Dear Village,
Pride is almost upon us! This Saturday is Trans Pride at the Dorset Gardens in Kemptown, 12pm until around 4pm. We will be hosting an MCC information point with MCC Brighton and MCC North London. Do drop by and say hello to everybody, even help out a little if you’d like to. It’s lovely meeting folks from other MCC’s and I suspect there will be members from both churches that you’ve not met before.
Then next Saturday we have Pride, and my mustache is almost fully steampunked up! It’s been so many years since I’ve had a little hair to style it’s quite exciting! Even if you’re not the adventurous type and not into dressing up it’d be lovely to see you and you’re still most welcome to be involved if you’d like. If you need a ticket for Pride then please let me know as soon as possible (We can get them for £12.50 each). If you’d like costume ideas then let me know!.
It feels odd not marching in the parade but I’m sure that by next year we’ll be there. If you would like to walk in the parade and haven’t committed to waking with another group yet then MCC Brighton will be walking and have very kindly offered a place for anyone who would like to join them. Please email Kirsty Smithers at info@mccbrighton.org.uk so she can give you directions to the meeting point. If you’d like a ‘Village MCC’ iron on logo for your shirt to wear while you walk then let me know and I’ll send you one.
Although Pride has changed enormously over the years I think that it’s still important. Whilst there are those who believe that we should be ashamed of who we are, or of who our loved ones and friends are, there is a need to stand up and be counted. I believe that God created a world where a spectrum of diversity is the norm, and would disagree wholeheartedly with anyone who would argue that uniformity should be the rule. I’m proud to be a work of God, a wonderfully complicated gay man, and hope that you are proud of the work of God that you are too, however God made you.
Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish theologian, philosopher, and poet wrote that Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. Over the next two weekends we have the opportunity to experience something new. This is the first time that Trans Pride in Brighton has allowed a church to have a voice at their event, and I don’t know about you but I’ve never run a steampunk carnival game in my life! Both of them promise to be wonderful new experiences, and I’d love it if you came and shared them with me.
I hope you have a wonderful and blessed week.
Rev. Michael