Green Patches

Blog of The Week - A Reader in Writing

 

So, with nearly a week between myself and Greenbelt, the GP 'Blog of The Week' goes to A Reader in Writing for her brave, honest, and for me personally, serendipitous reflections on some of the difficulties she enountered  in herself  there as a first-time visitor and camper. In spite of my upbeat blog post earlier in the week, I've been struggling to process my very mixed feelings on my GB this year; RIW, when I stumbled across your blog, I breathed  a huge sigh of relief - so much resonated with my own experience - and, from the other comments you received, with many other people too.

There were echos, too,  of this in church this morning. Our theme  was pilgrimage and faith journeys, as a large group of us had been away on our annual pilgrimage the week before GB.  We talked about  the hopes and fears involved in moving on to new stages of our journey: a new class, new school, uni, work, marriage, house moves, retirement... Then the need to acknowledge  our often mixed feelings about these transition times and the (natural) human reaction of either denying the situation or wanting to run away and hide.  Yet, with this, the need to hold to  the knowledge of God's presence with you on the journey.

Chatting after the service, I found myself able to be honest when asked how Greenbelt went and to to acknowledge that yes, for parts of the time it was a lonely experience for me; but also to balance this with some of the many positives without feeling that I was putting  a gloss on things and compromising my own integrity. Quite a step along the road for me. Again, many many thanks.

Maybe for this week only I should rename BOTW - The Golden Tent Peg!

 

 

Greenbelt Part 1

A few thoughts on my experience helping out with the TO presence this year, taken from 'The Ship.'

I thoroughly enjoyed my stints on the TO stall at Greenbelt. Plenty people stopped to make enquiries, browse through our literature and just to chat. I had some really inspiring conversations there. 

It was also good - if amusing - to note how many tertiaries, apart from those of us involved with the organisation of the stall - were there 'incognito' but who sidled by and 'outed' themselves when they realised we were there! 

 Taint always easy to meet with TO folk out of one's immediate area; (come to think of it, it isn't that easy to maintain contact with tertiaries within our own areas). I came away feeling quite encouraged.

Should any of the organisers be lurking here, this was definitely A Good Idea and I'm looking forward to next year's stint.

 

 

No Blog of The Week this week

I'm still reeling around in a post Greenbelt haze. Archdruid Eileen, should you be lurking around,  I can confirm that the rain prayers worked  well.   If the sight of  the middle-aged woman seen kneeling in front of her jammed open tent zip late on Friday evening,  whilst uttering strange inarticulate sounds of ectasy  and praise is anything to go by,  only too well.  The tent dried out - eventually, though my cargos seem to be harbouring a new and interesting type of mould. 

 Read last week's blog of the week here.

Songs of Protest and Praise

Garnered at the last minute from the Greenbelt Blog; if you're near Dorchester, it may be worth checking to see if there are still some places left at this weekend of folk music and poetry,  at  Hilfield Priory.

"Songs of Protest and Praise" will be led by Gill and Alan McIntosh, Franciscan

tertiaries based in Weymouth, who sing and play regularly in local folk clubs. The weekend promises music and poetry to assist in "celebrating community with each other, with the marginalised and with the land".

More details here.

 

 

Greenbelt 2010

 

 Better late than never. Cold Nights, Green Fields and Windy Interludes -  some thoughts on Greenbelt.

Change can be easier than you think

Says Generous.org  

Paul Northup shares a few familial thoughts at the start of another New Year about how the thought of change can sometimes daunt us, force us into passivity, hold us captive. When, in actuality, things might be easier – and sometimes even quicker – to change than we think.

The Spirit of Greenbelt lives on

There was a frisson of excitement yesterday, when I arrived home to find a quishy jiffybag stuffed with CDs waiting for me; a bunchy of talks from the festival  - hastily ordered last week in an attempt to beat the impending postal strike. The Greenpatch ironing mountain will be shrinking a treat.

I felt rather less enthused when John Bell's "Sabbath for Beginners," emitted a noise that was a cross between a washing machine on the 1000RPM cycle and a plane taking off, (and no, we're not talking about his Scottish accent here), shot round at the speed of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of The Bumblebee," yet talk was there none; a quick check in the pc bringing up the dreaded words: "Not recognised. Empty CD." 

I'll be contacting Greenbelt Sales when I return from my (computer free) trip to the Land of Seabirds And Brisk Sea Breezes. It made me smile though, given the nature of the talk, as anybody who remembers the gales of guilty laughter that swept through the room on John's challenge re...umm...excessive use of modern technology and its intrusion into family life. Trains running through living rooms, anyone?

