Greenbelt festival beckons!

Our family have very mixed feelings. Michaela does not particularly enjoy crowds, or festival camping. Emily is just dying to get there, and me, I feel both a tingle of anticipation and a pang of dread. (William is not going this year- he was too young last year, and decided that he would rather spend the weekend with his best friend, up here in Dunoon.)

My own slight ambivalence is related to a few things…

There are so many things/people that I am looking forward to seeing/hearing. But I know that I will miss many because I will be busy, and there will also be the dreaded anticlimax in the light of the day…

Aoradh are putting together a worship installation, around the theme of TIME- geological time, historical time, lifetime, NOW then future. A few of my best friends are traveling down to the festival together to put together the installation, and this makes me very happy. (If you are at GB- this will be in the New Forms Cafe, Saturday @ 1.00. Come and say hello!)

We tried out some of the ideas a couple of weeks ago- it was lovely…

I know from experience that doing things like this is a mixture of great fun, along with quite a lot of tension and stress. The POINT of doing it is to make a creative worship offering, in which people can engage in a journey of their own with God.

But there is also another driver- and to be honest, I think this might be a more important one as far as I am concerned. The creation of such spaces involves lots of planning and discussion and sharing within our small community. It is at this point that the life of the Spirit is visible within us. The event itself- with it’s pressure and it moments of triumph- these are a celebration of community, but not the point of it. The point of it is that we should learn to live lives of live and service, and that we should be open and real with one another.

And that is not always an easy thing to do.

Creativity can put more pressure on this too, as ego’s are involved even more fully- ‘my own little slice of expansion’ becomes very precious!

Going to Greenbelt is no small undertaking and there is a real question as to whether it is worth the time, expense and energy- as it is so far from the town and context within which we live and work here in Dunoon. However, I hope that it will offer adventure- a road trip- to those of us that go, and a chance to connect with others doing similar things- exchanging ideas and building supportive contacts.

But it will not be plain sailing- these things never are. Grace and peace be with us, Lord knows we always need it…