My Greenbelt 2012 journal (3)

Sunday 26^th August

Instead of the Greenbelt communion I go to St Bartholomew Nympsfield for their Patronal Festival where the 60 strong congregation is made up of locals and retreatants from Erdington at the Marist Retreat Centre in the village. Diana Crook preaches an impactful sermon equating the training and dedication of the Paralympians with that of the disciples, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, St Bartholomew, and ourselves. Jesus’ question to us – ‘Do you want to go?’ is a liberating one. We follow because we choose to and want to. This is a message which I need to hear.

Lila Dance are perplexing – something vigorous and fascinating is happening but, like Mister Jones, I have to confess I don’t know what it is. Peterson Toscana, in line with Jesus’ parables, is deliberately raising more questions than answers. He mixes his own story told as a sequence of prayers with the retelling of several Bible stories. These, while amusing and different, are not as funny or radical as I’d expected from the advance notices and I’m left rather underwhelmed. The session is titled 'Jesus had two daddies' though and that got me thinking about the phrase 'The unorthodox Jesus'. So much of the debate on controversial issues in the Church seems to revolve around different understandings of orthodoxy but Jesus was unorthodox - right from the start, as Toscana noted, growing up in a family set-up that was very far from being a nuclear family. 

I revisit the Gallery and appreciate a little more fully the comic book/strip focus of this show. Leunig is whimsical and wise while Smith is clear and challenging. Green remains opaquely personal while Lia has innocent humour.

Things pick up at mainstage with a great set of sensitive folk songs from Roddy Woomble and a barnstorming set from the Proclaimers. Roddy Woomble’s ‘Work Like You Can’ strikes me as a celebration of ordinary existence, something I need affirmed currently, while the Proclaimers sang:

“Thought that God had failed me
Thought my prayers were useless
Thought that he would never give the chance for me to praise him

Thought the book was written
Thought the game had ended
Thought the song was sung and I could never sing another

Thought my faith was misplaced
Thought my back was broken
Broken by a weight that I was never fit to carry

Thought I knew this city
Thought I knew all about it
And then one night I went to Morningside and you were waiting

I met you.”

Following that inspiration, I experience a measure of peace via the Taize Service and Aradhna in Eden and write the following:

Absence is not void.

Absence fills vacuum with live memory;

a present aching.

Silence is not still.

Silence simply tunes our hearing to other sounds;

noise abounds.

Peace is not passive.

Peace requires active relations,

if hands are to be shaken.

Do not a-void absence.

Hear the sounds of silence.

Actively create peace.

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Roddy Woomble - Work Like You Can.