Greenbelt Festival 2011 looks great

It took me just over 20 years to get to the Greenbelt Festival [now at Cheltenham Racecourse] when I made it in 2008. It was a bittersweet experience because it was everything I expected and more and so I've watched and read about it each year since and seen our exploration groups and wished I was joining them. For the trip to London? The visits to interesting communities engaging in contextual mission? Well, that's part of it.... but it's actually because it's a space and a community of people 'who get it' and whose creativity, experimentation, faithfulness, humanity and story are just so inspirational and challenging at the same time!!
The Festival and each of the groups we've visited in recent years are part of those 'thin places' where our awareness of God and our lives touch and where the artificial gap between the secular and the sacred is challenged and breaks.

My trip was full on for a number of reasons and 2008 was an eventful year besides...
It's August bank holiday weekend and a bunch of aussies from Victoria are there experiencing the wonder that is Greenbelt and you can check out the action here and here.

This is an aweful year [energy sapping, boring, de-energising, uncertain etc] counting down to the end of my current role and thoughts and memories of that 2008 trip and al the amazing things I saw and heard about still fuels my thinking and energy for mission, creative endeavour and 'shaping the future.'

Wonder whose playing mainstage in 2012?

I'm also aware that I'm writing these thoughts in a public forum... so trust me it's edited and restrained... but mostly [for me] blogging is one aspect of me processing thoughts and happenings and moving forward [some might call it venting, I think I'm more varied than that] anyhow... no need to respond because I really write for me and anyone finding this in anyway interesting. well that's a bonus... tomorrow is another day!! I will get my camera out tomorrow and express my own creative side and that'll be a nice break!!