Categories: uncategorized
Date: 22 August 2011 12:53:11
This week I head off to Greenbelt, a place which is depending upon who you are: "church", "a place to catch up", "somewhere to chill", "a place of pilgrimage", "a TAZ" or "just another festival" amongst other things. As I've been preparing to go - a process which has ended up quite complex this year for a variety of reasons - I've done my usual reflecting and I've realised that for me Greenbelt represents home. This post is an attempt to try and articulate that, as much for my own benefit as for others. It's also an attempt to explain to some of those closest to me why Greenbelt is such a big deal to me.
In many ways I feel rootless and if asked where home really is I could not tell you. I tend to move on from places and whilst I have bouts of whistful, sometimes romanticised, thinking about the past I do very little going back. Ipswich was the place I grew up, got married and where Immy was born but when I left - I left. It is a town which represents almost the life of a different person. Don't get me wrong it is still part of me in one sense - my affinity to the football team, but it is not "home" in any real sense of the word - I moved on a long, long time ago. Then there is Herne Bay - a place I lived for a good part of the noughties and which I loved in many ways. It was the place I started and established my teaching career and a place where I made alot of good friends, but it is not home. For a long while I did regard HBBC as my home church, but I am now firmly rooted in another denomination and again in many ways it seems like it was another person who was based there. In terms of Durham, that is no longer totally home. It is a place where I have lived and grown, but ultimately it remains just another place where I have lived. Similarly Milton Keynes is a place which is becoming home, but which I doubt will every truly be somewhere I will return to after leaving. Both Durham and Milton Keynes are places which will produce memories, friendships and personal development but both are somewhere I will leave behind. In many ways then I am a nomad without a place to truly call home. Greenbelt is the one place which has produced memories I can associate with all stages of my life though and is the space I meet friends who knew me in those different places and spaces. Oh I know the physical location changes - Greenbelt - for me - started with the Castle Ashby site when I was 16 but the festival itself is the nearest thing I feel I have to home.
As I go to Greenbelt I will begin by staying with a friend I am still in touch with who has known me longer than almost anybody else. At Greenbelt I will meet up with other friends and people I kind of know who I have built up relationship with over the years in different places. Greenbelt is also somewhere I have taken Third Party year on year and a place where I have noticed her growing up. It is over the festival weekend that TOH and I got together, having that "awkward conversation" which could have gone either way. Greenbelt is also somewhere I have grown up in many ways, and a place in which I have not grown up sometimes. In 2006 it was the place I left to go straight to my mum's funeral and so the space in which I actually allowed myself time to mourn. In earlier years, it had been the place I had tentively allowed myself to admit to myself that my sexual orientation was as it was and I really had to find away to manage that. Sneaking off to the predecessor to Outerspace enabled me to share space with LGBandT Christians for the first time.
Greenbelt is, I think, the thing that has been most constant in my life and the one place where I have been able to return each year to feel safe and nourished. Some people go home for Christmas, I go home for Greenbelt I think. That can be scary though, because although home is somewhere which has a familiarity about it sometimes things change. New members of the family have to be accomodated, people grow up and some pass on aswell as having to face physical changes. This year in some ways is one of those years.
Things have changed both personally and in terms of wider relationships. There will be people there who I, we are not used to inhabiting that space and there may be people to meet who we might feel trepidation about because they bring a number of unhelpful emotions to the surface. I will have to be a proper, responsible grown up in ways I have not before - how I conduct myself on the festival site, (aswell as elsewhere), now has implications beyond those I am used to at Greenbelt. Whilst in the past this was the place I came home to in order to totally relax and not worry about it too much if I had a drop too much those days are over. (NOTE TO FRIENDS: PLEASE DO NOT FEED ME MORE THAN ONE GLASS OF WINE!!!!) These days I have to be a proper grown up for a whole host of reasons which didn't exist before. Not that it is a bad thing, it is just a sign that I am coming home with different responsibilities and things to think about. It is actually a sign that I have undertaken alot of personal growth in recent times.
Yet again I have gone on too long....but I needed to express this and get it out of my system before I go. This year is one where I will be greatful of friends who have not seen me for a while taking me aside for quiet coffees to catch up. Lots has happened since I last came home and lots will happen before I next come home - I will be greatful for people who are in no way involved in my life or in any of the decision processes going on at present to talk some of it over with in person, rather than via FB messages or so forth. TOH and I will be on the Outerspace stall from 2-4pm on Saturday if you want to come and say hi and give us a hug.