Pride without prejudice

  

"What is pride? A rocket that emulates the stars."
(William Wordsworth)

 

The celebration now known as "Brighton Pride" is now in it's 40th year. Incredibly, the first march or parade was a smallish affair organised by the Sussex Gay Liberation Front in 1973; a mere seven years earlier and such a gathering of predominantly openly"out and proud" homosexuality could have culminated in custodial sentences. As in recent years, this Brighton Pride Weekend of 3rd and 4th August saw gay police officers from the city marching at the height of the parade. For the sixth successive year, they were joined by gay officers from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight constabularies, men and women and all proudly in uniform.
The Pride festivities are now organised by a specially created community-interest company, enabling and producing events that celebrate lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and trans-gender lives. The weekend now extends beyond the parade and the music festival in Preston Park to include a city-wide arts and film festival. Brighton Pride always aims to raise not only awareness, smiles and spirits but also funds for local community groups and charities. These essentially include HIV and AIDS support groups. As a former voluntary carer and fundraiser for the Terrence Higgins Trust, I'm always heartened to see THT's friendly and inclusive presence at such events. This year, it's estimated that more than £40,000 has been raised for the collective "Rainbow Fund".
In fact, general inclusivity across the parade and celebrations was bright and evident in Brighton this year. I was working over the Pride weekend and didn't really intend to join the parade or activities, but the theatrical enthusiasm was infectious. The theme of the festivities this year was gay icons across the arts and media. I found myself queuing in my local Aldi behind two male Monroes and ahead of a variety of Freddie Mercury and Cher lookalikes. Even iconic-wannabees fancy a bargain. I wandered past what I refer to as my local cheap-frock shop, only to find they were offering multi-coloured tutus as "buy one get one free". The rather skimpily curtained changing cubicles were full of delightful but quite large gentlemen taking advantage of the tutu sale: I had my doubts about their ballet credentials.
My one unwitting concession to the very sunny Pride weekend was to wear a homestead sundress and a straw cowboy hat from the 99p Shop. Along the walk home I was serenaded and yeehaw-ed at by a variety of cowboys, cowgirls and Native American Indians. Clearly, I had forgotten about the impact of the (beautiful) film "Brokeback Mountain"; and the cherished close partnership of The Lone Ranger and Tonto. As I emerged back onto Lewes Road, a Lady GaGa, Bugs Bunny, complete with carrot, and two very male, very bare-chested nuns tickled me as I went past their group. Turns out that Sally Field as The Flying Nun is a definite gay icon - who knew? The tickling incident was a bit of a shock although not unpleasant; I still haven't worked out where dear ol' Bugs Bunny fits into all this.
Attendance estimates for the weekend seem to vary wildly this year too; from the very conservative police figure of 30,000 to the extravagant 150,000 from some of the official sponsors. As with most things in life, the truth rests somewhere in the shade of the two extremes. As George Bernard Shaw suggested, life is not so much about finding yourself as it is about creating yourself. Obviously the good-natured openness and tolerance I witnessed locally extended across the city and over the whole weekend: there were about forty arrests in the city that weekend, probably the same as on any other hot summer weekend at the seaside.
When I first moved to Brighton, I found the tone of Pride quite different. Always promoted as a family celebration, it started to feel a little exclusive to me as a heterosexual female; although I felt saddened rather than threatened. My sexuality and my beliefs, including my Catholicism, sit very comfortably with dear friends made over the years who happen to be gay and the respect and affection I have for the gay community in Brighton. Essentially, I believe Brighton Pride must be inclusive to all ages, genders, sexualities and values to remain valid as well as supported. The point is that every gay man and woman is someone's son, daughter, brother, sister, possibly someone's parent; a police officer, a nurse, your neighbour, a friend.
I have no problem with Brighton Pride being proud, as long as it remains valiant rather than becoming arrogant. I'd actually like to see a celebration of self-worth extend beyond the gay community in Brighton, indeed beyond the city. A few days after Pride 2013, I've had to yet again complain to the city council about the street I live in being used as a little city dump. One person leaves a broken vacuum cleaner in the road, another person leaves a chair, then a large broken mirror appears propped up perilously against the side of a house. The street cleaner still isn't cleaning one side of the road, presumably because of the debris on the pavement.
This area is made up of whole streets of largely rented properties and this is the heart of campus country. After an attempted break-in at my little house the other week, a well-intentioned policeman sympathised that my area is disadvantaged and therefore resentful He noted that if people haven't grown up here or simply feel "dumped" here, the lack of strong roots can destroy the growth of future community. I do feel that when folk have no sense of connection with where they find themselves in life, there's no concept of pride in where they live and sadly, sometimes in how they treat others.
"Pride" is a widely used yet perhaps little understood word. With a negative connotation, often synonymous with "hubris", it refers to an inflated sense of self, often at the expense of all else; in Christianity, one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Yet the word itself originates from the Latin "prodis" - "to be of use or service". Through time, this evolved into the Old French and English words for valiant and noble.
With a positive connotation, pride can refer to a sense of attachment towards one's own choices, beliefs or actions, and towards others. It can be the worthy product of self-reflection, a sense of appreciation, a feeling of fulfilment or belonging. There's a sense of exaltation in the mindset behind Brighton Pride which I feel St Augustine himself would have appreciated. His take on pride without prejudice was that we should have a sense of our own "excellence", to the glory of God who created us; including that bouncy young man so wonderfully dressed as Bugs Bunny. And my fabulous bargain Stetson.

