Thoughts on the Gathering

So, we enter the week that for many of us marks the end of another year, and the beginning of a new year.
We are about to make the journey to a special place.
A place that has to be believed to be seen.

Our community gathering. For some, our only church.

My thoughts extend to Greenbelts' past, and of the people I have met, the things I have heard, the discussions I have been part of, or just earwigged in on.

I think of all the workers, all the volunteers who have put so much in to the preparations and organisation.

I think of my own journey, between last Greenbelt and this coming one. Of the amazing things, of the desperately sad things, of the deep frustrating things, of the life changing things, that have happened through the looking at life through the Greenbelt Lens.

John O'Donohue said at his last ever festival, 'make your gaze beautiful' - so that is my prayer and hope and wish for each and every person who will be touched by the spirit of festival named Greenbelt in the coming weeks and months.

May it move you, imprint upon you the very essence of what it is to know that whatever you are, wherever you are at, whatever you want to be, or don't want to be, that you find your moment.
That moment may be a tiny glimpse into what is possible, or it may be something thats enters you so deep that your world will be rocked to its core foundations, and you will never be the same ever again.

This is my Greenbelt Prayer for 2009, Standing in the Long Now.