Rising Sun sets

So the sun has set on Greenbelt again for another year. I had a fabulous time hanging out with our youth council, with young people from the diocese leading some fantastic worship, with young (and not so young!) people from my old parish, with youth work types on the youthwork matters stall and with all those people who you bump into by chance in a Greenbelt way. Notable was the soap opera-style coincidence of coming out of the Church Times tent with my new Dave Walker book and Cartoon Church calendar for the office to bump right into Dave himself! I promise he wasn't just hanging around watching how the pile of his books was reducing.


So what did I get up to? To be honest there weren't as many talks that really caught my imagination as last time I was there (2005) Jenny Baker was great (despite gales trying to steal her notes), Brian Maclaren was excellent on the subject of praying ina vulnerbale open way and John Bell, as always, was a joy to listen to on the subject of miracles. I also popped along to see Jon Birch of ASBOJesus who was very funny but rather short (in the time sense - only half an hour) pictured here (my endeavours to get a good pic were somewhat hampered by the guy in the hat!)

The overall experience for me was a mix of great chilling (at the proost lounge, in the blue hour with safespace, at blessed's funky mass - with me in three of the pics on Simon's site) and some fab music (Taize, Finchley, Jose Gonzalez, Yvonne Lyon, Beth Rowley, MxPx etc) I went to far more music than I did last time. My proudest moment had to be joining St the young people of St Barnabas for their youthmass which was truly awesome. There was a little bit of, well lets call them teething trouble, at the venue but all came right in the end and young person who came along to it was clearly blown away by the experience which made it all even better!



I still failed to get to any actual art workshops which I REALLY meant to do this year... next time... but I did do a bit of drawing inspired by some of the talks.

For me I think the overall sense was of gentle encouragement. Yvonne Lyon's songs Walk in the Rain and Down to the River plus Here Comes the Sun at the main eucharist and stuff from the talks all came together in the phrase "Here comes the Sun... it's alright"

WDYC internal!

Ok so this is really just for the Diocesan Youth Council...

Alice said on the forum:
"i found some vidios and didnt know what you would think they could be played inbetween the bands or maybe somewhere else. there off a website called www.lookingforgod.com but i got this version off you tube
the fathers love letter


an interviw with god


there are different versions

Ode(ar!) to Joy

I promise I was looking for some useful resources for youthwork on youtube when I found this:

I love Beaker!

Even better news is that this is just one of several official muppet pages now on youtube.

Enjoy!

Joy in Sadness

It must be the hopeless historian in me that is so VERY excited at the news that the Codex Sinaiticus is now available online. I can be hip and trendy at times but then my inner geek just shows through when I see enlargements of parchment damage described as being on "Quire 78, folio 6 recto!" and you can zoom right in on the text and it highlights the individual words for you (this is handy as Greek texts of the time looked basically like wordsearches with no punctuation or even spaces!)

Geeky comments aside...

This is basically the oldest edition of the "Bible" roughly as we know it today dating back to the mid fourth century. It's a book (codex - i.e. no scrolls) of the gospels and most of the Greek translation of the Old Testament (which was originally in Hebrew in the majority though with some Greek) . Basically this text shows that the Bible was formed pretty early and you can SEE IT! Wow!

Moping and some cheering up

As I had hoped to be going to Taize today but I'm not... I'm a little mopey. Especially as apparently there are some etchings by Fr Eric on display (and no doubt for sale) in the exposition. Fr Eric who died last year was one of the very early brothers who really epitomised the coming together of men of great gifts. It was he who designed the beautiful glass windows which adorn the church at Taize and so many of the other beautiful simple things.

It's not just for me that I wish I were going today but for the people I would have been with there. One of the teenagers from my old parish who was there throughout my youth ministry and grew with me in my role is going for the first time and I would so love to have travelled with her as she discovered that amazing place. Instead, those I have travelled with there before are travelling with her and my thoughts and prayers will be in Taize for the next week even as I sit in lots of different meetings here.


Now for the cheering up bit... this did make me lol! Thanks Chris