Days Of Gratitude - Storms, Survival and Songs in The First Days of Greenbelt

Just two days of gratitude this time.  These days were the first half of the Greenbelt Festival.  I was very worried about going to that but it turned out that I loved it.

I'll probably blog about the festival properly at some point.  Blob Thing has been writing his own diary of the festival which unsurprisingly sticks quite closely to the kind of things I was doing.  He is writing many thousands of words about his experiences and his thoughts.  I'd have posted the whole festival as one gratitude post but I included so many pictures in the Sunday Assembly group that it would have made for a long blog post.  Ah yes, the Sunday Assembly group.  The person who began it points out that I am the one keeping it going.  I'm certainly the only one who posts daily in a group for daily posts.  There should be 125 posts a day.  There are not.  I plan on keeping up my posts until the end of the year even if by that time I am the only person who posts out of those 125 people.  It's good for me!

27^th August

Grateful to have got up early and travelled with Amanda to Greenbelt. It's a sort of Christian festival. But it's the sort of Christian festival for more progressive types and is a place where atheists are happy too.

Grateful that we successfully put the tent up before the over-the-top storms of the afternoon. Grateful that only tents and fences blew away, not people.

Grateful for story cubes, the first of the freebies, the forest church movement, and for the atmosphere in both the goth & steampunk eucharist (at Greenbelt even those can work together!) and the queer eucharist, totally packed out at 11.30pm. Also for the first night of post-midnight carrot cake.

28^th August

Grateful to have survived the night!

Grateful for something to do while steadfastly not going to the main communion service at which Justin Welby spoke and answered questions well.

Grateful for finding more freebies and lots of nice people to talk to.

 
Grateful that nothing is forever. At about 3.30 my brain gave up and much time was spent in a quiet haven tent. Grateful for quiet havens. For the two theatrical things we went to. Grateful to be with Amanda for as much as we wanted.

A late service run by people from Iona was too much. I sat at the back of the tent and gathered up a few leaves and twigs by me and then had to leave.

And then the melty, overwhelmedness, can't cope sensations left as I wandered in the dark and then left my normal character behind and spent an hour after midnight right at the front in the main stage dancing like crazy and attempting stage photos. Awesome.performance by Ella and The Blisters.

Sorry! I'm infodumping about some parts of Greenbelt. But it was a bloody great weekend and outside of normal Clare experience - my first ever festival. A minister I know in Sunderland was very surprised because "I look the festival type!" Grateful to have met him too - on the Sunderland walk for refugees this year.