GREENBELT 2011

BEYOND featured heavily at this year's Greenbelt Festival, with three events including the Communion Service. The chosen festival theme, Dreams of Home, was encountered powerfully by more than 10,000 people who turned up for the annual Sunday morning gathering. The multi-coloured ribbons being hoisted above the main stage and congregation formed an all-encompassing tabernacle that has quickly become one of the most iconic images from the festival to date. However, there have been plenty of reviews and commentaries in the post-festival media about Communion, so this space is largely to reflect on our two other 'events'.

THE GAME OF LIFE

For those of you who were at Greenbelt, you will have noticed Beyond's version of The Game of Life near the village green. Set out on the ground, the large triangular 'board' outlined a number of various paths through life. Beginning with birth, the player would flip a coin to determine whether their next move was to the right or the left, repeatedly flipping the coin on each square until the ultimate, inevitable death. Multiple possibilities ensured that each journey encountered was entirely unique and left completely to chance. Who was to say whether you'd grow up in a loving, church-going family or be adopted at the age of two? Would your later life follow a prescribed, stereotypical path given your earlier circumstances, or would you defy expectations and break the mould? The progressive stages through the game induced laughter, sorrow and surprise in equal measure as the unpredictable journey would flit between the serious and the trivial, the sincere and the flippant.

Players described their journeys afterwards with varied interpretations. Some found themselves able to sympathise with certain choices that different people make as a result of their circumstances. Turning to drugs, alcohol, Christianity, Islam, marriage or whatever it was, seemed wholly appropriate for some unsuspecting players, given their fictional background. For others, it was far more interesting to play again and again, comparing the divergent walks of life. Of course there were as many responses as there were players, but one profound uniting factor prevailed: that ultimately, they would all end up together at Home. Whatever Home is.

As you would expect, isolated images will never do the game justice as they are plucked from an all-important context. But for those of you who couldn't be at Greenbelt, below is a taster of what it involved. Our Saturday night event Unsafe Space will probably be best summed up in photos, so please check our next post. It will include 'post-secrets' from The Unsafe Safe.

AIR

Our previous events this summer have been based on the elemental themes of Fire, Earth and Water, so on Sunday we drew the series to a close with Air. Gathering together in the open space of Hove Park, we combined it with our annual meditative event on the Fingermaze. The grass labyrinth never fails to provide the ideal environment for peaceful and solitary contemplation whilst walking its winding contours.

As air is so essential and all encompassing, the evening offered a unique opportunity to explore the often over-looked mystery that it is, particularly as an example of God’s presence and life. In the Bible, the Hebrew word Ruah is used and translates as Spirit which, in its primary sense, means breath, air, wind. The phrase Spirit of God is reasonably rendered Breath of God or Wind of God. The word spirit has taken on a corporeal tone like the word ghost. Likely, if the Greek word Pneuma had been rendered breath or wind in English, then the Holy Spirit would not have developed so strongly in English as a Person part of the Trinitarian Godhead.

Each person entered the maze individually, listening to an MP3 player loaded with relaxing music with a subtle breath rising and falling behind it. The journey was a slow and thoughtful one, with various biblical references to spirit and breath placed on sticks in the ground at regular intervals throughout the path.

Upon reaching each station on the journey, visitors were encouraged to breath on a mirror fixed to each of the sticks above the text. The condensation from every exhalation temporarily revealed a picture on each of the mirrors, acting as a reminder of the biblical idea of divine breath imparted to humankind:

‘And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.’ Gen 2:7

Whether believing in the idea of divine breath or not, the tangible second-by-second interaction with the air around us was central to this experience, as people were left feeling like the air that we inhale was somehow more real than before. This breath-awareness was also emphasized by an audio track that followed on from the music – a reflection on how every breath expresses a deeper existence without us even noticing most of the time.

The walk through the labyrinth ultimately led to the centre, where a large green helium-filled balloon hovered, tethered only to a small basket filled with pots of bubble mixture. The word Ruah was written on each of these, to serve as a reminder for those who had connected with the experience. As each individual took one out of the basket, the weight holding the balloon down was lessened until, with a prayer, it was released high into the sky.

The surrounding air was soon filled with Ruah-inspired ‘miracle bubbles’, as we shared food and drink together on a beautiful warm evening.

WATER

As part of Brighton's Paddle Round the Pier festival, Beyond were asked for the second year in a row to put something together for a short 'Blessing of the Surf' before the day's activities began. So, on Sunday morning, a few of us gathered to commit the day to God using various poems and readings, including The Surfer's Code.

To compliment this meditative time we added a reflection pool, which remained on the seafront the entire day for passers by to stop and engage with. In the words of Albert Einstein, 'When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.' In light of this then, there were a series of questions written on mirrors under the water that hopefully provoked people into thinking about how they see themselves compared to how others might see them. Included was Jesus' famous quote from Luke chapter 9, when he asks 'Who do you say I am?' which encouraged us to broaden our horizons a little, considering how our views relate to God's.

God of the tides,

whose faithful rhythm

underlies our daily lives,

help us to keep on,

with courage and caring,

both when we are full and fulfilled

and in times of ebb and emptiness-

neap and spring tides in our lives-

within the ocean of your love.

Amen

Visitors were asked to contribute to the installation by writing what they had seen inside the pool, or thoughts of their own. Below is a selection of the response we had:

Our final event in this series is AIR, to be held on the 31st July at Hove Fingermaze. Hope to see you there!