We received an email from greenbelt inviting mayBe community back to be part of the new worship plans for GB2010. We replied immediately with a whole-hearted YES.
mayBe at greenbelt_2009
Check out our other photos on our gallery page.
Greenbelt “alpha testing”
Team GB met again. We did an early run-through of the plans to see how it felt. And it felt good! A few new ideas and lots of volunteering to take bits on left us with the following even more exciting, updated plan. Look out for a beta test coming to a community Sunday near you soon!
Visuals
- Rach is going to make canopy decorations using similar materials as before. Emma is up for helping.
- Rich has made “Still life in motion” videos of South Park and Port Meadow, to “bring our outside cathedral in”.
- Jim and Jon (mechanic) to make other projections, including key words from readings, and possibly the Lamb song. Also our contact details (see below) for at the end.
Sounds and music
- JohnK will lead putting a suitable sound track together, including the Lamb song.
- Rich will make recording of crowd noises.
Opening/arrival
- Crowd voices sound-scape volume increases as more people come in, then shut it off suddenly to signal the start; relative stillness.
- People welcomed at the door by community members and given a hazelnut (in its shell — you’ll see why later) and hand out resource sheets.
- Tracey will source hazelnuts (in their shells)
- ChrisW will make nut allergy signs!
- JohnK will make beautiful resources (not typed, decorated). Rich can colour-photo-copy.
Welcome voice
- Tell people what will happen, who we are (a community [from Oxford] exploring creative, simple, engaged playful living in the way of Christ).
- Introduce theme:
- stepping back [from the pace of fashion]
- mention stillness in the eternal moment
- smallness/held-ness; hope of moving from fear to freedom in this.
- Rich will write this.
Call & response
- Use our Christ is coming – keeping the rhythm of our regular community life.
- Emma will adapt this.
Chant: come Holy Spirit…
- Jim wants to lead the singing on the day!
Wisdom
Read by different community members around the room (microphones allowing). These are all about scale (vastness, depth, eternity…).
- Vastness: Psalm 8 (Message remix?) macro skies… micro self… Why does God bother with us tiny things? [yet God does].
- Eternity: John 1, 14-18 ish (eternal presence of God,“He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” John 1 v15)
- Depth: Julian of Norwich: In this vision he showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, and it was round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought “What may this be?” And it was generally answered thus: “It is all that is made.” I marvelled how it might last, for it seemed it might suddenly have sunk into nothing because of its littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: “It lasts and ever shall, because God loves it.”
Chant: Gloria, Gloria, Gloria…
Reflection space
- Community voice introduces. Rachel will write this, based on her similar improvisation with the clover leaves that we did on Angel & Grayhound meadow.
- We will use Lamb song “Small” (see the YouTube video but we won’t use the video at GB) we’ll let this play through to time the meditation.
Mingling/improvisation
- Community voice encourages people to say “Hi” to the people near them, and share something of their thoughts.
- Tell people that we do this sort of thing quite a lot and sometimes we just turn to each other and talk about our day: it’s a space to share, saying something profound is optional!
- Possibly using inviting people to put their hazelnut on a circle marked-out on a bit of paper.
- Provides relief for people who like to share after all that reflection!
- Jim will write this.
Lead-in to sacred act
- Towards the end of the mingling/chatting/sharing, we’ll turn up the crowd noises again, then cut it dead and community voices will read pre-prepared statements of people expressing how they feel about being so small.
- We’ll do a run through of this “service” at a mayBe Sunday soon, and ask community members to write their thoughts for this. We want to select a range of different views.
Sacred act
- Invite everyone to bring their hazelnut to the middle and place it along an infinity symbol ? which will be marked out.
- symbolism: you are held; you have a place in God’s eternity.
- visually nice.
- We will also invite people, if they would like to, to go to one of five(?) community members stationed around the room to receive a blessing (possibly anointing with oil).
- We thought we would ask people for their name, and use it in the blessing.
- Andrea will write what to say, how to mark out the ?, and words for the blessing.
Bye byes
- blessing Emma will write this
- invite people to find their nut and take it with! [for a laugh]
- keep in touch: cards with mayBe details on? (ChrisW will design these. Possibly use moo.com?) should include
- website maybe.org.uk
- twitter.com/mayBeCommunity
- hellomaybe@maybe.org.uk
- 07870 988 904
- community members clearly around to be chatted to.ChrisW will design and print badges.
And spontaneously…
Sam is planning our spontaneous act of worship! Do talk to her if you have ideas or want to help.
All comments welcome!
update from gb on the new forms space
This just in from gb:
Tibetan Prayer Flags (image:wikimedia)
The bean bags are no longer with us…
We will be having an on-going installation within the venue in response to the festival theme ‘Standing in the Long Now’ – this is still forming in the creative minds of the venue managers and technical team – though at the moment we are working with a Christian interpretation of some images of tibetan prayer flags. The hope is that we will have an on-going vibe in the venue that will not interfere with your contributions but will hold the venue together visually and provide participants (you and those attending the worship sessions) with a sense of the how the venue sits in relation to the festival as a whole.
Greenbelt: emerging shapes
pic by dave
We met at Topsy, Jon & Isla’s to crystalise all the great ideas we’ve had from the three GB discussions so far. Still lots of questions, but exciting to see potential shapes coming out; ideas finding a home in the structure.
Oooh, don’t look at this, it’s out-of-date! Look at this instead!
