Spent today on the road to a favourite pilgrim place, Pennant Melangell, where I met up with other members of the Iona Community's North West England & Wales family group for a day in the sunshine in the most gorgeous secluded valley.
On the way there I rocked along the roads of Powys to Gordon Gano's new release, Hitting the Ground, which features many excellent guest vocalists, Frank Black, Lou Reed, John Cale and an uncannily Gano-sounding P.J. Harvey (actually after umpteen plays she starts to sound like her Patti Smith persona). Marvellous. And on the return - two of Tom Sine's Greenbelt seminars thrilled me with the potentials and exciting challenges ahead for us as we engage a world that really needs mustard seed activity, and often welcomes it.
Sine despairs of Bush's lack of grasp of world affairs and this seemed to be more than confirmed by an email from a friend writing from a Canadian airbase where she is visiting a friend who is a fighter pilot. She's been scandalised by Bush's speech to the American nation on September 11th. I'm sure she won't mind me quoting her a bit:
This speech is just the end, especially the idolatry in the last paragraph. I quote: "The ideal of America is the hope of all mankind. That hope drew millions to this harbour. That lights our way. The light shines in the darkness. And the darkness will not overcome it."
I always thought it was God who was the hope of the nations, and that St John was writing about Jesus. Was I wrong?!
Interestingly, she says she hears her concerns echoed within the forces there.....
Ah...part of the post-Greenbelt ritual is the developing of the photos taken over the Festival weekend. They always bring back recent memories, and things that have already began to slip the mind - one of my photo's this year reminds me of the Monday morning, where we went, as usual to the Restaurant at the Pitville Campus for breakfast and ended up sharing a table with John Peck. I've met the Rev. John before, and he's always approachable, always happy to talk to just about anyone...fascinating guy...we ended up giving him a lift into the Racecourse Site, where we got someone to take a bit of a group photo with John before going our separate ways...another photo taken that day, late at night this time, was with another Rev, Steve Stockman. What a great guy he is, too!
Another memory that doesn't need a photo to prompt it, is the one from early Monday evening where I was in the queue at the Jesus Christ Superstore. A man at the front, paid at the till, and, as he walked past the queue on his way out, grabbed my arm and said, " I've seen you a number of times over the weekend, and this is the first time that I've seen you when you've not been working - thanks to you and all the others for all that you do for us. "
To which I replied, " You're welcome! But it's a pleasure...we're all in this together. " Indeed we are.
No early night tonight; next door there's unusual activity and I can't sleep for it. The old lady, ill for so long, has died, and tonight she's taking visitors for the last time, lying in stillness in her coffin in the front room. The family are spilling out onto the road; passionate conversations spill out with them.
No silence tonight, too much to clear up before tomorrow's funeral. No stillness tonight, too much emotion to deal with.
And for once I'm peripheral to all of this. I'm just another neighbour, not the closest, not the best by a long way. Stripped of my usual clerical role, I'm confronted with hard questions about who I can be for them in their grief, if anyone.
While the old lady sleeps, healed at last, everyone around her is restless
Like many people all over the world today, I observed, along with my collegues here in Southend, a one minute silence, for the victims of the 11th September atrocities....this was a silence that was observed by Radio 1 too, and after playing the last Oasis single immediately afterwards - something that seemed fairly appropriate - DJ Mark Radcliffe mentioned that he'd also been allowed to choose a song that was to be played in commemoration, as well. His choice was Leonard Cohen's, ' Hallelujah ' ; only he decided to use Jeff Buckley's version, instead.
It was awesome....
....and apart from Heat, they all name Greenbelt when listing Songs of Praise on BBC1 this Sunday, from 5.30-6.05pm. In fact they all mention Rowan Williams and Simon Mayo as well - and TV and Satellite World tells you virtually everything that's going to appear on the programme...FACT!! Alright, it's a bit trainspotter-ish but I did get a thrill from seeing Greenbelt mentioned in the Radio Times, the biggest selling publication in this country.
Later on this lunchtime, I bumped into a friend who had attended the Festival this year, and discussing it, she described Greenbelt as, " really like a taste of heaven, now. " She had been very impressed.
Now we're into September, the Greenbelt Festival now seems well and truly gone. I received an e-mail from a friend, up in the north-east, yesterday - she worked at the Fest for the first time this year, as a venue manager like me. She mentioned how busy she'd been over the Bank Holiday weekend, and how she'd missed out on so much as a result - but also told me of how, on the last night, she felt God telling her of all the rejoicing that was going on in heaven as a result of some of the things that had happened at the Festival - and that it was partly, thanks to her, and to all the other volunteers and staff, that these things had come to pass.
I'm sure that there were quite a few who received A Kiss Of Life at Greenbelt this year. If you weren't there, or if you were and you want to re-live some of the party, you probably won't need me to tell you that you can, with Songs of Praise, this Sunday. I'm just off to lunch now, to check the various TV guides for the details and to see what sort of mention that they give to the Festival. So it looks like Greenbelt 02 is not quite over yet...not until Sunday, at any rate...