Thursday, August 03, 2006
moot labyrinth service
I apologise for not blogging this sooner, but this is the first opportunity I've had...So the BBC came to moot last Sunday. They came to film a labyrinth service for a "Songs of Praise" feature on emerging churches, and chose us. The show goes out on the 17th of September.
Three men in a Chelsea tractor came and disgorged loads of TV equipment into St. Matthew's, and proceeded to set up an interview room upstairs. In a scene that resembled the Germans grilling a Prisoner of War, they proceeded to interrogate Ian with bright lights and pointed questions for a solid hour, making him repeat the same things over and over until his brain packed up and went on holiday for a week (his body is following the holiday trail this weekend).
They asked me a couple of questions, too.
"Should I look at you directly, or can I look away as I'm thinking of an answer?", I asked.
"No look straight at me please."
"So, why do you come to moot?"
"Well.." I say, looking away to the right.
"OK. Thanks. That'll do."
Clare, of course, was the old pro that we know and love, and did her piece with her usual professionalism.
The labyrinth was good too. Numbers were up, and even the people who had never done one before and didn't like it on principle, said that they got lots out of it.
Rather than have stops along the way of the labyrinth (which is how it is normally done), there were 3 stations set up with various ideas, meditations and prayers to take with you in and out of the labyrinth. This gave it a different flow and feel, whilst maintaining the labyrinth's genius of being able to see and meet others along your journey. As usual, it was very moving and thought provoking as an experience.
More TV interviews with different people followed the service, although recording was regularly interrupted by an Elvis impersonator, who is also a Songs of Praise groupie - he follows the camera crew around wherever they go filming apparently.
If you've never done a labyrinth before, you can do an online version of it, and there is various information about what it is, and the history of where it has come from. I just tried to link the website, but blogger is playing silly buggers tonight, so you'll have to type this in manually: http://web.ukonline.co.uk/paradigm/
It's well worth a visit.
Oh, and apologies for the photo. I just spent an hour doing it, compositing various photos, and for some reason it came out really wee.
