I got up on a boringly overcast Sunday morning after a mildly less cold but significantly less noisy night, in which the relaxing Night Prayer had helped my rest. I attended the 10:30am Greenbelt Sunday Service at Mainstage with Heather, Matt, Paul and Annie, who hadn't bothered with her pink wig this time. I thought it was a good idea to base the whole service, called ‘Take An Olive Seed’, around the theme of people from the Holy Land (the home of the olive tree) and the conflict between them. We received an olive seed each and, instead of traditional Holy Communion, we were all given olive oil with which to anoint the hand of the person next to us with a Cross-sign. Also, rather than risk swine flu contamination by asking us to shake hands during the Peace, the conscientious organisers had instead devised the clever 'Elbow Bump of Peace’ which, according to Wikipedia, originated in a leper colony in the 1960’s.
Despite its creativity and strong theme, the service left me feeling a bit cold, and not just because of the weather. The music in particular was a bit rocky; the rearrangements of classic hymn tunes (with new lyrics), which would have been entertaining enough just to listen to, left those of us who tried to sing along floundering, given that the worship band hadn't taken the trouble to teach us their new arrangements first. A group behind us took the initiative and sang the traditional versions. The whole thing just didn’t quite take off for me. Still, I got to keep an olive seed and the attractive programme, which had lots of interesting stuff in it.
Several crashes later (of my car and male ego), my attention drifted skyward as the clouds opened and a bright gold light shone down upon The Centaur. Accompanied by the strains of Paschelbel’s Canon on an electric guitar, there descended upon the building a figure dressed all in black. Excitement in the queue ascended to fever pitch. Rob Bell had arrived. Actually, his real arrival was a lot more subdued, unnoticed, in fact, until, suddenly, the doors of Centaur were flung open and the queue made a great surge forward. I found myself level with Matt sooner than I had expected and consequently nearer the entrance. I was about to see Rob Bell! Hooray! But then, to our horror, the stewards declared that the venue was at full capacity. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! We had waited so long, we had been so patient, so well behaved, so close, but the forces of darkness (or rather, bad organisation) had deprived us at the last. As the crowd dispersed, I saw several people angrily berating the stewards and I overheard that, due to the large volume of people, the queue had snaked around so much that the end of the queue had been next to the front and, when the doors had opened, both ends merely charged in together before the stewards could stop them, taking up the seats that should have rightfully been for those of us who had been waiting longer. Bad people! How could they call themselves Christians?! Oh, hang on, what about ‘and the last shall be first’ and all that? Oh well. Matt and I considered various ways of breaking into Centaur to see Bell, the most likely option being gaining access to the ventilation system and watching him from above the stage. However, I pointed out that the chances of us being too heavy for the vent grates to support us and one of us falling on Bell and killing him were too great, so we abandoned that plan. With bells on.
Dejected from my Rob Bell experience, I dragged myself to my backup talk (and I’m sure I’m not the only one who had those) in The Kitchen again, ‘Living lightly in a fragile world’ with Will Campbell-Clause and Tim Maiden. It was surprisingly well attended for a talk scheduled at roughly the same time as the mighty Bell, although I guess not everyone wanted to see him and certainly not everyone could. This talk, which, like many of the things in the Daily Diary, bore an eye-catching title that explained its whole raison d’etre without recourse to the main programme, which gave more information about talks, etc. This was more necessary for events with vaguer titles like ‘Interesting’. I have a general interest in green issues and sustainable living (big issues at this festival) and so went along to ‘Living lightly...’. It was OK, and I was glad to meet other like-minded people but, as a member of green group Transition Norwich, I felt that I’d heard all about sustainable ways of living before. So, after about 45 minutes, I left to queue for the lesser Bell, John (a Scot from the Iona Community and a GB regular of many years), in the nearby Big Top tent.
