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Moseley Chimes
October 2008
This year 17 of us from the benefice headed as a group to the Greenbelt Arts Festival which is held annually on Cheltenham racecourse over the August bank holiday weekend. The festival organisers showed a fine sense of irony this year setting the theme of a damp and chilly weekend as ‘Rising Sun’ — if only!
As usual there was a bewildering choice of activities each day from 6am dawn worship, through to 11 pm night prayer. However don't be fooled into thinking the weekend is all about worship (although you could wander from one type of worship to the next all day); there's so much more to do from talks about theology, the environment or music; panel discussions; interfaith discussions; craft making activities and more varieties of music than my ears could cope with. Should you get totally overwhelmed by all the choice, there is the option of Soul Space, a chilled out room overlooking the racecourse reserved for prayer, meditation, drawing or just resting weary bones. Soul Space is also a perfect location for getting a real sense of just how big the festival is both in terms of the number of tents and the volume of people.
Everyone seems to have enjoyed the weekend in spite of the weather with plenty of chatter at the end of the day about different events and what was looking good for the following day. If you want to know more about what happened, see the pictures or download copies of the talks please go to www.greenbelt.org.uk/.
Bizarre sight of the weekend: Santa Claus pulling pints at the Jesus Arms (well he has to work somewhere on the other 364 days to make ends meet). Thought of the weekend taken from a Church Urban Fund presentation: If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.