Slept in a bit this morning, then walked downtown to buy soap and washing powder, only to find that my key wouldn't let me into the laundry. Cheltenham is the home of Holst, the composer who wrote "The Planets". I walked past his house and may visit tomorrow as they've kept it in period setting.
Spent the later part of the morning wandering around the Greenbelt site looking at displays, artwork, resources, etc. It rained overnight and the ground is getting very muddy (heck, that's what concert weekends are for...) Waited for a speaker for a while and then realised he's on tomorrow. I haven't seen any of the 'big names' here - Brian McLaren, Philip Yancey, Franky Schaeffer. I have spotted a couple of 'emerging church' gurus whom I recognise from their photos and have to pluck up the courage to go and speak to them...
Dropped into an installation by "the garden" at brighton (www.thegardenbrighton.co.uk) - focusing on the stories of our lives. Looped video on screens and TVs, glass cases of 'memorabilia', plus a live camera on-screen of people walking in the venue. (There was a performance piece and discussion about this in the venue tonight which I really wanted to see, but my energy didnt last the distance I'm afraid!)
I went with John Oldmeadow from NSW (we talked about the Ministry of Pastor in the queue...) to hear a piano recital of works by the French Catholic composer Messiaen performed by Stephen Robbings. He started with a Liszt piece based on Dante's Inferno and then 3 pieces by Messiaen bsed on the life of Christ. Wow! Brilliant! Amazing music, stunning performance, great sound.
The $10 folding chair that i bought is saving my back.... I bought it because it was a low chair, then found out it was a kids chair, but I havent broken it yet!
The whole of Greenbelt stopped for communion at 3 pm - hosted at the main stage and video-linked to a second outdoor area where I was seated. We sat in groups of 12-15. The leading musicians played sitar and other Indian instruments and sang Christian songs in Hindi. The preacher was a Brazilian Lutheran woman minister from Geneva. The songs were from Taiwan, Indonesia and some traditional stuff. It rained lightly during the service (the Greenbelt theme is about the Sun/Son and so was the service...) The message was about the Son/Sun shining and rising about about us being/doing that too (although she said it well in terms of peace and justice. I applaud their efforts to make it all-age and inclusive in many ways.
The service ran overtime so the rest of the day's program was put out of schedule. Saw a bit of Beth Rowley at mainstage - great blues/soul/gospel, then up for a circuit of the resource tent where I got to say hi to jonny baker on the Proost stall. I stopped by the Anglican "call waiting" stall to find out how about their new initiative to recruit clergy, saw a LOT of 'gap year' programs so I'm back tomorrow to check those out.
then went to a talk on 'new monasticism' by mark berry from 'safespace' (whom we're visiting). I liked this but have a bunch of questions to ask Mark when we see him.
Saw part of the Matthew Herbert Big Band. This was crazy-good. Wonderful and bent big band music with Matthew sampling his band live and playing back the samples with keyboard over the top. The song called "The Daily Mail" had them all ripping up newspapers while they played. A very kooky and brilliant guy. Not enough of a crowd but simply stunning.
Dinner was a superb locally made beef and dark ale pie with mashed potato and gravy in a cardboard box..... I have to get the paella tomorrow.
I raced up to another worship by Soul Space on "Toasting Planet Earth". Several of these worships, including ours, have been in the "New Forms" (ie. of worship....) space, so I admit I was getting a bit tired of the space (which has been hot all weekend too). The "toasting" was cleverly about celebrating creation and also about global warming. Again a large group and the worship was mainly watching and listening with (wait for it) another grape to eat... I appreciated the sentiments, but... I want to do a lot more thinking about 'presentation' and 'participation', because clearly some of the "alt worship" presented here has been low on participation (like most church worship), yet I don't know how much of that is due to the constraints of time, budget, space, etc.....
Since I had to sit down I went to some of Linda Marlowe's performance of "Believe" - a dramatic monologue of four Old Testament women - traitor, widow, warrior, martyr. Her performances of Rahab and Bathsheba were set in 20th C wartime and were absolutely stunning. I really regret not being able to stay for the rest. Linda is a first-rate UK actress both on stage and screen (she played James Nesbitt's mother in Dr Jekyll...)
One of the things I am reflecting on is the nature of 'spectacle' in worship (and education and mission)....Tex Sample has tried to reclaim "spectacle" from the realm of being merely entertainment, so to speak, with mixed success in my view. But there are some other dimensions, namely creativity, craft (expertise) and scale (scope of the work and its preparation) that are major issues for the church (I didnt mention budget). When I lead worship at College (3 times a year), someone always says "but you couldn't do this every week" (eg. sand, baked quail...). That's not the point... do you EVER do it? Has your church ever started rehearsing drama 3 months ahead, commissioning a sculptor a year ahead, working with a composer on a full-length choral piece. I could and will say more.... Do we plan to occasionally exercise excessive creativity, or invite in guest soloists, artists, musicians, etc? Have you annually transformed your whole worship space, with say, 200 palms for Palm Sunday, or whatever?
I also want to make a note here to think about light. The large majority of our churches were built to let in lots of light (as were galleries and museums). Both projection and electronic display art, analog and digital, require darkened spaces. This is not only reflective of art but also of our homes lives - TV. We know that data projectors need darkened rooms. But there are two other considerations - the first is about the connections between translucence and transcendence, the visual power of light and dark to convey life and death to us almost above all else, and secondly, the notion of escape/sleep/dream time as story time. More to say about these things.