Rather than descending from on high to the strains of classical music, John Bell was instead wheeled in through the back of the tent, singing an old Gaelic drinking song. This gave me hope that his talk, ‘Did Paul Mean It All?’ would be more interesting than the one in The Kitchen. I was not about to find out, though, as another one of those pesky stewards gave an announcement that rang a Bell. (Ho ho!) ‘This venue is now at full capacity.’ Cripes, did I smell, or something? Well, yes, probably, as I hadn’t showered in a day or two.
I went to the front of the tent to see if I could catch a glimpse of John but could only hear his dulcet tones from within. Instead, I opted to check out what was happening at the Festival Bowl which, rather than housing a game of American Football (well, it sounds like it should to me, anyway), had a very serious talk called ‘Bill Gates, Bono and You.’ Expecting to find these two men sat on a panel ready to field my questions, I was instead greeted with a middle-aged American, Matthew Bishop, the author of a book called ‘Philanthrocapitalism’, who talked about how the rich (e.g. Gates and Bono) can save the world and why we should let them. After listening to Bishop for about half an hour, I found him and the hard stone step I was sat on unengaging, so, deciding that I couldn’t afford to save the world, I agreed that we should leave it to Gates and Bono and left.
In the Contributors’ Tent once again, I met a man called Chris who had apparently just done a talk about being on Countdown five years ago. I found Chris a lot more interesting than the last two sessions I had been to as we chatted about how he’d managed to get into the GB programme talking about Countdown (he’s mates with one of the organisers), Doctor Who and what there is for the casual atheist (which Chris was) to enjoy at GB09. He had caught a talk by gay bishop Gene Robinson earlier (which I was annoyed with myself for missing and could quite easily have attended if I’d left The Kitchen sooner), plus one or two things in The Hub, where a lot of arty things were happening. After a while, Chris and I left the Contributors Area and headed for the Hub to hear a poet called Luke Kennard talk about ‘Writing angry, offensive and judgemental poetry’ and to read some of his own. Being something of a writer myself (how much of a one you can judge for yourself from this piece), I appreciated some of his comments about the craft but his own work left something to be desired (apart from the line ‘charity is the salve of the middle classes’.) and made me feel like writing something angry, offensive and judgemental, so at least he had inspired me.
Then, from on high, I heard Paschelbel’s Canon once more and, as Kennard was thankfully wrapping up, I made my getaway to secure a final chance to catch Rob Bell, this time 'In Conversation' at Jerusalem, not in Palestine, but a little bandstand in front of the Grandstand, which had quickly filled up with people. Sitting on the ground at Bell’s feet (a good vantage point for photos), I, along with everyone else, hung off his every word as journalist Martin Wroe interviewed him with admirable lack of nerves or sycophancy. After the interview, Bell fielded various questions from people, one or two being quite personal, e.g. a girl with an atheist father whom some of her Christian friends had said was going to Hell – what did Rob think, she asked? He answered that it wasn’t our job as Christians to predict who’s going where, that this was in fact what Jesus apparently told off the Pharisees about. It was our job merely to point out God’s absolute love for everyone, although not in a cringe-worthy way. ‘Like your sat at a ball game,’ he said, ‘your team scores and you say to your non-Christian friend next to you. “Jesus scored for you.”’ Ha! He said we needed a happy medium between lazy and arrogant evangelism, where the way we act and the choices we make leads the people we know to ask pertinent questions. Then, we can talk about what captivates us about the Bible, and Jesus.
Bell was very complimentary about GB and the UK as a whole, how there's nothing like GB in the USA and that they haven't even cottoned onto recycling yet. He also talked about the importance of keeping a holy Sabbath (a Saturday for him, Sunday being church, of course) to ‘feed our souls’ (they need feeding as much as the rest of us), where all our work is done (‘even if it’s not.’) and we remember that ‘we’re human beings...not human doings.’ ‘If you can’t find Heaven in the everyday (this reminded me of the title for GB07, 'Heaven in Ordinary'), you’ll struggle with a mountaintop experience.’
