Molten Meditation

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts and prayers over this our third Greenbelt weekend - we had another amazing time. Unfortunately my camera broke and so the pictures are a bit sporadic - if anyone has any more please send them in!
Alfie is a toddler now and so spends a lot less time snoozing in the buggy - in fact if he's awake then he's in need of constant attention. This is great for me as i don't often get to spend such a concentrated amount of time with him but it did mean that what we could go along to was fairly limited.

The weather was a bit up and down but there was certainly not enough rain to dampen our spirits. We pitched up on the Thursday night this time and we able to get our tents up in the centre bit, a couple of hundred yards from the main festival village which was wonderful. Previous years we've been in the main camping field with the regular punters about a mile away. It quickly filled up around us.

Sadly the Krogs were not with us this year but instead we'd enlisted the help of the sprawling Povey family who were a huge help in the preparation, setting up and handing out flyers and stuff.

Molten Meditation's contribution came in four parts:

"The Charismatic Contemplation Experiment"

Our snappily entitled first session was 6pm Friday evening in the "New Forms" venue. This is the coolest venue at the festival where all the alternative and experimental worship groups express themselves to God and the festival crowd. It's full of bean bags and cushions and the whole venue is surrounded by video screens onto which i can project my visualisations - it's a fabulous venue. The 6pm slot was a bit frustrating as most of the punters would still be setting up their tents and unlikely to have got to grips with the unfathomable program by then - undeterred we set out Friday afternoon armed with plastic flowers and flyers and invited anyone we could find. We'd also brought along the sign Andy made for us last year and used that as an artistic bit of advertising.

My desire was to bring together elements from both the charismatic and contemplative traditions to see whether open, spirit led, contributive worship could spring from a contemplative, meditative environment. Much of the criticism leveled at "charismatic worship" is to do with emotional manipulation and people being whipped into some sort of frenzy which is then passed off as the work of the Holy Spirit - I wanted to provide a place where people could bring their spiritual offerings whether that's prayer or prophecy, words or tongues, whatever God laid on their hearts, without the need of an hours singing to get you going. A gentle place, a soft place, a place where we could hear from God and meditate on his word.

So, did the experiment work? Not exactly, but I think that's a lot less important than I originally thought. During the session there was certainly no "outpouring" but one guy did come up - he had a bit of a crazy man shuffle to him that made me think "oh crikey - what's going to happen now" and in my lack of faith I hadn't put out a microphone or anything. Nonetheless he leaned into my mic and spoke in tongues really softly and beautifully, and then interpreted himself saying about peace and how God's peace is such food for the soul - even through my nervousness it was very lovely. Unfortunately no one else could hear him.

We had a practice session the week before with a handful of people from my church and they did bring a bit more, although still not a lot and I think perhaps there was a flaw in my thinking. The environment I'm creating with the music, the visuals, the relaxation, the meditations is simply not conducive to people speaking out loud. It turns you inward, looking to connect with God's spirit within, dwelling in a place of silent communion (as it were), so then to try to externalise that is really quite difficult. I think there's definitely a place for contribution and i am certain that God speaks to people in these sessions but encouraging people forward in the midst of that environment is not the way to do it. Far better perhaps to allow for discussion at the end of the session, so people can share their thoughts or their experiences with each other. Ultimately peoples spirituality and connection with God is their own and how that's expressed is much less important than the expression itself.

I think what was really behind this "Charismatic Contemplation Experiment" was my desire to bring a meditative style of worship to people who hadn't encountered it before. Typically charismatic "free" churches are suspicious of this kind of approach to worship - i often encounter comments such as "new age" or "transcendental" or "ritualistic nonsense" when in fact this is very biblical and can be an enormously refreshing way to spend time with God. However, getting these people to come in the first place is quite a struggle and i hoped the title would be a help. Was it? I have no idea, but a good few people turned up, got some good comments and CD's were sold so that's all very positive.

The second contribution was back in the "Soul Space", our regular slot in the contemplative venue. This was Friday night again but at the more attractive time of 10pm and billed as simply "Music and Scripture for Full Immersion". We had over 100 people come along and again got some good comments and one very interesting one about inclusive language. It was in reference to the part in the Beatitudes where peacemakers will be called "sons of God" and the comment was that I should consider using "children of God" instead so not to exclude women. I am absolutely in favour of using inclusive language and have since changed the recording to reflect that. However I should also say that there are good reasons why "sons" is perhaps a better word in this instance, in the context of first century Palestine, but I completely understand the need to ensure no one feels left out in the context of today's culture.  

