The angels share: Abigail Maxwell visits the Greenbelt festival of arts, faith and justice

‘Belonging is more than fitting in.’

The Greenbelt festival is a liminal space – one of transitions and thresholds. We are closer to Heaven there.

nsciously shedding the masks I use in public so I can be wholly myself and contribute. I desire to speak from God in me, all the time. Unmasking in a festival of ten thousand people is harder, but Greenbelt is a great place to practice walking cheerfully.

There is no litter. I felt my sternum vibrate in sympathy with the bass of Kae Tempest, nonbinary headline act, and saw a talk on Francis Galton, of the family of Samuel Galton, Quaker gunmaker. Nadia Bolz-Weber danced at the LGBT+ disco, and Rowan Williams read his poetry. I had my first in-person conversation about Aphantasia, a phenomenon in which people are unable to visualise imagery, with someone who shares the condition.

I introduced a Friend to Greenbelt, and he loves it. At the eucharist we heard hip-hop beats over Greta Thunberg saying ‘Right here. Right now.’ We sat near deaf people and saw a woman use sign language to interpret the song ‘It’s Raining Men’. As people went into small circles to share bread and grape juice, I thought, it will be alright, and it was: the people behind me asked me to share theirs. I like to share with people who value that ritual: ‘Though we are many, we are one Body.’

In 2021, Yearly Meeting minuted that trans people should be welcome in Local Meetings. At Greenbelt, trans people did the welcoming. Three of us organised the Meeting, and met two others who helped with doorkeeping. Someone asked, ‘Am I trans enough?’ We all go through such questioning, wondering if our understanding of our true selves is genuine enough to justify transition, and whether we could possibly manage it, or what nonbinary means for us. I want anyone who thinks they might be trans or nonbinary to feel welcome in trans groups.

Everyone should be welcome in Local Meetings, and this is difficult. On social media I can join groups honing our righteousness, and burn the opposition, but in Meeting I need a different way of relating, accepting the reality of other people in all their beauty and strangeness, where we lift each other up with a tender hand.

White privilege and systemic racism are a bane of Britain Yearly Meeting. I tend to see my acts enforcing them only afterwards, and cringe. I am pleased Quakers are working to root it out. Black Friends tell us their experiences of white Quakers, and I want their voices amplified. But in August I had two separate conversations where Friends felt bruised and driven from their Meetings because they did not share this view, and were perplexed and distressed to be called white supremacist.

We need to expunge white privilege, but humiliation is not the way. I want those Friends in my Society.

I want gender-critical people to feel welcome in their Meeting. We could challenge each other’s misunderstandings, or sit in Stillness together. Seeing God in people we find difficult, we bless each other. Belonging is more than fitting in.

Richard Dawkins spoke. I wanted to challenge his support of anti-trans campaigners in questions afterwards, but the Quaker Meeting clashed. I wondered if my disappointment was a Leading to challenge the professor anyway, and got a ‘Love’ and two ‘Likes’ on Facebook for my draft. After, I heard he had spoken of his response to beauty.

Sarah Zaltash shared the Muslim call to prayer. It was powerful to hear her call ‘Allahu Akbar’, and speak of her struggle with the idea that women do not do that. She loved the call, though her relatives hated the way the Iranian regime appropriated it. She spoke of this as a trans experience. Her steel does not seem unfeminine to me: I could ask her to explain, or accept not understanding. She translates Allah as ‘Oneness’. I knelt and kissed the ground, placed my forehead on it, and smelled the earth.

I saw her later, walking across the festival ground. I stopped her, and asked how I could connect to God within and other people, out in the world. She said singing together connected people. She suggested walking barefoot, so I did. She quoted a line of Rumi which I found beautiful, and now forget. We hugged.

I wandered off across the grass, between mature trees which at night were uplit in bright colours, and words came to my mind. To connect to Spirit I must connect to my joy. After a moment to absorb that, sorrow. I felt both at once. Then, unknowing. We are like sand grains on the shore, part of a greater whole. How could we know? Trying to classify and control is like trying to stop the clouds in the sky.

Next day, I thought, I must connect to my anger. It terrifies me so I suppress it until it bursts from me and I upset others, who may turn on me. I saw a man in that state at Greenbelt. He did not look good or behave well. So I told a pastor I was conscious of my sin, and she told me I am a lovely person who is very harsh on myself. It is a scar from trauma which can be healed.

In the Greenbelt supporters lounge (they are called ‘Angels’) I shared a love of The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch with a woman who reads it once a year, and spoke of experiencing the love of God with a woman married fifty-four years. I classified them as higher class than I, only perceiving my resentment later. In the volunteers lounge I heard the puns of a man who had shared them at the Edinburgh Fringe, and lost a game of Connect 4. Laughter connects people.

I looked up at Shaparak Khorsandi and thought, what an impressive human. I loved her openness and strength in vulnerability. Sometimes it is easy to see that of God.

I worked all weekend to remove the barriers to love and connect with Oneness, the Dance of Life, so I could bless the Meeting on Monday morning. Needing a table for the Bible and Quaker faith & practice, I borrowed one from people camped nearby. We did not count, but perhaps a hundred people attended, and we gave away fifty copies of Advices & queries. Perhaps half were new to Quakers: I hope they come again, to bless their Local Meetings and Zoom worship. A woman ministered words for all, especially trans people: we are ‘exquisite; intended; adored’. Another ministered of becoming conscious of sizing up the people there, classifying them, and trying to see beyond that to their humanity.

A woman sang ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind,’ and in afterthoughts a white man spoke of his struggles with the patriarchal language. I love that hymn, and it is hard to keep the meaning and rhythm without sexism. You have to rhyme with ‘find’ and ‘mind’ or change two other lines. ‘Dear God who loves all humankind’ might work, and others might improve it.

Greenbelt restores my faith in Christianity. It is a privilege to organise Meeting there.

---

Comments

Please login to add a comment