Greenbelt: More Ideas
A summary of Greenbelt ideas shared in the cafe after Eucharist.
We considered being small in time and space and how we each react to this. Can we move from a reaction of fear to freedom? Can the scale of all things actually bring us stillness and peace?
We shared written wisdoms. Psalms that spoke of how God was mindful of (tiny) us within the universe. C.S. Lewis wrote how creation was “sung into being”. The Gospel reminds us of the eternal presence of God, “Before the world was created, the Word already existed”. The celebration of the hazelnut by Julian of Norwich, “God made it, God loves it and God keeps it.”
We thought of some improvisations. Cupping ears. Lighting candles. And we reflected on some images. A pinpoint of light surrounded by darkness.
Planning our “Fashionable Pace” greenbelt worship
Cara, Jim, Rich and Tracey met to go over first ideas for our Greenbelt 2009 New Forms worship (7pm Saturday). A long way to go yet, but it was great to get out what we felt could be the main themes.
Our fist planning scribbles
Here’s how it will be billed:
Fashionable Pace
Stepping back from the pace of fashion, looking to the Gospels to see the bigger picture.
In our discussions we explored the ideas of the long now, the eternal moment, the vastness of life, the smallness of each of us (and marvelling at “how held we are”).
Big concepts, but little old us. We felt that there were many things of our previous greenbelt “services” that still feel important: it should be friendly; it’s just us, not a performance; it should have no obvious leader/front or centre.
The eternal moment is the idea that instead (as well?) as considering time stretching out sideways, each moment has an infinite possibility of God, an eternal depth in itself. We liked this and it was key to our thinking that stillness will be the most important theme for our session. Thanks to Liza for the eternal moment phrase.
We also discussed our smallness: it can be liberating to realise how tiny we each are, but it can be scary too. We liked the Lamb song “small” that explores this. We thought there could be mileage in the face the scale idea.
We had several other ideas including:
- showing videos of “still life in motion” to bring the outside (it’s a cathedral to us) into the venue.
- turning up a recording of chitter-chatter (from a pub? or recorded internal monologues?) as people come in — so they won’t realise it’s not them making the din, then cut it off suddenly as our start, instantly bringing a sense of space and quiet (although greenbelt is never really quiet!).
Finally we started work on a structure:
- open with our un-noticed sound-scape creschendo.
- call & response
- wisdom (gospel readings)
- space for personal reflection
- mingling improvisation
- sacred act (poss part of mingling)
- close, blessing, going out.
So look out for our next discussions (Thurs 4 June at community meal, and Sunday 7 June in cafe after Eucharist). And we’d love to hear from everyone on the ideas so far.
Greenbelt 2009: Standing in the long now
Greenbelt has become an important beat in the rhythm of mayBe’s life and we’ve been invited to contribute again this year.
We have a new forms slot again, this time Saturday 7pm. We’ll also be doing something else, but the powers that be have yet to tell us what — we hope to lead another spontaneous worship like last year’s umberella-covered, arty gathering.
Need to start planning what we’ll do. If you’re planning on coming, do let Rich know ASAP.
mayBe @Greenbelt: way of the sun
Thanks everyone for contributions to the Greenbelt ideas conversation.
Our thing in the New Forms cafe [3pm Saturday] will be
And we have been asked to do a ’spontaneous act of worship’…
Looking forward to it already… [Ian 12/6/08]
mayBe at Greenbelt Festival 2007
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beer n hymns |
• Had a great refreshing time at the festival. Saw some excellent performance art from Peterson Toscano, relived my teenage years watching ‘Return to the Forbidden Planet’ and got some inspiration and fluffy feelings from the ‘Embodied Mysticism’ seminar on body prayers and meditation ideas. After each learning filled day I was always disappointed to find my mayBe companions consuming the sinner’s beverage in the Jesus Arms. They’d probably been there all day…. Thanks to all!!!Jim [29.8.07]
• Highlights from Greenbelt – sharing the mayBe journey and eucharist with others, beautiful sunshine, star gazing, Ian Archer, tent side conversations and surprisingly good night time sleeping – thanks Jim for the earplugs!! Andrea [29.8.07]
• I had a brilliant weekend, and really enjoyed being part of mayBe’s small (but lovely!) contribution. Some highlights for me off the top of my head were… -beer and hymns (a marriage made in heaven!) -duke special and his amazing band -lovely lovely iain archer -star gazing and chatting with my lil’ sis jo outside the performance cafe to the sound of sarah masen – we each saw a shooting star! -many happy cups of tea at the tiny tea tent. Pace bene! Cara x [28.8.07]
• Our highlight was meeting Becky’s friends and hearing about Urban Vision and starting to think about how we can live difference makingly in Chalgrove… Sam [28.8.07]
• beautiful day, beautiful weekend! very happy times at the festival – thanks everyone for your all your hard work, enthusiasm and imagination which enabled the mayBe eucharist to take shape – I think it went really well and that it seemed to be well received and participated-in by many of the fellow travellers who joined us, as well as for us. Perhaps we can take that sense of the closeness of God, as near to us as breathing, with us into this new week… pace bene Ianx [28.8.07]
• My highlight? Apart from talk with Jenny and Justin? Billy Bragg, mayBe, Billy Bragg’s talk….sorry I missed Graham Cray’s talk on ‘working for the church while my family dies’ (an Arcade Fire lyric) and also the contributors patio! Dave [28.8.07]
