Writer and Greenbelt trustee Martin Wroe spoke on his new book, The Gospel According To Everyone, at Greenbelt 2011. Featuring portraits by Meg Wroe, the book contains "twelve short stories of faith and doubt, of love and longing by people you may recognise from a church you've never been to". Here's Martin, with an introduction to the themes of the book…

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There are many good reasons not to go to church but one of the best arguments in favour is that you get to meet people who are not like you. People who do not share your interest in baton twirling or caravanning, your passion for real ale or classic vinyl LP's.

Over time you get to know people who would otherwise have remained strangers. Then, one morning – stumbling through an eccentric hymn, kneeling at the communion rail, sharing a fairly-traded coffee – you catch a glimpse of their secret life, a story you've never heard.

The spinster who gave up her child for adoption. The gay man, once married with kids,  now barred from contact with his grandchildren. That woman on the till at Tesco… being beaten by her partner.

As you get to know these people who are not like you and they gradually reveal their story, you realise that they are as much the gospel truth as anything you ever heard from lectern or pulpit. You realise, as someone has put it, that "The Church is the Fifth Gospel".

When I discovered this I began writing up the stories of people in our  community and on a Sunday morning we started including a reading from this Fifth Gospel, celebrating the lives of people we hadn't realised we didn't really know.

Stories of faith and hope, love and longing. The odd fleeting sense of divine company. Good news even on the days when the news was mainly bad. Gospel truths in the lives of your friends and neighbours. A Gospel According To Everyone.

We’re surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses says a writer whose letter is recorded towards the end of the Bible. But most of the time we fail to witness these witnesses, fail to listen as they reveal their rich and deep and moving stories. They come from everywhere and have arrived in the same place as us, a community of faith, travelling along in the hope of a sign of grace, a glimpse of the divine.

When we stop to listen, we hear snatches of the good news in all our stories. Why not start listening to the Fifth Gospel in your community?

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The Gospel According To Everyone is published as a book on Lulu, as an iBook in the iTunes Store, and as a Kindle E-Book.

We're sure you paid a visit at Greenbelt to the excellent G-Books tent, run by our friends at Church House Bookshop. And even as the festival dims in the memory, there's still time to get great books – including those by Greenbelt speakers and artists – at a generous 10% discount…

Simply head over to the Church House Bookshop's special Greenbelt section and use the code GB2011 at the checkout to get a discount…

Visit the Church House Bookshop »

The offer runs until the end of September, and is not valid in conjunction with other discounts.

If you're preparing for Greenbelt 2011, and would like to read up on a few of the speakers, check out the Church House Bookshop selection for Greenbelt, featuring an array of books from GB11 speakers at great reduced prices.

Titles include:

Phyllis Tickle – Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why
Was: £10.99  Offer price: £9.89

Paula Gooder – Way Through the Wilderness: Experiencing God's Help in Times of Crisis
Was: £5.99  Offer price: £3.50

Sheila Cassidy – Confessions of a Lapsed Catholic
Was: £14.99  Offer price: £13.49

Brian McLaren – Naked Spirituality
Was: £11.99  Offer price: £10.79

Rob Bell – Love Wins
Was: £14.99  Offer price: £12.99

Plus many more…

Visit the Church House Bookshop website for the full list »

Pip Wilson is a youth worker, Greenbelt speaker and trustee. He has a new book out – Pip Wisdom – which is a collection of "reflections, stories, observations, ideas, graphic illustrations and exercises for the soul."

According to Pip, the reflections strive "always to be as open and as honest/vulnerable as possible". Pip says:

What I yearn for is that you will consider pausing and reflecting as you read. Considering how you communicate, love, breathe alongside other humans – those you know – those at the other side of the world who you do not know. Also the one you are getting to know, the one so precious and so beautiful – the one reading these words now.

Pip Wisdom is available from his own website, as well as from lulu.com. Pip will be speaking at Greenbelt 2010, and signing the book, so dip in, and be inspired…

The line-up for this year's London Literature Festival at the South Bank Centre has been announced, and there are some corking events on to tempt the literary from their book-filled burrow.

