Greenbelt 2010 review

I love greenbelt, there is always so much to inspire and this year was no exception. The drive down was great and was punctuated with the now traditional stop at strensham services for a bite to eat before joining the queues at GB. The wristband was adorned and we moved from one holding queue to another, which included a perplexing and frustrating journey as car after car in front of me seemed to be stopping for an in depth conversation with the steward. Surely it was obvious you just went in the direction they were pointing without the need for winding down the window and checking that they had understood the direction of pointing was towards the next illuminous jacket adorned steward. But that seemed to be exactly what was being discussed, with that or it was some confused punters looking for the Reading festival. Eventually we were onto the campsite and began pitching the tent to be followed by festival guide procrastination and a stir fry. The stir fry has become the staple first meal of greenbelt and is usually delicious as the ingredients are still fresh. And then it's time for the festival to begin. I started with a talk by Richard Rohr on the art of looking sideways at the bible. It was fairly informative re-asserting the need to re-read the bible with different coloured glasses (symbolic, cultural, eschatological and historical to name a few) and to recognise that our reading is steeped in our own culture and experience. A reminder that arguing over the meaning of greek words to fully understand what Christ was saying is, in a way, futile, as Christ didn't even speak greek. What was fascinating was the idea around contemplative thinking as opposed to dualistic thinking. Dualistic thinking being the kind of way of assessing if something does not fit x then it is y. Language has developed in a dualistic way - tall and short for example. But then when you think about it, tall and short are relative and it's not that straight forward. Apparently dualistic thinking cannot be applied to love, death, god, suffering or the infinite. Which kinda of makes sense, but what contemplative thinking actually is I am none the wiser, but i think i need to go and try it out. I didn't get to any of Richard's other talks as i guessed they would be much of a muchness. Followed this talk with a decision to investigate zic zazou at the centaur, purely based on the fact that the picture in the GB guide looked interesting. Whilst queuing it began to drizzle and the setting sun cast a wonderful rainbow over the festival towards the camping area. People clambered for their cameras and pretty much everyone at GB will have taken a picture of this beautiful image. The only disappointment was a lack of pot of gold in my tent when i returned. Zic Zazou were a kind of stomp style theatre making music from borrowed items and 'apparent junk'. Quite good fun, and every time i was just beginning to tire then they would re-awaken my interest with sounds from the most unlikely of places.
My first night's sleep was punctuated with snaps of wakefulness as my body revealed it was actually freezing and i began to re-assess my choice of a one season sleeping bag with added blanket. Despite the depths of cold the sleeping bag claimed to remain comfortable i conclude that the one season for which it is fit is summer, inside a house. Not inside a tent. Despite my erratic sleep i was up bright and early to see the start of a beautiful day. Had a good wander around the festival village before setting out my camping blanket at the grandstand to listen to Mark Yaconelli, he had a great story telling ability and i was engrossed in his story about meeting his wife and then the warm sun took hold and i drifted in and out of sleep. But that didn't matter, i was enjoying the atmosphere. Then at 1pm there were literally one million things i wanted to do, beer and hymns, martyn atkins, keith skene. In the end i opted for engage worship to see if i could pick up any ideas for cvm. It was ok, but nothing new was greatly learned, apart from the fact that there seemed to be a great interest in 'doing church' differently. Particularly with regard to making the experience more open to participation and dialogue. Something we have been doing successfuly at cvm for some time. A quick dash to the underground for 10 minutes of 100 philistine foreskins who are truly awesome. Probably one of my musical highlights of the festival. A raucous racket which had people charging for the exits and pleading to be let out whilst sweaty teenage boys crashed into each other with shoes flying overhead. I would've loved to have stayed longer but another clash was coming up, but i was there long enough to hear the lead singer say how amazed he was that anyone had turned up at all to listen to them. The bass player added it was like people buying broken things on ebay. We left after a passionate anti-bnp poem. the raw energy of this band and the amusing between track banter would have me put these on the mainstage. It would be a riot!
Late afternoon we went to see Lou Rhodes, i was a big fan of lamb and was relishing the opportunity to hear her solo stuff. The venue was running late and she was on later than billed, however it was worth the wait. Pleasant folk musings, though i really missed the erratic beats and trip hop feel of lamb.
The music line up this year hadn't really grabbed me, and although the festival is so much more than the music, over the years i have always enjoyed going to see something on the mainstage. This year the biggest name seemed to be shed seven who were appearing on saturday night. I have fond memories of dancing to their tunes at indie discos in the past and so was quite looking forward to it. However they never really seemed to ignite the crowd, perhaps as the majority of the eager teenagers at the front had never heard of them. Without a particularly strong stage presence there wasn't really anything to get excited about, and as the tunes played i began to realise why i had only ever danced to them at discos and never gone out my way to purchase any of their material. more later i guess, more images are on flickr

