My Greenbelt this year was rather different from previous years as we took a commission4mission market stall to the Festival and this reduced considerably the number of events to which it was possible to go.
The flipside was that being on the stall was great for meeting friends, as well as making new contacts. So, for me, the highlight this year was definitely time spent with others; in particular the members of my cell group, most of whom were at the Festival and two-thirds of whom were able to share the excellent (if, at times, historically inaccurate and lengthy) Communion service together. Mary Grey, MacDuff Phiri and Barbara Brown Taylor as witnesses giving powerful personal testimonies were by far and away the best part of this service which was well led by the Wild Goose Resources Group.
As with last year's music lineup, I found little that felt like a must-see; that is until we reached the final day when I watched the wonderful Thea Gilmore, had Courtney Pine as background music to final contacts and conversations on the commission4mission market stall before packing up the stall to the strains of Duke Special. I first heard Thea Gilmore at St Martin-in-the-Fields as part of a Christian Aid event for Trade Justice and fell in love then with her intricate yet direct word play, stunning voice and classic rock and roll stylings.
The literature stream was where I spent the most time this year. Malcolm Guite is a great performer of verse as well as being an engaging raconteur plus a knowledgeable and insightful speaker on poetry. He read from his sonnet sequence for the church year, Sounding the Seasons, and from his forthcoming collection, The Singing Bowl. His recommendations are, therefore, well worth following up and he particularly commended Michael Symmons Roberts' Drysalter, a session I was unfortunately unable to attend. His talk 'Upending the Rainstick' explored the nuances of the Seamus Heaney poem with this title in order to argue for poetry as a means of upending our perceptions of reality.
Jon McGregor gave a thoughtfully dramatic reading, laced with humour, of short stories from This Isn't The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You. A panel session chaired by Andrew Tate and comprising Debbie Fielding, Simon Jones, Katherine Venn and Anthony Wilson aimed to survey the literature of the past 40 years. Struggling with this vast undertaking generated some amusement but relatively little light while considering teen fiction, literary prizes, markets, morality and spirituality.
The participants listed their favourite book of the past 40 years: Dart by Alice Oswald (Catherine Venn); New Addresses by Kenneth Koch (Anthony Wilson); The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (Debbie Fielding); and any R.S. Thomas anthology (Simon Jones). Mark Oakley gave a moving talk on the effect which the poetry of R.S. Thomas had had on his life and ministry, drawn back to ordination training as he came to realise that absence is a vital and valid part of faith and ministry.
Absence, death of God and kenosis are all key concepts in Radical Theology which was discussed and debated in a stream developed by Kester Brewin, which involved John D. Caputo, Peter Rollins and Marika Rose. Caputo argued that Radical Theology is based on constant change because the impossible deconstructs every contemporary stance and space. In a panel session which ended the stream, Caputo used the example of Rosa Parks to suggest that this understanding leads to interventions in the present which seek to change reality in the direction of the impossible.
For me this makes sense of many of Jesus' sayings which are essentially impossible to fulfil. They are not literal demands but challenges to the comfort and stasis of wherever we currently are; the challenge to change is always before us, whether we are as saintly as St Francis or as evil as Hitler, not because of where we are but because the challenge and call is always out of reach e.g. be perfect just as your Father in heaven is perfect.
Whatever we do as a result is temporary and provisional because always deconstructable by the impossible. What we do, then, is to create temporary signs of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of the impossible. This leads to a position of doing the exact opposite to current teachings on Church growth. Instead of focussing on and doing a small number of things well, we are profligate in 'casting our bread on the waters' and create a number of projects/initiatives knowing that they are provisional and temporary.
This has been my underpinning ethos in life and ministry - discovered more through imagination, the Arts and the Way of Affirmation than through Radical Theology, apophatic theology and the Negative Way; all of which have been, for me, more recent interests - which has resulted in a past and current set of projects/initiatives which have/are lived/living and have/are died/dying. These include: Barking & Dagenham Faith Forum; Christians in the Workplace; commission4mission; Faith Communities Toolkit; Faiths in London's Economy; Living with other Faiths; New Life Church Centre & Noah's Ark Daycare Centre; Sophia Hubs; SOULINTHECITY Barking & Dagenham; and Voice of the People Trust.
Emotionally, I am constantly struggling with the birth pains involved with creating these temporary signs and also mourning the ending of them when they die, while understanding intellectually that this is the reality of their provisional and deconstructable nature. Genuinely living in change and flux is both creatively stimulating and emotionally draining at one and the same time. In reflecting on this year's Greenbelt event I think I may have understood and acknowledged this where I was unable to do so, although needing to do so, at last year's event.
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Thea Gilmore - This Road.
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