Chine McDonald - 02/09/2026

Available for over a year

Dolly Parton’s estate has announced that DollyFest - a festival honouring the singer’s life and legacy - is set to take place in both London and Nashville next year in place of a traditional public memorial. But why a festival? Last weekend, many gathered from across the country for festivals – lugging their camping equipment and stoves and wellies and raincoats to make temporary homes alongside others for a few days. My family and I were at Greenbelt – a faith, arts and justice festival I’ve been part of for years and am now a trustee of. I’ve been reflecting on how much I crave this annual meeting place. Despite the mud and the unpredictable weather and the inconvenience of being without our usual creature comforts, it always feels like coming home. There’s something sacred about festivals. The Greek word ekklesia is used in the New Testament to describe a gathering of people. We’ve come to think of ekklesia – as simply denoting ‘something to do with church’ but in the first century, ekklesia was really simply a gathering of people, just as festivals gather people together in an in-between space. All of life, all of human frailty and resilience and beauty, can be found in the gathering together that takes place at festivals. During my Greenbelt weekend I laughed and cried and enjoyed great food and danced and was challenged. For me, festivals represent the very human craving to want to gather with others – to celebrate, to remember, to dream, and sometimes to mourn. At another Christian event – Big Church Festival, which took place at the same time, thousands were gathered together when tragedy struck after a sign fell, killing church leader Robert Guanco. Friends there, some of whom witnessed the horror, are asking questions of God: how could such a thing happen at a place that was supposed to be full of joy? There are no answers, no ways to make it better. But in our increasingly disembodied and individualistic, atomised lives, gathering reminds us that we belong to one another: embodied in our joy and in our grief. I’ll never forget raising a glass with hundreds of others at Greenbelt’s rousing Beer and Hymns, where we remembered those we had lost and sang the soul-stirring words of Thine be the Glory: “Let the church with gladness hymns of triumph sing, for her Lord now liveth, death has lost its sting.” St Paul encourages the early Christian community to “bear one another’s burdens”. And maybe this is why we gather. Not because gathering can protect us from sorrow, but because neither sorrow nor hope was ever meant to be carried alone.