Top of any list for bonkers pop-culture theorising, Slavoj Zizek is appearing to discuss the end of capitalism; the perpetually-controversial Bret Easton Ellis discusses his writing and launches his new book Imperial Bedrooms; and other highlights include Gary Younge (discussing national identity), Jeanette Winterson, and John Cooper Clarke.

Of particular interest to those of you invested in Greenbelt's Just Peace campaign will be a joint event between the London Literature Festival and the Palestinian Festival of Literature, centred around Susan Abulhawa's novel Mornings In Jenin, which "offers a panaromic view of Palestine's bloody history, interwoven with personal stories of childhood, marriage and parenthood". That's on the 10th July.

There are also Book Club events around the following books: Lost World by Patricia Melo, A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam, Dark Matter – Poems Of Space, and many others – click here for details. (If you'd like to read any of these, why not purchase them through Greenbelt's affiliate deal with Amazon? Click here, and then make your purchase!)

For more information, and a full list of events, click here for the London Literature Festival website.

Oh, and if you go to any of these events, and would like to have your review featured on this blog, please drop me a line at tom@greenbelt.org.uk. (What we lack in review tickets, we more than make up for in enthusiasm for your work!)

When asked to write ten resolutions for a greener New Year, GB09 speaker Tamsin Omond instead came up with twelve. Twelve examples of "things that are filling the space between more radical activism and the real world – that are pulling the mainstream into a sustainable vision".

There are some great tips in there for Greenbelters looking to act upon things they heard in Tamsin's talks; things like…

6. I’m starting to like vegetables a lot, especially from my friends’ allotments, terraces or window boxes. And an ex who works on an oil rig(!) has been throwing “meat-free Monday” parties. (http://www.meatfreemondays.co.uk)

Read the rest by clicking here.

Tamsin's talk from GB09 – "WWJD?" – is available from the Greenbelt Talks Shop, and her book "RUSH! The Making of a Climate Activist" is available from Amazon.

I'm a big fan of bookclub meetings with friendly banter, good books and being a meeting of minds. The bookclub meetings held at the Festival last year were an absolute treat. Following the comedic revelation that I was not Carol Ann Duffy there were some wonderful insightful comments about her poetry. Sally Nicholls also gave a wonderful reading from Jackie Kay's short stories. One of my highlights of the Festival was hearing Jasper Fforde & Andrew Tate (two of my favourite writers) discussing Walden which somehow drifted into a discussion about the Muppets. It was an essentially Greenbelt moment – profound, spiritual and witty.

The people who came along to the sessions shared from their own experiences, talked of their responses to the books. (Thank you for that, I was deeply moved by some of the things you shared & said).

This year the literature subgroup have popped their collective thinking hats on, had some passionate discussion and have picked three very different books which we commend to you for discussion at the Festival.

1) Ali Smith – The First Person and Other Stories

Ali Smith is a wonderful writer and in the short story form her skills really zing. Smith has a knack for capturing conversations, pinning moments in a relationship & unlocking the process that goes into writing a novel. There's much here to delight and inspire, some of these stories will leave a smile in your mind.

2) Thornton Wilder – The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Wilder's novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928. The story of the collapse in 1714 of "the finest bridge in all Peru", killing five people, it is a parable of the struggle to find meaning in chance and in inexplicable tragedy – a struggle many people face today. In the wake of the 9/11 tragedy Prime Minister Tony Blair quoted from the novel at a memorial service.

In the novel, a Franciscan missionary sees the bridge "divide and fling five gesticulating ants into the valley below". He then sets out to trace the lives of the victims, linked only by their deaths, in an effort to understand the seemingly random nature of the tragedy. Wilder later explained that he was seeking to address the question: "Is there a direction and meaning in lives beyond the individual's own will?