Greenbelt 2007

Had another excellent Greenblet Weekend. This festival is great, and despite the music line up being the poorest for some time, I still managed to enjoy it greatly. Arriving Friday in blazing sunshine it appeared that the weather had once again looked favourably on a festival i was attending. There was quite a wait in a queue before getting on to the campsite, but this gave me plenty of time to scour the programme for things of interst. Each morning I would then browse through my checklist to discover numerous clashes and decisions had to be made as to which seminar sounded the best. A few brief highlights below, I've kept it a bit short this year cos I'm packing to go to Jordan with highway projects tomorrow.

Friday
Met up with mr clark who joined me and ad in the world cup tent. Good to see him and congratulate him on his first steps in gainful employment. Watched Sarah Mason on the mainstage, who has a nice voice, but seemed to get distracted re-tuning her instrument all the time - doesn't she have a tuner! A pleasant enough start. Wander around the extensive village and called in at the organic beer tent to continue conversation with cc and ad. I'd also read that there would be opportunity to dj at this venue on the Friday. I thought there would be loads of people wanting a go, and was too afraid of losing my iPod, so had just brought along 4 tracks. Despite the PA being wrong and too poor for the venue, I still enjoyed my time as a dj and mixed a bit of an indie disco party: Can't explain - the who, hotel yorba - white stripes, alala - css and DANCE - justice. Too early for any dancing action, but a guy behind the bar exclaimed his enthusiasm for DANCE by running up to the 'dj booth' proclaiming it to be 'a tune'. I christened him my number one fan. Finished off the night with Billy Bragg, who for a guy with just a guitar does a great job of headlining with his brand of protest songs, with an ironic cover of the carpenters thrown in to keep us amused.

Saturday
Went to a couple of literature workshops which were quite good, i was amazed at some of the talent shown, people were writing some great prose in just a few minutes, it made my work look like that of a primary school kid. Some useful excerises nonetheless. Maggi Dawn did an interesting talk around the subject of her book questioning how we hear god in light of the fact that god doesn't often use angels to proclaim his will, in particular looking at the stories of mary and zechariah. Of course there were no straight answers to how to hear god, but pointers of how to disern his voice in the everyday and ordinary, and how there is an element of choice in finding god's will, we make creative choices and these are woven into the will of god. Some nice ideas. There followed a talk by bishop graham on the latest arcade fire album. A fairly dull but well researched look at the writing style and thoughts of win butler. Not only is it a great album, but bishop graham suggests that it is a call for the church to re-awaken and challenge issues of justice and to be counter-cultural, rather than a critique on the church itself. He didn't play any clips though.
Took part in the communion by numbers service by Grace in the afternoon. It was lovely in the sun and i bumped into ben askew a sheffield blogger who i finally got to meet in the flesh and share communion with. The service worked quite well, but i could imagine it working better in the 'dinner party' setting in which it originated. It was interactive, and i enjoyed the liturgy produced for the sharing of the elements. I might have to use those again. In the evening I opted to try speed dating through the lack of any decent music. It was better than i thought it would be, and a chance to meet a lot of people i wouldn't otherwise have done. No chance of meeting everyone and instead just met a small percentage of the eligable people in the tent. There were quite a few people who i wouldn't've minded continuing a conversation with, but by the time I'd decided i'd make some indication of this, the cards used to exchange details had run out as had most of the girls who had partaken in conversation with me. I expect they had dashed due to the poor quality of the other candidates that followed me (!) Anyway despite that, as i was meandering my way out of the tent got chatting with a few others who weren't part of my speed dating trial and we went to the beer tent to continue chatting. Maybe make a few more friends - or at least boost my facebook profile - lol.

