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!

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.

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!

Here’s the plan. Bits that need community members to take forward are »in bold«.

Throughout / venue

• Need decorations. Drapes again? (”Freedom” “Fear” “Micro” “Macro” “Eternal”…) »creative types step on up!«
• Need suitable sound track »got good tunes?«
• Projections: “still life in motion” »film the outside to bring it in« slow zoom on tiny candle? other pictures? »your ideas here!«

Opening/arrival

• Crowd voices sound-scape volume increases as more people come in, then shut it off suddenly to signal the start; relative stillness. »someone to record pub/cafe sounds«
  
• How to welcome people at the door?»ideas« Give people a hazelnut (in its shell — you’ll see why later)? Hand out sheets?

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]
  • stillness in the eternal moment
  • smallness/held-ness; hope of moving from fear to freedom in this.
• »someone to write«

Call & response

• Use our Christ is coming – keeping the rhythm of our regular community life. »someone to adapt«
• »words on sheets? projections? both? Needs preparation«

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, “Before the world was created, the Word already existed”.)
• 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.”

Reflection space

• Community voice introduces. »fancy writing this?«
• Look at your hazelnut for 5 minutes a la Rach’s improvisation with the clover leaves we did last Sunday?
• Use Lamb song “Small” (YouTube video)?
• Hear different voices expressing different feelings about being small? Freedom / fear? »would this work here? earlier?«

Mingling/improvisation

• Community voice encourages people to share their reflections with a person near them.
• Needs to be done right: not cringy, not difficult (”turn to the stranger next to you and tell them something really hard in your life..”) – you know the sort of thing we normally do well fairly naturally. »could you do this?«
  
• Provides relief for people who like to share after all that reflection!

Sacred act

• Invite everyone to [optionally] move to put their hazelnut in some sort of pattern (a line? a snake? a circle? circles? use ribbon to mark out something?) »want to take this on?«
• symbolism: you are held; you have a place in God’s eternity.
• visually nice.

Close

• blessing »someone to write/find« »«
• invite people to find their nut and take it with! [fun]?
• keep in touch: cards with mayBe details on? »design/print them« (use moo.com?)
• website / twitter / email / phone nos on projections.
• community members clearly around to be chatted to. »make badges like Kate’s last year?«

So what do you think? Please comment below, or email the community and email me (Rich) if you’re interested in taking any of this forward.

Next chat: mayBe weekend away.

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.

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.

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.

• Greenbelt’s website

Thanks everyone for contributions to the Greenbelt ideas conversation.

Our thing in the New Forms cafe [3pm Saturday] will be way of the sun: a sacramental journey in darkness and light, following in the way, spirit and presence of Jesus of the Gospels.

And we have been asked to do a ’spontaneous act of worship’…

way of the sun: improvised: a flashmob event – an orientation towards Jesus the So

Looking forward to it already… [Ian 12/6/08]