Could this be a sign? ;)

For Greenbelt

and all other festivals taking place just now: a prayer  from Pip Wilson. With thanks to Maggi Dawn . 

Gardening tips - part 3

credit freedigitalphotos.net

All  of which  of course, is a lead-in to a profound 'thunk'  - to  which  the pic provides a cryptic clue. Some might say 'tenuous;' the cucumber's only there because I wasn't able to provide a photo of John Bell's keynote red shoes. Though, in true 'Blue Peter' tradition, Here's One I Found Earlier .  (Thank you, Mr Gnome!).  All will be made clear...

It's been a funny old week, beginning with major gasworks  chez Greenpatch, and ending with two men and an excavator digging up whole swathes of our front garden. There's gardening for you! (Don't worry it was planned). Mr Greenpatch - aka Mr M/The lycra'ed horror has been busy climbing ever'y mountain in La Marmotte 2009 . Or from all accounts falling off them. I've still to see the extent of his injuries when he gets home tomorrow!

More seriously, a member of the extended family is gravely ill. I'm awaiting the news - although I know what said news will be.

Alongside that  are the latest in my own wanderings - call it gardening for the soul. I've applied for a course. Not in an area I've not considered before; in fact it's been right there in the background for quite a while. It's simply that the decision to apply was a snap one. Whatever happened to Franciscan balance? Come to think of it's hardly a term to apply to Francis himself. Whatever his good qualities, balanced he was not!  It is, if I'm honest with myself, a long shot; I'm trying hard to regard the whole affair as a learning experience, regardless of outcome. Which so far, I've managed, in fits and starts.

 What's helped, (and here's where the cucumber comes in ) has been simply taking time to reflect, read and pray. It's strange what sometimes happens when you do. The profound 'thunk' started whilst I was listening to John Bell's talk from last year's Greenbelt - on Faith in a Failing Church.  He mentioned the accounts of the Israelite wanderings from the book of Numbers; of the grumblers, the 'Back to Egypt' waverers, who although they're at the border of the promised land, are so terrified at the reports brought them by the spies who've gone ahead, that they'd rather turn back to the miseries of slavery. They refuse to move on, Moses begs God not to let them return to Egypt as a result of which they're condemned to wander  in wilderness until the last of the misery-guts have died off!  Now I know I'm taking things out of context; the passages are dealing with those who are reluctant to embrace change.  However, for me the message that came through to me was this:  I have travelled a long way these last few years; gained tremendous ground; grown in ways I'd not thought possible. Whether the answer to   the present situation may be - yes, no, wait, go on to something completely different - I can't 'go back.'  When I've done that in the past, not been true to myself,  something inside me has died. And I'm very much in the way of living!

Cat and Dog's Diary Part 2 - Homelessness and belonging

Body-soul dualism is foreign to the Jewish world-view,foreign to the Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures. To be qunitessentially Jewish was and is to have a voracious appetite for life in all its material and physical reality......Yet from its earliest days, two strands of spirituality have existed side by side in Christianity...The one that has predominated in the Western Church is based on a vision of the human spirit rising above the natural, physical or material world in  order to commune with God in the 'spiritual' realm....The scond...strongly rejects the idea that we  must escapethe world in order to commune with God....In this...the presence of the divine is celebrated within the physical and material realm....The expectation is to encounter God within both the world of nature, and the world of human culture and experience. St Francis offers a paradigmatic expression of this strand...when, as he was about to die, in that most intimate moment of communion with God, he kept reciting  his elegant 'Canticle to the Sun', that placed  him in solidarity with the birds, the insects, the sun and the moon, and indeed the whole world of nature.   Dave Tomlinson in Re-Enchanting Christianity , Canterbury Press, 2008, p89-90

  This extract expanding on the talk of the same title   sparked one of the trains of  of thought that I've been mulling over since my recent visit to Greenbelt. I'd not noticed the 'feline/canine' connections til just now. However, it wasn't the only thing I heard there that - to my mind  anyway -   tied into  both core aspects of Franciscan spirituality and has planted a tiny seed of thought regarding the synthesis of several strands of my own, which currently loom quite large in my vocational musings. Not that they don't figure in the journey of every Christian at some point or other, regardless of their leanings. It's not rocket science, as they say - or simplicity, as Francis would doubtless tell you. Yet it offers a clue as to how to move on, and I, for one, will be following the reflections as to how to reconcile, to balance, these two strands of homelessness and belonging  with real  interest.  

Who'd have thunk it?!