Sunday
The diversity of greenbelt is what, to me, makes it a special festival. People from all walks of the christian faith and those searching and those of no particular faith, all catered for, and not in a segrageted way either. You're just as likely to bump into a happy clappy charismatic as you are a caped goth. And this is exemplified in the communion service where thousands gather. This year we went to the arena venue for the live feed and a supposed 'alternative' style. Bit disappointing that the only alternative about it from the regular service being fed to us on the screen was some lame vjing during collection. However it was great to feel part of a hug assembly all sharing in the eucharistic feast. Helped remind of the diversity of the body of christ. Prayers of intercession were supplemented with a release of balloons which made a nic symbol of our prayers being raised heavenwards. Got a seat to see andy yorke perform, being brother of thom, i think i expected too much and his set of sub snow patrol rock was fairly uninspiring. No guest appearance from his more famous bro either. A few more talks and seminars in the afternoon and a fine performance from one nation in the early evening. Not as good on the mainstage as they are in an intamite venue, but still able to get the crowd dancing along to the funk. Met up with the highway projects people at the festival for beers in the evening.

Monday

Started the morning with some meditative chanting with taize. There's something really moving about the music and tuning in to god. A wonderful way to start the week. Also found this meditative artwork in a room that was playing 'prayer of the heart' a piece written by john tavener with bjork. It was an awesome piece of music, with bjork singing 'jesus son of god have mercy on me' in a number of ancient tongues. Her voice is magnificant and has an aching quality to it that inspires you to pray also for mercy in god's presence. Then a listen to John Bell which is a must at greenbelt. A fantastic orator and often opens my eyes to new ways of reading texts. Today teaching on the truth stories, not the true stories of the opening chapters of genesis, highlighting how the literal interpretation of some of these texts have been used for the acceptance of some atrocious behaviour, particularly in the south african apartheid system. Speaking of the truth contained in these allorgories refreshed the understanding of these tales. Though i wondered how do you teach these stories to kids. You can hardly tell a story and then go through some protracted deconstruction on what the texts say about god. Though teaching them as literal historical fact can lead to a dissolution of faith as they do not hold up to the rigors of intellectual questioning. I mean, what did noah really do with all that poo for a start. When faith fails because that which we were taught as truth unravels as not truth leads to the unsettling of actual truth and revelation of god in christ. Hearing great minds expose the truth of god contained in these tales comforts a cynic like me. The faith in christ i experience is not based on mere fables which do not stand up to scrutiny, but that these tales still contain within them revelations of the character of God that should help continue shape my faith and understanding. The next talk i went to was the best of the entire weekend. I'll probably blog on this later when I've read this book, but Rhidian Brook gave an account of his travels through the pandemic regions of HIV. During a slideshow i was struggling to battle tears as he showed fields full of orphans as a result of HIV and war.
After packing up the tent me and cc headed down to see chas and dave, i waited 20 minutes for run rabbit run or an appearance of steve davis for snooker loopy. I got none, and twenty minutes of cockney knees up piano twonking was more than enough! The evening brought the finest musical performance of the weekend from Duke Special. The set seemed to get better as it went on, his quality vocals supported by a cast of theatrical backing musicains led to a spectacular performance, and a great curtain riser for us leaving as we did before delirious.

