Standing in the long now

Realising that I haven't blogged in many months I thought I'd give a summary of the Greenbelt festival, which I returned from yesterday. It is an annual Christian arts and music festival held at Cheltenham racecourse. I enjoyed music by Duke Special, Athlete, Foreign Slippers and Sixpence None the Richer and talks by John Bell and Earth Abbey (about permaculture) - sadly no Rob Bell though!

The theme for Greenbelt this year was 'Standing in the long now', and I include an excerpt from a reflection on this theme:

"In an age of 'do-it-now' and the instant decision, when waiting times are always coming down and the destination always trumps the journey, the idea of 'the long now' is deeply resonant for people of faith. In our traditions we keep alive the stories of iconic figures from past millennia because we know they will inspire us in bringing change to the present one. We mark a season of advent, consciously waiting for hope to be born and some kind of culmination of history. We recite a C4th creed which 'looks for the world to come' but subconsciously admit that it's turning out to be a pretty long now when after seventeen centuries it often seems no closer.

So what does it mean to stand in this long now? To become long-sighted? To plan for a present we may never experience, to long for a world we may have left before it arrives. What would it be like if gratification was not instant and the waiting had not been taken out of the wanting.

Would a credit-crunch take on a different perspective?

Would a painting or a piece of music take on another kind of value?

And how about a career? Could that find itself in competition from something as old-fashioned as a 'vocation'?"

(Martin Wroe, http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/festival/2009/theme)

This idea of living slowly, with care for the planet and with enjoyment of God's creation is always prevalent in Greenbelt's attitude and the nature of the artists and speakers it invites. I went to several literature-based talks, all of which you should be able to download from Greenbelt's website, should you be interested. The first was Suzanne Bray speaking on 'Rooted in the living word'. Suzanne works at l'Universite Catholique de Lille, and is the reason I was able to spend some time there in my gap year. Her main focus is on British Christian writers of the early 20th century, such as C.S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers. She spoke on the literary heritage which all English writers carry, often without realising it, and the fact that it is rooted in at least 14 centuries of Christian influence in writing. Through a whistle-stop tour of a set of extracts from each century (some of which I had the privilege of reading aloud) she illustrated this to fascinating effect, from 12th century Arthurian legends, to Chaucer, to Shakespeare and Milton, to Austen, to Tolkien.

Straight after this was Andrew Tate, a lecturer at the University of Lancaster, who I heard speak on 'Epic narratives' - their history and application particularly through Dante's Inferno, Milton's Paradise Lost and Pullman's His Dark Materials. He interestingly suggested that, through using an inherently Christian story/plotline Pullman is "Of God's party without knowing it", among other things. I was glad to have studied Paradise Lost this year, otherwise I think I might have been a bit lost.

Later on I went to see Jasper Fforde, who I have previously recommended, speak about his writing. He was very amusing, and I was encouraged at his manner of speaking - rushing over his words, getting things tangled up, as I know this is the way I speak! He was very matter-of-fact about the writing process and evidently enjoys his own writing immensely. He read an extract from his forthcoming novel Shades of Grey which promises to be full of fun as usual, although not set in what he calls his "Nextian universe".

My last literary event of Greenbelt was Michael Ward, who has recently become fairly famous for his book Planet Narnia. The BBC made a documentary about it over Easter, The Narnia Code, which I saw and was interested by. His basic theory is that the Narnia books are not, as has been thought by many, full of chaos and confusion but that they are in fact held together by a thread of thought. This is that each of the seven books is based around the imagery of one of the seven planets in the medieval view of the cosmos - a line from a Lewis poem about Jupiter ("Winter passed and guilt forgiven") made him think of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and he has linked up the other books with other planets accordingly. It's an interesting theory, although not without problems (for example, some imagery is threaded through the whole series rather than being confined to one book only). I would like to read Planet Narnia itself but refuse to pay for a hard back copy! I think I'll look for it in a library...

I was going to add more thoughts about some other things I've been reading but perhaps I will save it for another time as I've rambled (again!). However I will say that I watched the new ITV production of Wuthering Heights recently, and am half way through re-reading it. The more I read it, the more I appreciate what a strange, individual book it is - I don't think I've ever read anything quite like it, and perhaps I'll post some thoughts up another time as it really is one of my favourite books. Suffice to say that I think the new adaptation to be quite good - in general it is in the spirit of the book. However I felt they had tried to make Cathy and Heathcliff too nice - much nicer than they are on page, in any case. I was glad to see the presence of Nelly, who is often left out from the action though she is quite important. Mr Lockwood, the novel's narrator, is - as usual - absent, perhaps understandably. I do think, though, that he is important as he is, like us, an outsider to the main action of the novel and thus stands out because he has a different perception of what is 'normal' in society to how the Earnshaws and Lintons live. Lockwood plays the reader to an extent - we too have no connection with the strange events of the novel (for they are strange). I could go on, but won't. One final reservation about this adaptation is that it is probably quite confusing for someone who's never read the novel - I think the way it's been split up is meant to help in understand what can be quite a contorted storyline but I'm not sure it does.