Greenbelt 2011 - Accord - Brain McLaren - Jim Cotter

After a very enjoyable mug of tea in the sunshine Sunday evening began in true Anglican style with Choral Evensong. It was sung for us by Accord who promised Evensong with a twist - if you come expecting this to be some kind of radical in your face re rendering then you would have been somewhat disappointed.  The main twist was that the Magnificat was sung with words other than Crammer's and to the tune of Amazing Grace.  The other twist was the Choir members were conducting the service in its entirety, which included one of them giving a Provisional Blessing at the end.  There isn't anything wrong with that as such, Evensong can and often is conducted by members of the Laity, but the lack of someone acting as a minister separate from the Choir blurred the boundary between Divine Service and a Concert.  Also given that there was a small handful of Priests there (and that is just the ones known personally to me) it seems a missed opportunity to have given a Provisional Blessing rather than wheeling one of them out to give the Blessing.

After Evensong I went to hear Brian McLaren on Naked Spirituality - I am not sure exactly what I was expecting, perhaps a Christian retelling of Gok Wan's How to Look Good Naked. I arrived to to find the Big Top full to it 3200 capacity and not a lover of crowds I hovered at the edge and reversed judgement.  He began and it became clear what was on offer was a fairly straight forward reworking not of Gok Wan but of Fowler's stages of faith development, admittedly Brain was only going to give us 4 compared with Fowler's 7.  Also there didn't seem to be anything particular to commend the title 'Spiritual' and so half way through stage 1 I left.

Jim Cotter has produced a collection of RS Thomas's poems accompanied with a DVD in which Jim reads the poems against the backdrop of the places RS Thomas was writing about. The session, which was a viewing of parts of the DVD, was hosted by Jim's two collaborators in the project as Jim himself was unable to attend due to ill health - clearly a major disappointment for many there who hoped the Venerable Cotter's shadow might fall across them. There was a gentleness about the coming together of RS Thomas' words and the images of the Llyn - images of the Llyn, as noted in the DVD, in uncharacteristically sunny and tranquil moments.  Missing the wildness of the land you also tended to miss the ragged layer of RS's poetry.  He is a complex man and his place in Welsh literary and cultural life is contested, encounters with RS Thomas should never be simple - you have to contend with the man, with the words, with those who claim him as a hero and those who denounce his as the epitome of every cultural wrong. I would need to spend more time with Jim's collection to really find if it is part of the complex journey.