3) Star of the Morning: The Extraordinary life of Lady Hester Stanhope by Kirsten Ellis

The life of Lady Hester Stanhope (1776-1839) sounds like something from fiction. She was Prime Minister Pitt's niece and companion. She joined her brother on a voyage to Spain and kept travelling. She travelled to Constantinople and Damascus and was the first European woman to enter the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, but eventually made a home in Joun, in the mountains of Lebanon. When her clothes were lost in a shipwreck she dressed like a Turkish man, smoked a long water-pipe and rejected her birth culture. Famous for her wit, beauty and energy, she became the greatest woman traveller of her day. She developed a passion for the Arab world and forged lasting friendships with pashas, emirs and sheikhs – and was revered by the Bedouin, whose cause she championed, as their ‘Star of the Morning.’

If you don't own any of these books, you should! Click on the titles of the books to buy them from Amazon, and a portion of money will go to Greenbelt. Your local library should also stock these.

You'll find these discussions in The Hub the venue where Visual Arts and Literature coexist. Bring a mug of something warm and prepare to share your thoughts with other equally passionate souls. I can't wait to hear what people will have to say about these books. Will you be there? You won't want to miss this, it's going to be great!

—-

Ben Whitehouse is Literature Coordinator for the Greenbelt festival. He writes a blog – White Like Milk – and you can follow him on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Benjiw

"Former evangelical Christian political agitator Schaeffer has been born yet again. This time, he has been reborn into what he calls the Church of Hopeful Uncertainty, as defined by his belief that the vast majority of people inhabits a middle ground between the two fundamentalist extremes battling one another for followers in the world today. He suffers no one who advocates a devotion so rigid as to exclude any but the stanchest. He names names but is an equal opportunity assailant, laying into fundamentalist atheists and religious zealots alike, decrying both for inflexibility and the blatant commercialism of their enterprises. Make no mistake, Schaeffer is not proselytizing. He knows, or at least hopes, that with this book he is singing to the choir of millions fed up with or unable to commit to full-blown atheism or stiff-necked religion of any kind. His belief that faith, in God or not, ought to support and enrich one’s life, not run it into the ground, strikes, he hopes, a universally appealing chord."
- Donna Chavez

Jon Bounds spoke at the Festival this year. One his excellent talks was about his 11-11-11 project.

He's written about the project he's conducting this year for the blog.

–

I there’s one thing I like in the Old Testament is it’s grasp of the symbolic power of encircling a town. When Joshua brings down Jericho it's not the brass arrangement, it's the ongoing circumnavigation. So if there was an easy way to surround one of Europe's largest cities you'd do it, wouldn't you?

Luckily there is — the eleven bus. The number eleven skirts the city of Birmingham, the 11C clockwise, the 11A anti, taking in all of its great suburbs as far from the blandly redeveloped city centre as you can get without ending up in the wider conurbation. At two hours 45 minutes long it's one of the longest bus routes in Europe, and if you stop on you can go round and round again.

And I did, and so did about 30 other people last year on the eleventh of November. I asked for people to spend eleven hours, from eleven o’clock, rounding the city and to record their thoughts, emotions and experiences (they’re collected online at elevenbus.co.uk).

As a feat it required endurance, a packed lunch, mobile internet technology or a pen and paper, and a daysaver. A daysaver entitles you to as many bus journeys within the West Midlands in one day as you like — ideal for getting off in Bournville, Perry Barr, Acock’s Green, or Erdington and exploring parts of Birmingham that you’ve not visited. Or if you already have, then your memories for the recording will be so much richer.

But eleven hours is a lot, a big commitment, so we’re relaxing the rules a little this year. Instead of having to do the full eleven hours, one circuit is enough — but make sure that it is completed within the eleven hour window. The rules are:

• Get on the 11C at some point after 11am on 11/11.
• Get off the 11C exactly one circuit later.
• You can get on and off the bus as many times as you like (don’t spend more than an hour off bus at one time).
• Document your journey; photos, film, writing, cross-stitch, knitting, amigurumi, poetry, blog, twitter, however you like.
• Meet up with others as mad as you, if you want.
• Record everything on elevenbus.co.uk — or on your own space and link us up.

