Oh, what a lovely war...

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A brilliant recent post about 9/11... Hauerwas on 9/11

Harvest Festival

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Saw the very wonderful Seth Lakeman perform last night at Harvest at Jimmy's, a new cosy and intimate festival of food and music at our customer Jimmy's Farm just down the road near Ipswich, Suffolk. Seth is a consumate professional and a seriously gifted musician - launching into his 'defining' solo fiddle and stompbox piece, Kitty Jay, as shown above. This piece illustrates that special place where musician and instrument become as one, a truly uplifting experience which I first witnessed when he headlined at the Greenbelt Festival in 2008. The band is excellent, too, with unfussy, solid drumming, great musical support on guitar from brother Sean, a new guy on guitar/mandolin/etc. and a very tall double bass player.

The event was excellent, too, bearing in mind this was the first time Jimmy's Farm had staged something of this magnitude. Another one of the irrepressible Jimmy Doherty's great ideas!

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Raising my Ebenezer...

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It's OK, I know we ALL know about Ebenezer's and that they are, well, a really good thing! A new start...?

Every so often you read someone's Blog in the morning and it cracks you up! And a substantial part of the joy is the resonance with where you are and where you've got to, so, folks, here it is, thanks to Revd Sam for sending me the link...

Comparative Religious Exam Paper 1 - Modern Christian Songs

Love it!

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Of All The People In All The World at Greenbelt...

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(Photographed by Samuel Banks)

This year at the Greenbelt Festival I made it a personal mission to check out more about physical art as well as the usual reasons I go. The latter are, primarily, for the edifying and inspiring talks, the music and, additionally, for all the 'chance' encounters whether they be with folk you already know or complete strangers.

One of the first and most talked about pieces of art, more of a complete and dynamic installation, was the display in the Christian Aid tent by Stan's Café entitiled 'Of All The People In All The World'. This inspiring and challenging piece is based on a grain of rice to represent a person and from there piles of rice to represent various juxtaposed worldwide statistics. Seeing this brings into stark focus our Western unbalanced World View. Click to expand the picture above to see the largest heap of rice represents all the people who have died in the Congo since the conflict began in 1998, the medium sized pile to the right is the number of civilian deaths in Iraq since 2001 and the adjacent relatively tiny pile represents all the forces' casualties in Afghanistan (again since 2001).

I also attended one of the panels discussing use of Art as part of Alternative Worship which was also inpsiring but I will return to that again as they dissed the use of music because of the conflicts that are raised between using traditional and modern worship stuff... the short answer is use pop music as well as hymns, see here!

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On a more general level the whole Greenbelt 2009 site had lots of complementary 'vibing' which just seemed more complete this year from the start of the festival along with some very accessible (in every sense of the word!) sculptures.

So, myth one about Greenbelt dispelled, GB is NOT just a music festival!

Standing in The Long Now... GB09

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Now back from an incredible Greenbelt Festival, feels like one of the best ever! I have loads of notes, books, audio files and musings to absorb and ponder, so may well return to this topic again soon! Meanwhile check out this excellent blog post from Steve Lawson that I feel captures some of the essence of GB.

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Under Grace...

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At the age of 70 the sculptor William E. deGarthe set about 'releasing' the figures contained in this massive block of granite (~100 feet wide) in his back yard in Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia. He named it the 'Fisherman's Monument' and reading from Right to Left (click to enlarge so you can check the detail) the piece is in three joined sections. The first section represents WORK, all about the fishermen and depicts them all working together. The second, middle part he called BOUNTY showing the riches of the sea and the final area is dominated by the angel figure, GRACE, the 'guardian angel watching over a fisherman and his family'.