It's amazing how something that only lasts for four days, can have such an impact and influence on your life, for the rest of the year, each year. Yep, Greenbelt comes and goes, for most of us, too quickly - relatively speaking, it doesn't last for very long, doesn't involve many of the world's population and doesn't cover much space. Relatively speaking.
Of course, it lives on during the winter months, as we finally get round to hearing all the seminar tapes that we bought at the festival, as we finish the books that we were recommended over the weekend, as we listen to the CDs of the new Gb groups that impressed us.
But perhaps it lives on most of all, in the practical outworking of all the things that we heard and learnt during those brief days, in the sights, sounds and impressions that stay with us, after the event. The practical outworking of our day-to-day lives, where the challenge of using our imaginations, of doing justice, and of following Jesus creatively and relevantly, is ultimately to be found.
On Songs of Praise the entire Soul Space team were shown outside shopping and when Brian Kennedy walked right past them with his brolly up, not one of them even blinked at him. Was he airbrushed in? How near they were to greatness and how little they knew it. Of all the SoPs from Greenbelt this was the best designed, I felt. The opening sequence seguing various musicians, punters and contributers together into 'All People That On Earth Do Dwell ' was wonderfully well-done; and the programme provided me with yet more Greenbelt moments (lump in throat, profoundly tearful, etc...)
...is the title of the 1992 album from Depeche Mode, a band that originate from just up the road from here in Southend - I didn't want to give an obvious title to these ramblings...but in the run up to Sunday's Songs Of Praise, it seemed that everyone I know who's connected with Greenbelt, in fact every Christian that I spoke to, was talking about the programme. I myself havn't watched Songs Of...in full, for years, because I'm normally on my way to an evening service, so I was looking forward to it this week with unusual expectancy! After watching it once and taping it, how did it come across?
Well, it seemed strange for two reasons :- firstly, here were all these familiar faces and surroundings...only on the telly, where I don't usually encounter them. Secondly, it didn't really seem like Greenbelt - or at least, not my experience of it this year. But that's a somewhat subjective viewpoint, so what did others think?
A variety of opinions on the programme has been expressed on the Gb Forum, with many people acknowledging that Songs Of...put together this particular edition with their regular viewers in mind, understandably.
When I got into work today, a guy who works with me couldn't wait to tell me that he saw part of the programme - he felt that it all looked, " great ", that it looked a really, " good, positive place and probably better than all the other Festivals, because of the extra, spiritual dimension ", and, " it would've been really interesting to have been there. " He was mostly impressed with the diversity of the people that he saw at Greenbelt. He went on to tell me about how he'd been reading an article by a Druidess, talking about the good points that Christianity contains. It seems that Songs Of...was well-timed for him, and the combination of the two has, at the moment, left him more sympathetic with what we believe. Praise God!