麻豆约拍

A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Harry Baker

Good morning.

This weekend, for the first time in two years, I will be attending and performing poems at a music festival. Not an online festival, not me dressing up at home and putting zoom on the big screen and pretending, but a proper gather-in-a-field in-person event. Specifically this Festival is called Brainchild in Sussex, where alongside poetry, music, talks and art installations, there is a miniature railway that attendees seem to be as excited about as anything else.

I love festivals. I am bringing with me the same pop-up tent I was gifted the summer I finished my A levels 11 years ago, complete with Gaffa tape over the holes in the bag so the pegs don鈥檛 fall out - again. Thankfully some practices since then have changed. I will no longer be taking cold tins of ravioli that I have to bash open with a spoon when I realise I forgot to bring a tin opener. I will still be bringing a bag of easy-peelers for the mornings.

A festival is one of the only places you can be dressed as a pirate, a giraffe, or simply covered head to toe in glitter and nobody seems to bat an eyelid. Where strangers can become best friends overnight, and where the best moments seem to be the ones you couldn鈥檛 possibly have planned. I have been invited to weddings of people who first met when they saw me perform at a festival 5 years previous. Some of my favourite acts and artists now are ones I happened to stumble upon by chance because I was in the right field at the right time.

God, thank you for these excuses to celebrate life. To revel in the wonder of our surroundings and tap in to our playful, brilliant selves. I pray that be it in a field in Sussex with a miniature railway or as we begin our commute back to the office after so long at home, we can retain our sense of wonder, we can pay attention to the colourful and glittery moments of our everyday, and you can open our eyes to the discovery of the new.

Amen