No Pearsons’ Perspectives last weekend. Where were we? Where we always are over August Bank Holiday! At the Greenbelt Festival! As usual it was a rich cocktail of insights and inspiration – many of which we are still processing! We both credit Greenbelt with having sustained and enriched our spiritual lives, vastly broadened our social horizons and sensitised our consciences in the nearly 20+ years we’ve been going! The Festival is making a serious effort to reduce its carbon footprint and is strong on environmental concern. No plastic cups, no air tickets for guest speakers, request for punters to travel by train or in groups etc. etc.
This year there was gale force wind one night and four or five hours of torrential rain 24 hours later. We usually reckon we hardly manage more than 1% of the worship, arts and social justice presentations that are on offer. The weather meant that this year it might have been even less!
It's almost impossible to put our highlights in any kind of order! So... as they come!
A creative mini series was entitled, ‘God as...’ There was ‘God as chaotic and curious’, ‘God as child’ featuring a poetic theologian, Graham Adams – full of ideas! Then there was God help us with Faith Constructs featuring a new discovery for us, the theologian Thomas Jay Oord. Tom held a tent of young people spellbound as he told the story of his own loss and refinding of faith and fielded questions both serious and profound. His books, we were told, sold out in hours at the bookstore.
‘God help us with Gender Constructs’ featured Sophie Grace Chappell who began life as Timothy David Chappell. Now Professor of Philosophy at the Open University, she gave the clearest and perhaps the most authentic account of what it was like to experience the growing wish as a young Christian to set the woman inside her free. We have both felt uneasy about the whole transgender issue and this session dispelled some of our ignorance and, frankly, prejudice. It helped us to understand the torment experienced by many trans people.
The Grenbelt environmental push meant that the numbers of ’big’ transatlantic speakers have been reduced. Thanks to the weather we sadly missed Brian McLaren who did come. But. speaking via video link from New Mexico in a new venue called ‘No Fly Zone’, we did hear the popular Franciscan, 81-year old Richard Rohr. He outlined his forthcoming book The Tears of Things, which explores the question of how we live compassionately in times of violence and despair. Lots of food for thought there!
In a different venue, veteran UK barrister Michael Mansfield KC spoke about the injustices visited upon ‘little people’ with no access to the levers of power. He has fought for justice for the residents of the Grenfell Tower and Hillsborough tragedies and the victims of the infected blood scandal – people given HIV by transfusion. Marginal people were also the focus of a panel including Bishop Rachel Treweek and the Director of the Prison Reform Trust, Pia SInha speaking alongside two reformed prisoners, the poet Lady Unchained, and Junior Smart, MBE who has one honorary doctorate and one about to be earned! Every speaker so impressive!
The Sunday morning communion was led by Guvna B, a rap artist, author and broadcaster and Siskin Green, a contemporary Scottish folk trio who draw on themes of faith, feminism and justice. A rendering of ‘El Shaddai’ by Drag Queen, Flamy Grant, a gravelly vocalist moved us and many others deeply. We later heard her story of coming to faith in the Methodist centre, the Hope and Anchor
The simple but moving open-air service of Holy Communion featured, by video link, some profound words of encouragement from Daoud Nasser, leader of the Tent of Nations, who appeared with members of his small Christian community in Bethlehem. Daoud had been due to come to the Festival but chose to remain after threats from Israeli settlers to take over the family’s olive groves they have been farming for more than a century. Their sad noble faces served as a backdrop to the whole communion and gave a whole new meaning to ‘sharing in the Body of Christ’. When asked what their hopes for the future were, the Palestinian children growing up on the West Bank used to reply ‘to get a good education’. That was 20 years ago. Now they say ‘to die together and not be left behind’. The story was told in another sessioin by a highly articulate Muslim woman as she struggled to relate the horrors she had witnessed under Israeli occupation and wondered ‘What next for Gaza?’. She was comforted by a Palestinian Christian woman sitting beside her.
There was so much more. A session on ‘Did God Save Donald Trump?’ by Scottish theologian John Bell. Many kinds of worship experience. Lots of music of every conceivable type from Quaker silence through folk to soul to gospel to rock and beyond. Crafts. Textiles. Theatre. Performance like juggling. We can only take so much stimulus – the weekend is quite enough.
It’s a good gig!
PS We hope some of our readers will be interested in following up some of our new discoveries!
You can watch the Greenbelt communion on this link!
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