (hope you don't mind me indulging you and any potential blog readers). I went to the amazing Emmanuel Jal film on Sunday night. Before it started there were technical difficulties and we thought it wasn't going to happen, having eagerly queued for some time. During the delay a random girl from the 'audience' suggested that she fill time - by entertaining us with a rap. She started with 'my name's Shazza, right, yeah, and I'm just gonna do a rap'. At first you could tangibly hear the groan as it was suggested. The next line in true Catherine Tate 'Bovvered' tones, 'Things is, right, don't clap cuz it'll be out of time and that will just be awkward'. In that one sentence (which was hilarious in itself) we were captivated. the audience LOVED her. Her first rap, 'mamma Brown' about her life growing up in a single parent family with 3 other siblings and getting one new pair of trainers per year on the market place but mamma Brown praying hard through all the pain, brought the house down. SHe followed this with another rap, supported by her friend, Ruth, and you could hear the cheers from the far end of the campsite. This girl had talent and ended with 'yeah, I've made it. I played Greenbelt'.

As if that wasn't exciting enough, the technical difficulties were overcome and we then watched the INCREDIBLE film which moved us all.

At the end of the movie, I was sitting in the room outside the 'Foxhunter' venue on my mobility scooter (who is called Brian) putting all my layers on to face the cold when a group of random people (including Shaz Brown and her mate, Ruth) decided that we should pray together. I've NO IDEA how this happened or who the people even were who instigated the impromtu prayer meeting but I somehow found myself in a circle of people who asked if they could pray for me (as well as Shaz Brown's future rap career and the continued inner healing of Emmanuel Jal). I said I'd love them to pray that my self and my husband would be blessed, which they did. Only they hadn't asked my name so they proceeded to pray (inspired by the name engraved on the front of my granny scooter) for 'Brian's husband' and the 'Brian' would know that God loved 'her'. I was roaring with laughter, thinking - this has to be the best part of Greenbelt, random connections with crazy people like me.

I thought that was the end and proceeded, with my friend, Amy, to find the lift. We went downstairs only to meet the above mentioned prayer posse in the foyer. One of them said, 'I think we should do the hokey cokey', which we then did (as if that was a normal thing to do). The thing was, though, I was sitting on Brian. He is rather slow for the 'in, out, in, out, shake it all about'. So it was 'in', ('wait, wait wait') as I put him into reverse. But, wait for it, Brian has one of those awful 'I feel like a dustbin lorry' reverse tones. So every time we said, 'out' in the hokey cokey, all you could hear was Brian reversing. Everyone was laughing so hard we could barely sing but we carried on to 'we do the hokey cokey and we turn around' - at which point we had to clear the area for Brian's turning circle, finishing with, 'that's what it's all about, hey' - and I thought, yes, this IS what it's all about. I love Greenbelt...

[Carole]

Hi Jonny. After a few years of knowing the persona, it was great to meet the person...although being a bit of a lightweight in the alcohol department, after a pint of organic lager I'm afraid I wasn't firing on all braincells! All good fun though, eh?

[David Derbyshire]

Do you have anything that you can blog about your discussion about Western doubt and African certainty? It sounded really interesting but I opted to take my little girl to Moot's all age service instead which she thoroughly enjoyed. I downloaded the mp3 of Brian McLaren on Post-colonialism who was also on at that time but yours wasn't recorded. It was a difficult choice.

[jonny]

i think cms recorded it - i'll try and find out...

i have my notes somewhere too but they are only the thoughts i brought to the conversation.