Our third contribution was a "Meditation Station", like we did last year up in the Soul Space, but this time it was a bit more tastefully presented with sun flowers following the style of the new CD cover. Unfortunately I don't have a picture (if anyone else does please send it in!) but it was basically a low table with a computer screen on it and two pairs of headphones. People could sit in front and listen to three meditations with visuals using a simple menu. I'm told that it was very well used over the weekend which is marvellous to hear.   
       
Our final slot was as part of the Proost birthday party. Proost are an online collection of some of the most interesting, creative and contemplative worship resources available. We love being a part of it. The idea is that you pay a subscription to the site and you'll get access to all the resources they have and all new content which is added every month. There's music, film, animation, liturgy, go check it out - www.proost.co.uk

I was only doing a quick spot amongst other performers and was on first which was really helpful for my setup. Although we had to wait for my childhood hero Garth Hewitt to amble off the stage before we could start plugging things in. In the end I had about 8 minutes which was enough and highlights how much more adaptable i am when I'm playing live rather than just putting on pre-recorded tracks as i have in past events. I felt that if i wanted to respond to the leading of the Spirit then i really needed to be performing the music - although as one person I couldn't play everything. So, the music was broken down into loops which were arranged in a piece of software called Ableton Live running on a laptop. Various selections of loops are triggered by a foot switch which enables me to step through musical passages as quickly or slowly as I like - while playing guitar over the top and reading the verses. The laptop also sent the visualisations from DVD to the projector. This setup enables me to lengthen or shorten the meditation as I like and change the dynamics of how it evolves. I also had a keyboard controller with faders that could control the volume of various tracks so i could fade bits in and out. It made things more complicated but it also gave me much more control over each session and it felt "live" and interactive - definitely a better way of doing it.

After I finished my slot and hurried off with my gear this bloke, who looked an awful lot like Johnny Lydon, came over and asked if I could play reggae - not exactly the sort of comment I was expecting! I murmured something about liking a bit of dub so he asked me if I would play guitar for him - he's a left handed guitarist and no could find him a left handed guitar - so he quickly told me the two chords to play and after a couple of glasses of cava we were on. He was brilliant and I just about kept it together. It was a real special moment for me - spontaneous and spirit filled in an unexpected form - marvellous. Apparently Barry Taylor is a bit famous, he's an author, musician, pastor of a church in Santa Monica and became a Christian when he was a roadie on the AC/DC Highway to Hell tour :)  

Other Highlights.

Mixed in a lot of stuff over the weekend.

The best inspirational speakers for me were:

Brian McLaren - He has the most unexciting style - gentle, softly spoken, but talks with such honesty and warmth about how to rediscover church as a lifestyle, as a "way" as opposed to a system of belief. I've read most of his books and have enjoyed witnessing his journey from being a disillusioned pastor to his rediscovery of a much larger world of God. He did a talk on "naked prayer" based on the Lord's Prayer that was simply beautiful.

Pete Rollins - Founder member of Ikon a strange church that emerged in Belfast. He's the most extraordinary thinker/theologian/philosopher whose seminars leave your head feeling like it's been broken open and your brain massaged until it becomes twice the size. His book "How (not) to speak to God" is one of my all time favourites.

Philip Yancey - Listening to this guy makes you wonder why the regular evangelical church is so messed up. He laid out simple thoughts on church and faith that if only we grasped a little bit would revolutionise our approach. This is normal, regular church doctrine and belief that seems so lost in the day-to-day running of church.

Hard Rain - there was an exhibition of photographs from the Hard Rain Project where a guy had taken the lyrics from Bob Dylans song and matched them to photographs from around the world about the state of the planet. Strangely prophetic and an important reminder that there's an awful lot of mess out there.
www.hardrainproject.com

The sunday morning communion.

Sunday Communion - better than last year (which was great) they had it in the afternoon for the first time which seemed like a good idea. It's always amazing to sit in a crowd of 10,000 (or whatever) people - I find it very moving. There was this "Rising Sun" theme (despite the rain) that included songs and people dancing and a big procession - the problem is that you really can't see what's going on. The music was great, the sermon by some lady from the other side of the world was really good. We did lots of things with ribbons and prayed for one another and then took communion. I love it! They just really need to keep it simple and fairly short :)

Lots of other good stuff clashed with my sessions like Ikon's "Evandalism" and York's "Visions" and we had a much more active boy to look after so we didn't get to see as much stuff as we'd hoped - but it was all good. Even saw a couple of bands including Seth Lakeman and some guy from Busted :)

All in all a great time - I loved contributing, loved being there, loved camping with Maria and Alfie and together with Andy, Caroline and all their kids - it's not a simple thing - and I'd really like to keep on doing it, if they'll have me.