 

 

"Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us."

(Jane Austen)

 

 

 

 

The Rainbow Fund
Sussex Community Foundation
Falcon Wharf
Railway Lane
LEWES
BN7 2AQ

info@sussexgiving.org.uk

 

www.brightonpride.org

 

www.tht.org.uk

 

  

"Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real."
(Thomas Merton)

"Pride perceiving humility honourable, often borrows her cloak."

(Thomas Fuller)

 

"Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay."
(Francois de la Rochefoucauld)

 (Photo: Gigi, album)
Yeehaw x

"Wake Me Up When It's All Over" Avicii

 

 

A darkness on the edge of town

"You can talk with someone for years, everyday, and still, it won't mean as much as what you can have when you sit in front of someone, not saying a word .... connections are made with the heart, not the tongue." 
(C. Joybell)

 

It's certainly true that you never know how much you rely upon something, accept and expect, even cherish something, until it's not there. At the end of June, three Vodafone masts somewhere out on the South Downs spluttered and fell silent. I'm aware that some parts of Brighton and it's suburbs were without Vodafone mobile coverage for three weeks. There was a palpable darkness at the edge of the town. My own little mobile was silent for a week, but these eerily quiet days over-lapped with my beleaguered BT landline finally admitting defeat, which also rendered my broadband speechless and my laptop comatose.
I live in a small street that's usually disproportionately noisy and which forms a horse-shoe in and out of a busy, in-yer-face main road. There's an exuberant little primary school across the street, with the playground leaning onto the road. There's usually some manner of building works banging away somewhere nearby. My next-door neighbours, with three new babies as part of the extended clan, are from Liverpool: I love them dearly, but they would be the first to admit that the Liverbird larynx comes with integral speakers! And speaking of birds, my beloved seagulls are the running commentary to this city; at worst, like a particularly overwrought Jeremy Kyle audience. In short, you actually have to retreat to find silence or to experience real loneliness in this area.
Although I live on my own and still don't really "know" many folk in this area, I'm far from reclusive. I think I'm a friendly soul. I'm interested in people and expect most to respond warmly or at least civilly. Yet for several days, the enforced lack of communication behind my closed door felt isolating and frankly worrying. With no access to even emergency calls, it may have been natural to fret about fire or footsteps on the stairs at night. Facebook was sullenly closed to me for a few days and I even found myself totting up how many of my daily free online bingo tokens were lost. I couldn't update this little blog and am still trying to catch up on posts I wanted to add; I worry that I've lost phrases and even thoughts I'd been unable to commit to screen. Can you ever actually lose a thought? Surely my own conscience is the most precious hard-drive ever created.
What left me feeling bereft was loss of contact from those who've become part of my daily routine. Most of my closest friends live in London or beyond, but even my neighbour here will text me to say "Cuppa?", expecting me to respond with "Five mins". Technology has expedited and streamlined our communications with "free talk minutes", "txt spk" and character regulated "tweets". Even personal emails promote abridged friendliness and abbreviated emotions, with "LOLs" and "smiley faces" rendering exclamations of joy unnecessary and rather embarrassing.
The Yorkshire novelist, playwright and broadcaster J. B. Priestley was a man who knew how to work and play with words, becoming a Doctor of Letters in his later years. He once noted that the more elaborate our means of communication become, the less we actually communicate. My own shelves of words often make me wistful for the worlds of Austen and the Brontes, with rounds of perfumed letters preserved in initialled trunks under the bed and earnest, totally unseasonally attired lovers riding across sodden moors, collapsing in a consumptive heap on the threshold. Usually choosing to walk around Brighton, I often arrive back at my own front door seriously bedraggled after a trip to Aldis. I actually have a couple of vintage trunks under my bed but the only secrets they store are stockings, hot water bottles and spare bedding. There's a man who walks his rather snooty dog "Heathcliff", often stopping to let him poop by my roses (the dog, not the owner). But I digress: even the largely emotionally sterile, character-economic, technical truncations of the internet won't stop a digressor.
 

