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.
Here's how it will be billed:
Our fist planning scribbles
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!).
- 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.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009 - 8:34pm