Fifty: A Festival Lexicon
Do y’all know about Greenbelt? I don’t want to get too dramatic about it, but I’d say it saved my life a little over thirty years ago. I heard tell of it through Nick Barre just before I journeyed with Lee Smithey over to Newcastle, Northern Ireland to live and work at the Green Hill YMCA. Lee and I made our way over to it and nothing’s been the same since.
It’s where I met Henri Nouwen and Steve Stockman and Iain Archer and Martin Wroe. Come to think of it, it’s also where I met Ric Hordinski and Karin Berquist and Linford Detweiler and Bruce Cockburn. This was all in one long weekend in 1992. Walter Wink and Bob Geldof and Cliff Richard were also in attendance, but I don’t think I ever met them properly.
I say all this to say that I’m part of a book project commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of this righteous effort. I am among the fifty folks who offer an entry in the artifact described here. I urge you to watch the video and consider ordering one or two or a whole bunch, but I’ll also transcribe a bit of what Chine McDonald has to say in her piece:
The place where faith, arts and justice meet will by its nature be political; concerned with bringing about change; committed to making a difference, holding up a mirror to the powers that be. As Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has famously said: “Everything is art. Everything is politics.” Nothing escapes the realms of the political. This is why those that disproportionately hold power for themselves fear the change when people are shaken out of the slumber of inaction because of music and poetry and dance. as Walter Brueggemann writes in The Prophetic Imagination: “Every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist. It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination.”
People who know me well will hear an awful lot of my drift here. I picked it up at Greenbelt. Yes, I’d already seen Do The Right Thing and met Peter Case and was beginning to think with more discernment concerning my own context, but Greenbelt locked it all in. I try to carry it with me everywhere I go. Greenbelt is my people. Greenbelt is, in so many ways, the witness by which I measure my own.
So anyway, Pádraig Ó Tuama and Kate Bottley and Rowan Williams and Brian McLaren are in there too. I’m honored beyond belief to have my words in the volume alongside theirs. I could talk about Greenbelt all day and will be happy to answer any questions you have.
Be the Greenbelt you want to see in the world.
Movements may begin with changes in different places that then stretch out to connect with each other. I had never heard of Greenbelt until now, but now i know it was one of those places that made a clearing for the movement we see all around us now.
I learned about Greenbelt about 10 days ago via a reference in Bruce Cockburn's bio (needed a hymn which included a rocket launcher). My current tribe does backflips in regard to instrumental music's proper role in Christian worship (none, apparently); the "pretext" being that the early church never psallo-ed with a psallo, allegedly (exegesis with a predetermined result makes for tricky theology). The whole prophetic-harp-exorcism theme [the hand of man calling the hand of God prayer-ritual] is never mentioned in the discussions (of a fellowship with many members of secret societies with their own unrenounced "rival deities"). Anyway, ethnomusicology and church music in a world of audio learners and nonliterate disciples mean psalms, hymns, and spiritual odes (as well as ASLV gospels) are still harnessing energy from the heaven dimensions. Prophesy should not be despised though well discerned -- often in communal gatherings (see also Scottish holy fairs and American revivalism, including Cane Ridge).
PS if I assert this is all metaphor can I still get tenure?