 

I'm the first to admit that I usually have something to say and can talk. A lot. I like the art and science of words: these seemed fine reasons to start a blog, over a year ago now, when I was unemployed. But I also appreciate silence and always find myself looking for what's left unsaid when the conversation has ended. There's a precious silence in the closest relationships; an emotional recognition and communion negating words. Yet sometimes things must be said, the surety of feelings needs to be voiced to uncertain hearts. Sometimes words won't flow, stemmed by too much self-doubt or fear of offending, too much anger or pain, even too much love.
Doubt is the natural enemy of love. The unspoken may provide poignant memories but regrets are too dried and crumbly to rest prettily in a purple ribbon. For every pair of star-crossed lovers confounded by fortune, there will be dozens of chances choked upon and broken bridges languishing by a bank of missing planks. God gave us the security of silence but also a wealth of words and the luxury of language. Talk to each other, listen; you really can't successfully do either one without the other.
The word "communication" comes from the Latin for "sharing". Open communication lends itself to community; harmonised interests, values and intimacy. And yet it seems that enhanced routes and almost time-travelling speeds in modern communication have led to inappropriate over-familiarity, contempt and apathy. And when those routes fail, we feel almost socially excluded. We assume the landline, mobile, email or social network will be there tomorrow: the idea, opportunity, emotion or even the person may not be. If our connections were reduced to one letter a month and a steed galloping up-country instead of current upload speeds, we would surely say more in that letter. My Mum and Dad never let the sun set on a problem in case one of them might not be there to see the sunrise. Not a sentiment shared by BT and Vodafone it seems.
Two prisoners in adjoining cells will talk to each other by knocking on the wall. The barrier between them becomes their route of communication; their separation becomes a link between them. Knock knock?

  

"Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true."
(Charles Dickens)

"Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords."
(Robert Louis Stevenson)

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
 (George Bernard Shaw)

"If the darkening sky could lift
more than one hour from this day
there are words I would never have said
nor have heard you say."
(Carol Ann Duffy)

 

"Darkness On The Edge Of Town"  Bruce Springsteen)

 

  "Everybody's got a secret, sonny,
Something that they just can't face,
Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it,
They carry it with them every step they take.
Till some day they just cut loose;
Cut it loose or let it drag them down;
Where no one asks any questions
Or looks too long in your face,
In the darkness on the edge of town."
(B. Springsteen)

 

 

The workers' saint

"St Joseph was a just man, a tireless worker, the upright guardian of those entrusted to his care. May he always guard, protect and enlighten families."

