An open space
Abigail Maxwell reflects on the Greenbelt Festival
I began August at Yearly Meeting Gathering (YMG) as I ended it at the Greenbelt Festival: with my tribe, my heart opened and mind expanded. The festival feeds a hunger across the churches. Someone at the Queer stall asked: ‘Why can’t church always be this open, thoughtful, loving, generous?’ Here is the church, wrestling with Quaker issues, all of us celebrating and consecrating the worship of thousands together. We share interests: I met a man whose talk I remembered from YMG in Bath, and they talked of attracting more minority ethnic people.
Rachel Rose Reid excavates Judaism, peeling away the rabbinical orthodoxy established after the Jews were expelled from Jerusalem. How can you discover the practices of the people, dismissed as ‘preliterate’, from the one true path of orthodoxy? By considering the Mishnah, where the rabbis applied the law to every aspect of Jewish life, seeing scraps of stories of the alternative ways of being and doing in which people actually practised their religion, and using them to expand the idea of how God wants us to be. I met Rachel Rose Reid in the predominantly Muslim interfaith space, new this year, in a tent made beautiful with many colours and patterns, large enough to attract learned speakers and relaxed enough for private conversation with them after.
Also new was the ‘Red Tent’, the women’s space. I asked if I could come in, and found it is for all who ‘identify’ as women. Some sessions were open to all genders. Asked what were our hopes from that place, I said I want to find my place in the tension between the femininity I have chosen to express and the womanhood of most people here. At least one woman objected. She approached me afterwards and said it was ‘brave’ of me to speak like that. She was uncomfortable with me there, and though she was nervous about telling me she dealt with it in a Quakerly manner: we ate together, then went for a drink, and explained ourselves to each other.
Some men objected to the Red Tent, we heard. (Ribald scoffing erupts.) What about the men? They announced there would be a men’s group, at 11am on Saturday and 11pm on Sunday. Later I noticed two signs that it would be held inside the Red Tent: asserting our right to our space, with a feminine desire to pacify opposition.
I went to the ‘Men’s Journey’. ‘That’s provocative,’ a Friend observed. ‘Well, you know me.’ The Quaker running it challenged me, and I said my Y chromosome is as good as anyone’s. I can only be myself by carving out my own inconsistent and challenging way of being, rather than trying to fit the conceptions of others. He let me join in, in my purple dress.
The group runs men’s rites of passage workshops based on the ideas of the Franciscan Richard Rohr, which include contemplative prayer and the true self within us, made in the image of God: the Catholic church has always encompassed elements of Quakerism. We did worship sharing, speaking and listening from the heart. We shared on why we were here, and ‘What is your darkness?’ My darkness is a tiger, pacing in a too small cage. The image came to me as I spoke, as ministry. Men shared deeply.
Northamptonshire Area Meeting arranged the Quaker Meeting, in the worship space slightly apart from the rest of the festival, on the other side of the lake. We sat in silence, preparing, under huge trees, appreciating the beauty and quiet. About 120 attended, and shared anecdotes of people who had come to Quakers after the Greenbelt Quaker worship. I would welcome other personal reflections.
Liz Edman a New York Episcopal priest, spoke on Queering theology. Queer theory is about rupturing false binaries, such as between male and female, making space for queer people. Christianity ruptures binaries, between human and divine, sacred and profane, self and other. Authentic Christianity is not respectable. It must be Queer! I loved this, and will throw away my painstaking analyses of the anti-gay Bible verses. Liz Edman, does not engage with them. If she were near I would happily worship at her church.
Here I renew my faith in Christianity and humanity. Come to Greenbelt, and see the beauty of the church!
Further information: abigailgem@yahoo.co.uk
Comments
Please login to add a comment
