Categories: uncategorized
Date: 26 August 2008 15:09:17
So we're home from Greenbelt and so I guess I'm going to follow the usual tradition of unpacking it over a few days.
For me it was an ickle strange, I was camping with a group of young adults from church who had a large percentage of Greenbelt virgins amongst them. It meant I was able to enjoy the smiles as they "discovered" Greenbelt for the first time, rather than doing that usual thing of slightly cynically comparing x, y or z about the festival with previous years.
Music wise the only thing I did this year were The Woebegone Brothers who do skiffle gospel and were playing at Greenbelt for the first time in 17 years. It appears they've reformed and despite the odd technical problem they played a cracking set. Having seen them at Greenbelt and more bizarrely busking outside chalets at Spring Harvest in the late 80's / early 90's it was a real retro experience seeing them again.
Talks wise I did a bit more McLaren and Frank Schaeffer and tried out a bit of Yancey in the main arena. I also went to some smaller seminars over in the CMS Blah tent. The first given by Andrew Jones , (aka Tall Skinney Kiwi), was about doing internet mission through streaming our lives and is one I may well revisit this week in a more extensive post. The other one I went to was one given by Spirited Exchanges , which was interesting. I'm not going to post about what went on itself, mainly because it was discussion based and so that wouldn't be appropriate. However, it touched on a bunch of "stuff" which I might look at again later one.
Experience wise I finally did Beer and Hymns, aswell as Carols and Cider. In plain English this means that despite my slightly moralistic post before I went I ended up well and truly discovering the organic beer tent. Note: I was hooked on their lemonade until they ran dry of the stuff which is the only reason I was on the wine ..... honest. Seriously, I really enjoyed the vibe in there this year.
"Emotional Moment": after carols had finished and we'd seen the new year in we sang "We'll Meet Again" to mark the end of Greenbelt. Well I was standing there with the guys from church, who I was pretty much saying goodbye to. It's not surprising that accompanying my choking out of the word "we'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when" were a stream of tears. The guys were wonderful though, and one by one they came and up and hugged me as we sang it. That's the sort of memory you can't pay for and I guess that sums up this years Greenbelt......
.......a bunch of memories involving wonderful people and surreal situations that are priceless.