a soggy morning

it is six o'clock in the morning and by this time tomorrow morning i will be thinking about packing and it is raining ... greenbelt and rain is not a good thing ... all those camping have a kind of resolve about them all day ... everyone looks soggy and windswept in the morning and it is really hard to work when you know if the sun would only shine everyone would have smiles on their faces and the site would look so much better ... still there are some things we can't control

i have to go shopping this morning ... run around picking up all those bits and pieces we need ... i leave it until the last day because if i try to do it earlier there is always something else and i end up going out again anyway ... there is of course the fear that you won't be able to find what you want

my last task is to compile some song lyrics and poems into a powerpoint presentation ... i am not going to do a sales talk or anything ... we use it to project onto a wall and scroll the text like film credits ... white text on black background so the words are all lit up ... i suspect that to do it properly i should be using some fancy software that gives me more control but it is very expensive so as with most things we will have to make do ... but the limitations are that you don't have much control over the speed and how things behave so it is a question of fiddling for a very long time to get it the best i can ... hopefully i will find time to finish it between now and sunday afternoon when we need it ... i am doing a basic one then tweaking it so if i really had to it could be used at any stage ... but the perfectionist in me always wants to slightly improve it so i spend ages trying out different stuff and watching the same stuff scroll before my eyes trying to decide which looks better

the idea of the service is to try and take the theme of the festival 'freedom bound' and focus on those that we would like to be bound for freedom ... at holy joes we dabble with alternative worship ... this is a label in the uk that seems to be applied to any worship service that incudes a slide projector and some groovy music ... sorry that was a little cynical ... but as one of the orginators of the genre it feels like we are watching mainstream church claim the style and sanitise it ... anyway a discussion for another day

we have done many services over the years and the last few years we developed a thing called meta::morphic ... if you think art gallery with a variety of things presented that you walk around and some you observe and others you do things ... the orginal concept was about trying to remove all the layers between a person and God ... so no preacher ...no sermon ...no communal singing ... no service sheet .... just allowing people to walk around and interact as and when they feel they want to ... for some it is a quick glance around and leave ...for others it is a long time engrossed in one or other of the exhibts .... another person may pick a few things but not connect with other things ... it seemed to work and whenever we do it people seem to like it a lot ... the whole thing has a background wash of music chosen by people who have picked a song that inspires them ... and lit with candles everywhere

anyway this year we wanted to experiment a little ...otherwise we get bored ... so we have eventually ended up at a very simple sparse meta::morphic communion ... low tables covered with white cloths ... some bread and wine and candles on each table ... lyrics/prose/poems and quotes all projected onto walls instrumental music washing the room (no lyrics to distract) and people sitting praying and having communion with each other ... with strangers and friends ... focusing on people in their lives and community who are dealing with abuse or pain or suffering ... placing before God and letting his love get involved ... nothing else ... no big plan

it runs for two hours ... and we have no idea if it will work ... thats the problem with experiments like this we have no idea what will happen until we put it in front of an audience ... we shall see

guess i better get on with it ... or else it will end up a little more empty than we first planned :)