The Yatal concert

This January gets you down. You never dry out! Every time you leave the flat you get drenched by constant, persistent, penetrating drizzle. It's just like Cardiff, it really is.

So last night I was the only Davey to brave the brief journey by train to the Eglise Sacré Coeur near the central railway station to hear the group, Yatal, who hail basically from Grenoble.

Yatal is a kind of folk-pop group made up of a guitarist, a bassist, a drummer, a violinist and a multi-instrumentalist who is known especially for playing the hang-drum. He also wowed the crowd by playing the spoons. (I'll have to tell Pat. We can both play the spoons. Fame awaits us!)

My train was 10 minutes late so I had to hoof it fast up the road to the church. I've been there once before. A friend from the language school used to go there. It's one of the more interesting Catholic churches, it has perpetual adoration of the host, as well as pop-music youth masses on Sunday night and has renamed itself "L'Eglise de Bordeaux Centre". It's also often the venue for Christian concerts, including the catholic groups, Glorious (you pronounce it like "glory-house" without the h) and Be Witness.

In front of me was a young chap I know from a church in Bordeaux. We chatted about the size of the crowd. 

"I expected more people."

"We're about 150, I guess."

"But they could have held this in one of the Assembly of God buildings?"

"Certain doctrinal differences perhaps? They come from a baptist church don't they? Or is it some kind of frères"

"CAEF, I think". I looked around. "So more differences than with this?"

"The place of the Word of God?"

Sometimes I feel very foreign. 

I think that what has happened is that the charismatic movement in the Catholic church has created a certain coming and going between the charismatic protestant and catholic communities and made a bridge between the two. This hasn't happened between the pentecostals and the other groups, so in the end people like my friend feel a greater affinity with the church that maintains perpetual adoration of the host than with the local AoG groups. Maybe my friend doesn't know the local AoG people at all.

Makes you think, doesn't it!



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