Greenbelt photos on flickr

Twelve Baskets

There is this superb new site called twelve basketsthat has recently been launched to share worship resources. It is part funded by the methodist church and I heard about it at greenbelt.
You create an account and upload any powerpoint presentations or movies or images etc that you have created for worship. Add some tags and a description and upload the media. Then should anyone else be interested in using your work they pay a small amount of money to download said item. This money helps to pay for the site maintenance etc, 10% goes to charity and a proportion gets credited to your own account. You can either use this money to download other material from the site, donate to charity or have sent in cash when you accumulate £20. Sounds like a fantastic idea. Please share it if you think it would be useful.

www.twelvebaskets.co.uk for more info.

The church using web 2.0 technology - whatever next!

Emma Pollock teletext review

Just before we left to go to greenbelt on friday I had a chance to see my teletext review for the emma pollock gig at the leadmill. Emma sent me an email saying that she had seen the review too! I always find it exciting to see one of my reviews on the tv. In fact when i got back from greenbelt I had a letter from teletext as I had won another £10 gift voucher for 'review of the week' don't know for which review though. maybe it was this one, but the letter was dated 11th august, and my previous review to this was probably my adem one.
Just for your info, any further greenbelt posts will be dated retrospectively, so that those who aren't too interested in the minutiae of the details can skip them. My photos from the weekend are now uploaded onto flickr in my greenbelt 2006 set.

Greenbelt - Sunday

A bit of a lie in on the sunday, despite being in a tent I am able to laze through to gone 9am, which makes a change for a sunday. It's the communion service in the morning and we congregate around the main stage, thousands of us. There is something quite special sharing communion with such large numbers, though in comparison to say a football match at old trafford, the numbers really aren't that large. There is definately something different to worshiping in a large number to supporting a football team in a large number. It is some sense of community, and that is one of the things that sharing communion signifies, the communion of us and the saints with god. The service runs smoothly and unlike previous years keeps to a reasonable length. Most of the songs are new to the people gathered, but I find it quite refreshing to use these songs from various worldwide traditions. Focusing on slavery and the liberation of the israelis from egypt, and it is quite poignant when the bible reading is read by Norman Kember. This is also a good time to meet new people as we gather in groups to share the elements. After the service h goes to meet jonny baker for a bbq where she engages in conversation about Bill Viola and why she thinks his art is manipulative, whilst me chris and andrew have a delicious meal of meatballs and potatoes. After eating I head down to purchase and get a signed copy of dave walker's guide to the church. It's a superb little book and I head back to the tent to read it. After a bit of a snooze I then get to meet some people whose blogs I have stumbled across since GB last year. Dave has organised a gathering of wibbers and hangers on. It's certainly good to meet some of these people in the flesh and also to meet a few more bloggers to add to my blog feed list. Meet back up with the guys in the evening and enjoy listening to My Morning Jacket.