Rob Bell In Conversation was definitely Sunday’s highlight, more than making up for the lacklustre stuff I’d see during the day and the earlier queue situation, for which a Greenbelt staffer gave an apology to all assembled before Bell came on. A small crowd quickly gathered around him after the interview; people clamouring for answers, book signings, handshakes and hugs. I just took a picture of him and ran off, later regretting not taking the opportunity to thank him for his book ‘Velvet Elvis’, which helped me a lot and partly lead me to get baptised earlier this year. You might say I was “saved by the Bell”, but I wouldn’t, because it’s God that does the saving, as I’m sure you know, plus, these 'bell' puns are wearing really thin now, even for me and I'm writing this thing. Later, one lady who had made it into his earlier Centaur talk said that hearing a more spontaneous Bell In Conversation had been better than hearing one of his well-prepared lectures.
In the picture above, Rob is signing a copy of his new book, 'Drops Like Stars' (basically the talk of the same name in book form) which irked me greatly when I had a look at it in the bookstore earlier. A real oversized, coffee-table filler, I clocked the price at about £20 and opened it to find it had roughly two lines on one page (in various orientations) with massive, arty photos (of things like flowers being dropped) filling others! It was, of course, an "art book" and not at all like his previous ones which had lots of words in them that he'd bothered filling the whole page with before moving onto the next one and not cheated with pictures. Well, fair enough, Rob, but I sure wasn't gonna pay £20 for mostly white space (although I would borrow it from a library or from someone else). Perhaps he could try a comic book next? I would actually pay for that.
After my Rob fix, I wandered around the festival, taking in various sights like the Christian Aid tent, where there was an incredible exhibition that used accurately counted piles of rice to illustrate figures such as worldwide deaths caused by the recent swine flu pandemic, versus those caused by Spanish flu a century ago. I was really impressed by the effort taken with this show, given that one rice grain was equivalent to one swine flu victim, for example. Shamefully, though, after a few minutes looking around, I couldn’t help but notice that two huge piles of rice next to one another resembled a large pair of buttocks. I thought it best to leave at this point.
Walking around the food stalls, I was tapped on the shoulder by Adam, whom I had met the day before in the first Rob Bell queue. He was queuing (again) for some curry with his wife Lucy and friend Pete. I was very interested to hear about the fact that they lived in a van and were part of a Christian community in Bristol similar to the Simple Way in Philadelphia, USA. They were impressed that I’d read Shane Claiborne’s ‘Irresistible Revolution’, an inspiration for their community. I ended up joining them to watch Shlomo The Vocal Orchestra at Mainstage. It was one of those Greenbelt events that I noticed but would have remained indifferent to, were it not for chance, that actually turned out to be great. I stood in awe, watching skinny, white Shlomo lead his 8-piece Orchestra in several tunes, utilizing the group’s multiple vocal talents, which mostly involved beatboxing, which I'm not a fan of generally, but couldn't fail to be impressed with here.
My final occasion for Sunday was a short play, by the Applecart Theatre Company, called ‘In which....the Crowd Gatherer makes inappropriate advances.’ I had no idea what this would entail; perhaps it referred to the man who had accosted me earlier as I was strolling through the crowd and cried out, 'APPLECART THEATRE COMPANY, HUB, 10 O'CLOCK TONIGHT!' Or maybe, having Gatherered a Crowd at the Hub, he would make advances toward us. I attended with an open mind, since I fancied a bit of theatre. The stage was small and minimal, with a keyboard and bare set, the actors in modern clothes. They re-enacted the story in John 4:1-26, where Jesus (played by the man who accosted me earlier, I think) meets a Samaritan woman at a well. Their radical interpretation was done in very contemporary, naturalistic language, complete with the use of an S-word that fit the Samaritan’s harassed and anxious character but still jarred slightly given the biblical context (maybe it was meant to?) The drama was broken up with the odd joke and even odder, yet still fitting, musical interludes. The play kept me watching, despite the fact that I was cold and my feet felt like they were about to melt into the ground. It was well produced and challenged me in its stripped-down, language-heavy interpretation of such a well known Gospel story, in which it was all about Jesus’, sorry, the Crowd-Gatherer’s struggle to gain the trust of one very damaged woman in order to give her the ‘water of life.’
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