Watch the blog for more information in the run-up to the great day. If it’s better to travel hopefully than arrive, Birmingham is the ideal place.

Jon's worked in publishing, music journalism, and in a venetian blind factory. Now, after several years at the BBC, Jon is a freelance social media consultant and producer, writer and blogger. His common theme – tech plus people equals great things. He's obsessed by place.  www.jonbounds.co.uk ]]> http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/blog/2009/10/11-11-11/feed/ 0 http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/blog/2009/08/introduction-jon-bounds/ http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/blog/2009/08/introduction-jon-bounds/#comments Fri, 07 Aug 2009 10:22:57 +0000 Ben Whitehouse http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/blog/?p=749

by Ben Whitehouse

I asked Jon Bounds to "write a post for the blog" and wasn't too sure what I'd get back. As usual I wasn't disappointed, Jon has delivered, in his own unique, way, something wonderful about his talks for the festival. Make sure you catch them, they're not to be missed!

The ways in which place affects us are too often cloistered in the work of travel writers or gap-year bloggers hemp-shirting their way across some of the developing World's most considered facades. That or dreamy-eyed nostalgists, moisting up over the bomb-cleared playgrouds of their youth. To descibe the now and your relation to it is to record history for the losers as well as the winners, it's to let location its due in your psyche, and it's honest.

In the post-spin age; the spun are dizzy with post-modernism, never more than an involuntary muscule spasm away from an arched eyebrow or a cheese football. We've long since given up on desire for the truth but prefer to band together and hunker down with whatever lie seems most palatable.

The job of the psychogeographer is to twist the facts into something relating the truth, and it's that which I've been trying to do for ten years of development, redevelopment and regeneration of Britian's most maligned conurbation.

I founded Birmingham: It's Not Shit in 2002, just as the city was embarrassing itself on the European stage again, not this time shooting for the stars with un-government backed bids for global sporting events but merely aiming the twelve bore directly a pied and not even standing up to Liverpool in the bidding for European Capital of culture status. The city's marketeers, all second-jobbing on their way to more suitable metropoli, presented a sheen of apartments, cafes and smiling mixed-ethnicity groups laughing just too much as one at how perfect their lives were. Liverpool presented some old film of the Beatles.

It's about to start all over again, and this time the site has been cited by the Council's Minister of Fun (er Cabinet Member for Culture and lesiure or something) as an example to follow. They're going to attempt to tempt the Turner Prize to some wasted industrial unit by giving the people what they want – Jasper Carrot and the Spitfire. Goldenballs.

I'm going to give three separate, but no-doubt interrelated talks at Greenbelt this year, one telling some of the story about how Birmingham is portrayed in popular culture and myth (and yes Benny from Crossroads will feature). A second will look more deeply at how the city sees itself – nominally from the upstairs window of a circular bus ride. Hundreds of Brummie kids spent Sunday afternoons in the sixties, seventies and eighties, riding round the outer circle. They gained a sense of the size of their city, a numerologist's appreciation of the codes and glyphs of the bus ticket and a life-long 'thing' for staring at the tops of middle aged mens' heads through a system of mirrors.

Whoever said that it was "better to travel hopefully than to arrive" never spent two and a half hours on a double decker and got off at the very same stop he got on at.

Or eleven hours come to that. I did, and I got about 30 people to do the same. I'll tell you why and what we found out.

My third talk is less inward-looking, and a bit more sweary. I'm going to look at the rapid spead of internet memes and how with just a soupcon of profanity, you too can become an interweb superstar. Or at least cost yourself a few hundred quid in hosting charges and destroy your employment prospects.

Jon founded Birmingham: it's Not Shit, a website that markets Brum without ever mentioning 'canalside living'.

Jon's worked in publishing, music journalism, and in a venetian blind factory. Now, after several years at the BBC, Jon is a freelance social media consultant and producer, writer and blogger. His common theme – tech plus people equals great things. He's obsessed by place.  www.jonbounds.co.uk