thanks to everyone who came to the grace service at greenbelt. it was based on the february grace with half the people wearing glasses with red filters and half with blue. depending on your glasses you saw different things. it was a challenge to upscale it so it would work with 500 people. we ended up building 10 screens and getting 500 pairs of glasses and using 10 slide projectors. amazingly it all got set up in time and went well at least from our point of view. harry wrote a poem purple which has been added to the grace site and i have pasted below. a nice development from the previous service was picking up on an idea in the comments (thanks andrew) when i described it before. we wrote a liturgy in red and blue such that you could only see one set of words. it worked a treat with half the people saying one thing and half the other. people were also invited to come and take a piece of either dyed red or dyed blue bread to symbolise needing the other in the body of christ. thanks dean for the photo (i didn’t take a camera to greenbelt this year – enough to carry round without it…) – no doubt more will follow from others.
Christ’s piece is you,
Christ’s piece is me,
It is those that do,
And it is those that be,
Without one another we can’t cover 360 degrees,
Because we don’t need ‘I’s to see, we need We.
As every image that we see of ourselves is reflected,
Every image that we see of the world is subjective,
We need two points of view to gain some perspective,
And the ability and humility to accept this.
Because in our vision lies division,
A polarised view of action and pacifism,
But contradiction doesn’t mean fact and fiction,
more like discordant harmonies in the melody of wisdom.
I need you, like red needs blue,
You need me, like do needs be,
And life shouldn’t be binary,
Our eyes shouldn’t be primary,
We need to trade in reds and blues for indigos and violets see:
We need to try and be purple.
Not just protest march bruises as we go out and do,
Or blood filled cheeks as we hold our breath and be,
I mean purple.
Full circle.
The hares and the rabbits,
the tortoises and turtles,
Purple.
So let us be moved to be mauve,
Maroon and mulberry,
Lilac, plum and lavender,
May the red and blue poles of our souls and our minds combine to be magnets of magenta,
Purple.
May we take the opposites and make the composite,
As every image has its limits
And every picture could be richer,
If we have someone else to see that we are in it,
We need to be purple.
[by Harry Baker aka Dubb]
love the poem – thanks for sharing it. where can one find more of Harry’s poetry?
http://dubb.bandcamp.com/
more of Harry’s stuff…
After a few years of reading about Grace services, I finally plucked up the courage to attend this one. To be honest I had read about it a few months back but had forgotten the detail and it was good to see how it worked in practice. I loved it…as soon as I found my night vision! What an imaginative bunch Grace are!
More of Harry here too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbeR_Z0L5No&feature=channel
hearing harrys poem was a highlight for me, very very good. The girls really liked the blue and red bread!.
“to symbolise needing the other in the body of christ”. including people with visual impairments? 😉
hey, i am glad the grace service went well, i was unable to make it this year, however wanted to tell you and the folk @ grace I still remember the service you did in the arena a few years ago, communion by numbers. I still have something that reminds me of it, and what a personal life changing hour that was for me.
keep doing that thing that you do 🙂
Fragz
thanks jonny and harry for this. wonderful. i have an envelope full of 3D glasses that i bought for an early failed digital experiment, and I’m now thinking how i might use them at college chapel in october.
missing greenbelt!
I love the poem the liturgy and the concept. Are the red/blue slides available anywhere?