(Pope John Paul II)

The celebration of the first day of May has ancient origins. There's an obvious relationship with the Celtic pagan festival of Beltane and also with the Germanic celebration of Walpurgis Night. Although I'm sill unsure how or why the humble St Walpurga, an English missionary who helped to convert pagan Germany in the eighth century, has lent her name to a witches' sabbath. As the western world became Christianised, many popular secular holidays merged with Christian feasts. Through the 20th and 21st centuries, neo-pagans have resurrected and restructured many of the old traditions, including May Day festivities. 
As a secular celebration, "May Day" may be best known for maypole dancing and the crowning of the May queen. In pre-Christian Europe, the first day of May was also seen to be the first day of summer, in relation to the midsummer solstice in the second half of June. The Romans celebrated the feast of the goddess Flora at this time, the aptly named queen of flowers and plants. The Roman Catholic Church observes May as the month of the Virgin Mary; with statues of Mary often being adorned with crowns and wreaths of flowers.
May Day has had a tradition of community based festivities across the British Isles down the centuries. Towns and villages celebrated the fertility of the soil and the livestock. Seeding and sowing had usually been completed by this time of year and it would be convenient to allow farm workers and labourers a holiday. For some, May Day gained infamous "communist" associations. As the Catholic calendar was reformed, Pope Pius XII instituted the feast of St Joseph The Worker in 1955. Yet the the saint's patronage of workers and grafters has an older history.
Everything we know about Joseph originates from scripture. We know he was a working man and of limited means. Yet the gospels highlight his lineage from David, the king of Israel. I have a fondness for Joseph because he was very much an ordinary Joe, yet he displayed immense compassion and faith when he realised that his young bride to-be was already with child; supernaturally conceived at that. He initially considered ending their betrothal but feared for Mary's safety if she was shamed as an adulteress.
Clearly, Joseph loved Mary and would also love Jesus as his own, leaving his home and family to protect the child. The gospels note that the people of Nazareth referred to the boy Jesus as "the son of Joseph" without other distinction. Fittingly, Joseph is the patron saint of fathers; also of the Universal Church, of the dying, of social justice, and of course of carpenters.
The Christian Church has always been proud to emphasise Jesus' background as the step-son of a carpenter, probably apprenticed by Joseph himself. The humanity and humility of Jesus through Joseph's guardianship are evident; also the fulfillment and often sheer drudgery that can be part of vocation. Like his father on earth and in heaven, Jesus was a creator. I've always found it poignant that the carpenter's boy would ultimately bear his own wooden cross to be nailed to the Roman tree of execution.
I'm no carpenter, but I've loved working with discarded bits of wood or cut-offs to distress and tart up into driftwood-style shelves, frames and bits and pieces. I'm most fond of my "carpenter's crucifix". I think folk thought I'd finally lost it when I said I wanted to make the corpus out of nails and upholstery tacks, with a crown made of picture wire. A couple of years ago, if anyone had told me I would be thinking of making a crucifix at all, I'd have thought they'd gone large on the altar wine. But it seems to suit the little house; fashioned more from love than skill, as many precious things are.

(Photo: Gigi, album)

Located a well judged stone's throw away from me is the tall, Gothic Catholic church of St Joseph, at the foot of Elm Grove and just off the Lewes Road. Both roads have long been densely populated: they're areas frequented by locals rather than tourists. In the heart of uni-campus land, much of the Victorian housing is rented out. 

In the 1860s, a Mission Chapel stood on the site now occupied by St Joseph's. The current church is a Grade II listed building. However, due to outstanding debts, the church wasn't dedicated until 8th May 1979; a few days after the feast of St Joseph the Worker and a hundred years to the day since building work began.
The Lewes Road and surrounding areas are necessarily entrepreneurial and hand-to-mouth communities. Home to the local branch of The Society of St Vincent de Paul, the church is just a short wander away from one of the SVP's charity shops; traditionally sited in deprived areas. The Brighton shop is as well used as it is well stocked. St Joseph's today serves an increasingly multi-cultural congregation of local workers; those with jobs and those without.

www.stjosephsbrighton.co.uk

"If I Had a Hammer" The Seekers (version)

"In Joseph, faith is not separated from action."

(Pope Benedict XVI)