Terra affirma: Abigail Maxwell visits the Greenbelt Festival 2023

There is a Greenbelt for everyone.’

The Greenbelt Festival is an experience of Christ and of the church that challenges, affirms, delights and teaches me. After it, I am better fitted to do Christ’s work in the world.

The last act on the main stage was Ezra Furman. Someone went to the front, carrying a large trans flag. It is horizontal stripes of blue, pink, white, pink, blue. My Friend and I went forward and four of us took turns waving it. ‘Thank you for the flag,’ said Ezra Furman.

The song ‘Black Tie’ by Grace Petrie affects me like ‘I will survive’ by Gloria Gaynor affects some other women, filling me with power, helping me value myself. ‘When I dared to utter that Trans Lives Matter all I got was a TERF war,’ she sang, and the audience joined in the chorus. T-shirts quoting the song sold out.

Thousands of us took the Eucharist together sitting in the field, sharing the Love of God, becoming one body, with bread, wine and music. At the door of the Quaker Meeting, a woman remembered ministry affirming trans people last year.

Ukrainian group Balaklava Blues performed, opposing Russia by other means than bombs and bullets. Dave Andrews, a self-described ‘Beardy, weirdy, kind-old elder’ had been working with persecuted Muslim minorities, who might say ‘Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem’ (‘In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful’) to bring themselves into a state of wary love in confrontations they cannot win by force. The Arabic root ‘Rah’ means ‘womb’.

I spoke to a butch, bi, Church of England priest working to unionise clergy, and we celebrated each other. Jolyon Maugham, the director of the Good Law Project, also spoke. After his legal actions around Brexit, the Daily Express called him ‘Public Enemy No.1’. I stood to thank him for the legal actions the Project has undertaken for trans rights, and his eyes moistened.

The love story of two gay men, told in mime and acrobatics on Chinese poles in the Playhouse, was beautiful. I found the LGBT-related Greenbelt, but there is a huge profusion, a thousand entertainers and speakers, twelve hundred volunteers. There is a Greenbelt for everyone. Gordon Brown spoke of work to mitigate poverty, and Milton Jones performed his puns. I heard of ‘doughnut economics’ here first: there should be enough economic activity to meet the needs of the people, while remaining sustainable. No country meets both these goals.

Cole Arthur Riley spoke of embodied spirituality and the trauma of being racialised. When she says, ‘Black lives matter’, it costs her because she should not need to convince others of that.

Writing is my gift. Strive for the greater gifts, said Paul. Be eager to prophesy. Beloved Sara Zaltash, a newly-baptised Christian, sang, ‘Their battles are our battles, and if their battles are not our battles, we shall pray for them’. She speaks directly from Light, and one of her visions made no sense to me. She took from it more than I thought she rationally could. It drove me to cognitive dissonance, and I went to the quiet area where a volunteer heard me and helped me process. I wanted a filter, so that the words from my depths, where God is, would always make sense to me and others, but none is available. The attempt dims my light. I must trust myself to be orderly enough.

I come away affirmed individually by loving friends and encounters. Symbolically, Greenbelt says, ‘Trans is beautiful’. Symbols are important to me. I know my Love is powerful and beautiful, and that I desire to use it for good. I value and affirm myself. Then I consider a Quaker Meeting which might hire a room to an anti-trans group, and am plunged into misery. The affirmation of the festival, and of those who love me, leaves my mind.

That Meeting becomes for me a symbol of how my true self has been rejected and suppressed, by my society, my family, and me. Thinking of it I am in the darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

In reality, where God is, I move through the world as a woman with little problem. In social and news media, where I perhaps spend too much time, many campaign against trans rights, scaremongering about trans people, and in hell, where I now am, I feel entirely rejected because of this symbolic rejection. My demons tell me ‘Trans is bad’ and I will suffer always.

Then I clutch at one of my gifts that society values: the ability to construct an argument. I will persuade people. I will tell my experience, and win sympathy. I will quote Yearly Meeting 2021 minutes: we ‘seek to provide places of worship and community that are welcoming and supportive to trans and non-binary people’. I will explain the law and my rights, and how trans-inclusion benefits everyone. I will establish my control. The Meeting (not my own) will do my will, and I will be safe – or, still in hell, another symbol will distract me and I will remain immiserated.

I call the group I’m talking about ‘anti-trans’, but its members would say they are for women’s rights. From their website, I see they spend a great deal of time and energy on excluding trans women from women’s services, and trying to prevent trans men and boys from transitioning. (They would say they are excluding men from women’s services, and stopping women being mutilated.)

It seems to me this is a symbol for them, too. In real life, they rarely see a trans woman in women’s space – well, how often do you see a trans woman? In real life, they are degraded by patriarchy and male privilege, and trans rights become for them a symbol of patriarchy, so they fight that. They too have rational argument. There are millions of words in books and articles proving to their grim satisfaction that ‘Trans is bad’, and they hone their words on social media.

So, two suffering groups are set against each other. The conflict is made in hell. Can I see Friends who call themselves ‘Gender-concerned’, and see beyond their campaigning against trans rights to the whole human being? They too are made in the image of God.

I see hell and heaven at once. In hell we fight over symbols. In heaven we affirm each other, and tend each other’s wounds. I cannot improve my situation by fighting these battles, but by walking cheerfully, God in me meeting God in others, so all may be blessed. Jesus sent seventy out without a bag or shoes, and their needs were met. Rational argument is a useful tool, when kept in proportion. Empathy and care is a more excellent way.

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem. I cannot control the world, or guarantee my safety. My arguments are no refuge really. All I can do is hide in fear, or let my Light shine. At Pride this year I bought a beautiful glass pendant, coloured blue, pink, white, pink, blue. It is a symbol for me of my presence and openness.

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