Greenbelt - the view from the Death Star

Jaded post-evangelicals celebrate the end of religion

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Picture: Greenbelt Festival. The view from the Death Star.


The upliftment continues at Greenbelt

Not often discussed at Greenbelt

Greenbelt anti-pilgrimage

Disappointed at Greenbelt


AB note: The Greenbelt Festival takes place over four days each August Bank Holiday in the UK. In recent years it has been held in the west of England, at the Cheltenham National Hunt racecourse in Gloucestershire. It bills itself as an "arts, faith and justice festival" and has been running since 1974. The official Greenbelt Festival website can be found here.

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Disappointed at Greenbelt

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No longer young,
She makes her way
To the Greenbelt Festival
At Cheltenham Racecourse.

It is a sacred site;
Full of Celtic ghosts
And the sense of
Abiding loss.

In her mind
Is the hope
That she may be able
To rediscover
Something of the energy
Of spiritual fascism
Which so excited
Her internal juices
All those years ago
At university.

She is disappointed.

Plenty is happening
At Greenbelt,
But none of it has to do with
Energy,
Spiritual fascism,
Or internal fluidity.

What is happening
At Greenbelt
Is the spiritual self-congratulation
Of materialistic Middle England
As it tries to remember
What all the fuss was about
In the olden days
When angels seemed closer,
And Churchianity seemed more
Than just gender-posing,
And God existed
As a vital,
Immanent
And cosmetically expedient
Fashion accessory.

To be a survivor
At Greenbelt,
You have to be
An out-of-date
Post-evangelical.

And to be
An out-of-date
Post-evangelical,
You have to be
A card-carrying
Associate member
Of the human race
With a half-finished,
Unpublished
Thesis
On "God as Dolphin Mother."

It is all rather disappointing.

But, this year,
The intense quality
Of the disappointment
Is somehow
More gratifying
Than usual.






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The upliftment continues at Greenbelt

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The Reverend Clive Hopeley
Is a traditionalist
Bible wanker
In the Wycliffe Hall style.

He wishes he was
An African bishop,
But his lips
Are insufficiently rubbery,
And he has no
Convincing tribal affiliations
Outside the Chorleywood beltway.

Clive is an enthusiastic,
Full-gospel
Antihomosexualist;
He is in bed with the Catholics on this.
He believes
That all Anglican archbishops
Discovered having
Penetrative communion
On Hampstead Heath
With other Anglican bishops
Of the same liturgical persuasion
Should have their tonsures
Shaved off
With emery paper.

He makes his way
To the Greenbelt gathering
At Cheltenham
Hoping to discuss seventies
Cucumber sandwiches
With old Jesus Festival chums.

Clive is shocked:
Religion has been
Officially replaced
With spirituality,
Benign extraterrestrials are everywhere,
And the whole planet
Is about to ascend.

What price Churchianity now?


..............................................................



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Not often discussed at Greenbelt

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Greenbelt is
The gleeful annual festival
Of transcendental self-congratulation
For the omnipercipient;
A sort of
Trojan horsefair
For biblecreeps,
Pewbuttocks,
And armchair dogma potatoes
Who wish to widen
The horizons
Of their tunnel vision.

Greenbelt at Cheltenham
Is a lot like
Glastonbury at Glastonbury,
Except without the mud
And the noise:
Not only the scrotums are wrinkly.

But there is a tent
For the under-fifties,
With Chorleywood
Colouring books,
Old Testament
Legobricks
By Soul Survivor,
And black and white
Play-Doh
By the African bishops:
Pink not allowed.

Not often discussed
At Greenbelt
Is the fact that
Although post-religious
Christian spirituality
Walked out of church
Decades ago
And exercised its option
Of not returning,
Churchianity at Greenbelt
Is still a
Fashion accessory
Proudly sported by
A minority
Of the spiritually insecure -
Not all of them bishops.

The trousers at Wycliffe Hall
Might object to this
On the grounds that,
In Extremis,
The evangelical God
Must go through the motions
Of noticing the energy
Of the churchbore groupmind
As part of His
Non-negotiable covenant
Of universal condescension.

But it doesn't matter much.
Apparently, Wycliffe Hall
Is only an upgraded
Second division polytechnic
Playfully maintaining
A furtive,
Semi-detached relationship
With Oxford University.

No one of absolutely
Terrific quality
Goes there any more;
No-one of absolutely
Terrific quality
Teaches there any more;
These days it's just
A toothless ghetto
Of masticating misogynists
Chewing the crud
Of Christendom past
And keen
To climax
On Calvin.
Or so it is said
Around the wide acres
Of the Cheltenham racecourse.

But we must tolerate
The new fundamentalism,
And patronise
The Talibanisation
Of Anglican Churchianity
Because it is a legitimate
Voice of dissent
Among the sex-obsessed
Death odours
Of Western religion.
Or so it is suggested,
As a discussion starter,
Before the fish course.

But at Greenbelt
It's OK to be
Vegetarian
On these issues.

Indeed, after four days
Of earnest broad-mindedness
And agenda-free enquiry,
Life itself
Begins to feel
A bit like
A stuffed aubergine.


.................................................................



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Greenbelt anti-pilgrimage

http://alcuinbramerton.blogspot.co.uk/2006/08/greenbelt-anti-pilgrimage.html
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Once again,
Sid and Doris Heeohm-Kountie,
Balding and quasi-menopausal,
Find themselves
At the Greenbelt Festival,
In Cheltenham,
Gloucestershire.

Horses for courses.

It is the annual
Anti-pilgrimage
To yesterday's memories
Of what might have been
If the Holy Spirit
Had been a bit more streetwise
In the pre-mortgage,
Pre-wife-and-two-veg years,
Of fundamentalist
Spiritual formation.

What is the narrative here?
And what is the metanarrative?

The narrative is
That this is Cheltenham,
Not Middlesborough.

Nor is it Baghdad
Or Banda Aceh
Or Darfur
Or Kashmir
Or Lebanon
Or Ramallah.

We're not talking about
Engagement with real issues
On the ground, here;
We're talking about
Talking about
Not engaging with real issues
On the ground,
But not engaging
With empathy:
Christian social action through the arts
As directed from
The depths
Of the middle class armchair.

You need bottom at Greenbelt:
The narrative is radical.

The metanarrative, however,
Is less decisive.

At Greenbelt
You have to learn
To expect the expected.

The Greenbelt Festival
Is Tunbridge Wells
At prayer.

Hold the front page.

..............................................................



Greenbelt - the view from the Death Star

Disappointed at Greenbelt

Men make such hopeless priests

Why is church so serious?

More Norfolk koans

Index of blog contents