Greenbelt 2016
Abigail Maxwell reflects on her experience of the Greenbelt festival
Most British Quakers have come from other churches, and many of us are refugees: we ‘come home’ to Friends, but we would not have left our churches without some dissatisfaction, often with a particular congregation. Our memory of a denomination from ten or twenty years ago may be jaundiced.
So, I wish you could all come to Greenbelt, and see what the church can be. At the Quaker stall in the ‘G-source’, or groups fair, I talked to a man aged about sixteen who had ‘come out’ to his parents just the Wednesday before. He had gone to the Outer Space Eucharist on the Saturday evening and had been powerfully affirmed: he was welcomed to communion not in spite of who he was, but because of it. He was unaware of other gay youths in his year, and had had only straight sex education: we tend to feel young people are far more accepting, but possibly some schools under government control and austerity may change this.
On the Sunday morning, thousands of us sat around the main stage and worshipped together. It was an adult service led by children, in children’s voices and sometimes their own words. We formed groups of about ten to twenty, each with a naan bread and some fruit juice to consecrate together. I sat with an Anglican curate. She is evangelical and loves the austere simplicity of her tradition, and the knowledge of and respect for the Bible central to her faith, yet her concern is that the church must be inclusive and welcoming of all and not so hung up on the rules, or on Leviticus 20 and Romans 1. There was I, the ‘out trans Quaker’, and we could affirm all this together.
We could see and value each other and each be encouraged. I could tell her how much Quakers value inclusivity. Both the people I know to be polyamorous are Quaker. She wasn’t so sure of that – she had told her husband if he had an affair she would cut his b***s off – but then not all Quakers would be either, at least not until they met those Friends. And she did not reject it completely – she could see that polyamory might work for some people.
The creed consisted of simple statements of belief in God, Christ and Spirit, and after each we all said ‘Christ has died – Christ is risen – Christ will come again’ – post Charles Darwin and Edwin Hubble, many there might have problems with the Nicene Creed.
To a revved up jig,we sang:
Come, all you vagabonds,
Come, all you ‘don’t belongs’
Winners and losers, come, people like me.
Quakers can be an introverted lot. Perhaps if we were extrovert we would be Charismatics instead. ‘The music is too loud,’ said a Friend. Well, it is passionate. A folk singer sang of Nye Bevan, that freedom is not freedom while there is poverty. He spoke of the value of the NHS. ‘Enjoy it while it lasts,’ I cracked to a woman in the audience and she smiled bleakly. I found I could just talk with strangers, in the queues for food, loos, talks and drama, far more than I would expect at a festival. There was a play based on Dante’s Inferno, where people became demons rushing across the stage in chaos and violence, and people were demons in an office, manipulating and torturing each other, terrified of not fitting in. The play ended in love. It was powerful to see the love in the eyes and posture of a silent couple. I loved Lorraine Bowen’s housecoats and tabards fashion show – your Google term for her, should you dare, is ‘dill pickle’ – and the Progressive Christianity Network in G-Source.
We took Meeting for Worship to Greenbelt, and over three days had about 250-300 people worshipping with us. There was a great deal of ministry worth listening to. We have this great treasure to share with the church; but other Christians have been praying contemplatively almost since Gethsemane, and we have so much to learn from them! Those who go there to staff the Quaker stall should recognise what a privilege it is.
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