Greenbelt - Saturday

So on Saturday morning I went along to the new forms venue for morning worship led by a group called the garden from Brighton. It was an interesting experience. The venue had more video projectors than you can shake a stick at, it was image overload, but i quite liked it. They told a creation story using general scientific perceptions of the timeline of the universe. This was accompanied by a visual represenatation of time in a spiral formed by rocks. As a girl moved from the centre spiraling outwards she lit candles on the timeline indicating significant events, sun, planets, life (missing amino acids and rna, but hey!), metazoans, dinosaurs etc. Interesting to see that most of the events of human history are just a mere twinkling against this timeline. We were then encouraged to use a rock as a symbol of something that is made of the same matter as we are, matter created at the same moment. Then to think of the wisdom of the stone, something from ancient jewish mystecism, due to it's age. Well I drew my picture on the stone, which I liked, but I didn't get anything from the rock's wisdom. Maybe I'm not enough of a hippy. Then I went to a disappointing talk on 'what should i do with my life' which turned to be a monologue on what the speaker did with his life and how great he'd been. The only thing I got from it was that the skills of an educated person can be greatly used in developing countries, even in fields for which you have not studied. At lunch time I listened to Christopher Booker discuss the 7 basic plots of literature, up to the last 200 years. Fascinating, but he didn't go on to discuss these in light of religious stories, well not much anyway. Enjoyed John Bell in the afternoon, despite not hearing anything new, he just has a really good way of relating his talks to a diverse audience, I always enjoy his thought of the day on radio 4 if i hear it.
In the evening I attended the taize service, it was a wonderful experience. I find the music and chanting a great way to engage with God. The idea is that the whole service is a prayer, and it certainly feels like I'm communing with God during that time. After the service I met up with Helen and went for a quick drink at the organic beer tent before danial bedingfield. However, it took us ages to get served as the beer and hymn singing had been hugely popular and there were still many people singing loudly with beer in hand, a very bizarre experience. Then I get a text from chris c that danny b is already on, he'd come on early. Tsk, well I finished my drink, met up with some of the guys from highway projects then headed for the mainstage. Trying to get over the bridge from the race course I could hear the distant sound of pop, but when I got there all DB was doing was talking about the slave trade in his girly high voice, with teenyboppers cheering his every incoherent sentance! Then started the ballads, well it was more than I could bear, so I headed back to the beer tent. The evening ended with Kit ashton, and I quietly refrained from the goth worship! Another good day.
greenbelt2006
greenbelt

Greenbelt - Friday

The afternoon was spent enjoying the sun, reading and deciding what to do over the course of the weekend, so much choice.

Before we could eat, we required water to cook the noodles, but the plumbing had yet to be connected to serve water to our campsite, so I had to go on a traipse onto the race course to find some water. It took ages, and I was pretty tired after lugging the water back, which made me think about those people who daily have to walk miles for water and then get on with many jobs too. Not me, I collapsed and handed the baton of food preparation to Andrew and Helen. It was almost delicious. Got a text from siobhan, she was just back from her time in Kenya and was at greenbelt, fantastic to see her again. that strange, can't believe it's almost a year, kind of encounter. Here is someone who has experienced life in a very different way, whilst in the same period things have plodded on in the uk, it must be quite a strange time adjusting again. You should check out her blog though to hear of her experience.

The first event of the day was to go and see clarky cat, who hail from Notingham. These were probably my favourite band of the weekend, for the sheer enthusiasm and energy that they put into their music. It certainly wasn't the best music I've heard, definate room for improvement, but if they continue in that passionate vein, I'm sure something will come. Great to see kids getting enthusiastic about music, obviously been listening to a lot of their parents punk music, but re-interpreting it with drum machines. The bass player thought he was Sting, bleached hair and Sting like bass playing movements.

Then we queued up for Fuse Factory, a group form switzerland who use electronica and vjing for worship. It sounded interesting, and whilst in the queue we were just in front of jonny baker whom h was hoping to meet to enquire about grace, a worship event in london, near to where she was moving to. Anyway, he was there with all his trendy 'alt.worship' dudes with their trendy glasses and little beards on their chins, looking ultra cool. They seemed friendly and h arranged to meet them later in the weekend to chat about grace. They did remind me of this cartoon.
Fuse factory were interesting, I really liked the idea of creating four walls of projections, the front wall being thin gauze where it was possible to see at the same time the projection on the back screen as well as the projection on the front screen. Some girl was singing in the middle of all this. Found the songs a bit irritating, and the images a little tiring after a while, there's only so much swiching back and forth from video loops you can take. But I think this idea of projecting can be taken further.
greenbelt2006
greenbelt

Back from Greenbelt

A shower and a shave this morning, a welcome relief after a weekend with no showers and no inclination to get my razor out. It starts on Thursday, and after giving a talk to house group members about my time in israel/palestine, I meet up with helen and chris. Now the plan to travel to greenbelt involves four of us, two tents, camping stove, food and clothes squeezing into the fiesta, so when h arrived she was mocked for elephantine travel bag. Next stop andrew's house where we would spend the night giving us easy access to the m1 in the morning and to collect utensils and pans etc too. It's just gone 10pm and everything is going to plan, andrew asks h and c about collecting their tickets at greenbelt. Tickets, hmmm, that would be useful, and I knew exactly where mine was, still in the safe location back at my house. So back to the car and back to mine to pick it up, what an idiot. Still, better making that journey at night than getting caught in rush hour traffic!

So starts our journey.

In fact the travel down is pleasant, the roads aren't too busy and we make good time, reaching the site around 1030. This year, not only does greenbelt have the opportunity to explore creativity, listen to music, be challenged by talks and spend time in worship, but a chance to perhaps meet one or two bloggers whom I became aware of after blogging about last year's festival. One such blogger is 'world famous' dave walker of cartoon church. A blog that has been an amusing read all year. A few cars ahead in the queue to enter the site we spotted a camper-van, and knowing that dave is an owner of such a vehicle, we wondered if he would be on board. Alas, no, just another punter, still not to worry, there would be opportunity to meet him during the weekend at either book signing or the wibsite get together. Once on site we headed over to campsite 9 taking random turns in a search for a spare plot of grass on which to pitch our tents. Due to some erroneous manoeuvre we seemed to end up traversing outside the cordoned road way, with no apparent route back onto the correct path, in fact we seemed to be heading further and further towards the perimeter wood and fearing getting the car stuck in a bog, drastic measures were called for. The cordon, appeared to have quite a bit of give in it, so chris got out the car and held the cordon aloft as I drove underneath in a kind of car-limbo dance. Ahead we spotted a space, but as we were still confined to the maze-like road network, we decided to employ our cordon defying technique and take a cross country route to the sighted plot. Off we headed, chris in front lifting cordons, me squeezing the car underneath. The plot was reached, next job to check that it wasn't being reserved for a multitude and to scan for any children under ten who may be awake and playing football against the side of the tent come 6am. No kids, good, check with the neighbours, and wait a minute, we have only just gone and pulled alongside cartoon church dave!

"Hi, are you cartoon dave?"
"I am."
"It's chris, I read your blog a lot and commented a few times as the moog"
"Who??"

Obviously my blogging exploits haven't set the blogging world alight, much to the amusement of my friends.

Still, dave is a very friendly chap and we soon make ourselves his neighbours and settle down to read the programme and decide what things we wanted to do.

So that is the tale of how we arrived at greenbelt, when I've uploaded some pics to flickr I shall give a review of some of the things that I did over the weekend. Which reminds me, I've got a new camera, decided to treat myself and replace my camera I lost earlier in the year in Cambridge.

greenbelt2006
greenbelt

Hemsworth

It's near Pontefract don't you know.

I wonder if anyone blogs about Hemsworth? I doubt it, nothing noteworthy from my visits, but then you never know. I'm only blogging about it cos I went to visit my friend Mick there last night. He lives there, and he isn't famous, which is probably why no-one blogs about Hemsworth. Though I guess if he was famous, then there'd be a blue plaque on the wall and thousands of web pages dedicated to the town. As it is, this is probably about as famous as Hemsworth gets.

It was good to see Mick, it's been a while since I last saw him, and it's always good to chat and you can rely on having some tasty food too. Yesterday his wife cooked a delicious curry. So we chatted, played pop quiz on the playstation and chatted some more.

Work is a little slack, hence the sneaky and relatively uninteresting blog. Today I am a little worried about my hair line, it is rapidly retreating and there appears to be no halt in sight. My head even feels tingley, so I'm imagining that I can feel my hair dropping out.

Looking forward to greenbelt, if you are going I recommend 'One Nation' always very good live. In fact I've just ordered a new camera to replace the one i lost earlier in the year, as I am missing adding to my photos on flickr. Two gigs and no photos.