The Dream Picnic

The Dream Picnic

Last Sunday on my way to church I saw this banner in Sainsbury’s car park.  What an impact it could make if it appeared above the church entrance, where earlier this month the red Christian Aid banner fluttered in the breeze!

Tonight, I hope to attend a concert given by  Edinburgh’s splendid LGBT choir Loud and Proud, of which my daughter Linda is an enthusiastic member.  It is now thirty years since Linda finally plucked up enough courage to “come out” to me.  It was no real surprise to me that she is lesbian, and I was glad that she felt able to discuss the matter frankly.  However, I was very distressed on her account, thinking of how hard life was probably going to be for her, how difficult it would be for her to feel accepted.  I felt like a tigress ready to defend her cub!

But this was only a few months after my dear husband Bob’s death, and I was still emotionally drained.  How could God expect me to be strong now for Linda when I still felt so weakened by grief?

That night, after praying hard for strength and guidance, I was granted the following vivid dream.

I dreamt that Bob and I were on a little tour of the Scottish Borders, enjoying the pleasure of one another’s company as we sat side by side in our car.  We stopped for a picnic at a beauty spot – by the spectacular waterfall known as the Grey Mare’s Tail.  I was spreading out a square cloth on the grass when suddenly Linda arrived on a motor-bike, with her friend ‘Janice’ (also lesbian) in the side car.  They were both wearing black leather jackets and trousers and black helmets with visors, which allowed them to remain unrecognisable.  They stopped, removed their helmets and came to join us on the grass.

Placing the food and drink on the square cloth, I asked us all to sit down, one on each of the four sides.  This was very important because it emphasised that we were all absolutely equal.  With the breaking of the bread, this simple meal took on the solemnity and blessing of a Communion service.  It was impressed on me that, even though we had ben provided with different kinds of vehicles to travel in, we were all heading along the same road, in the same direction.

As I woke up I had a wonderful sense of peace, and over the past thirty years I have often had reason to thank God for the help and guidance I received that night.  As a symbolic reminder of that special dream I have this old photograph on my bedroom wall.  Bob had taken it about ten years previously at the Grey Mare’s Tail car park when a stray sheep came up to share my ginger biscuit!

Glad as I was that Linda had felt confident to “come out”, I now felt that I was now the one “in the closet”!  At that time there were very few people with whom I could discuss the matter – least of all, alas, my friends at the church.  So, in 1990 I was glad to attend a conference at Churches’ House , Dunblane which was entitled ‘Changing Churches’ Attitude?’ and to which parents of gay people were invited.

I have three vivid memories of that conference.  The first is of a talk by the mother of a gay son, who had set up a form of Samaritans in her home city (Birmingham?)  She spoke of the misery of some of the young  people who had contacted her: girls confused and depressed because they just couldn’t conform to the “normal”  prince-and-princess-lived-happily-ever-after culture, and boys who were in despair at being totally unable to live up to a father’s hope of a macho son.  The lady asked us which adjective best described most parents’ reaction when their child “came out”.   “Disappointed? Angry? Bewildered? Horrified?” we suggested.  “No, bereaved is the most common” she told us.  “They feel that the child they thought they knew has died.  So, they need to be helped to realise that he or she has actually been that way since birth.”

My second memory is of sharing dinner at a table for eight, where I was the only female and the only “straight” person.  So now I knew what it felt like to be the odd one out!  The man on my left told me that it was only after both his parents had died, when he was forty-five, that he had at last felt able to admit to himself that he was gay.  On my right sat a bitter misogynist who spoke angrily about all women in general.

My third memory is a very poignant one.  I had been asked to play the piano for the Sunday morning worship, and to choose suitable hymns.  The first was a favourite of mine – Christ’s is the world in which we move (to the tune Dream Angus) by contemporary hymnwriters John L. Bell and Graham Maule, both of the Iona Community.  I asked all the men to sing the second verse and chorus on their own.  The tears still come to my eyes when I remember their lovely rich tenor and bass voices singing these words: ‘Feel for the people we most avoid – strange or bereaved or never employed.  Feel for the women and feel for the men who fear that their living is all in vain.  (Chorus)  To the lost Christ shows his face, to the unloved he gives his embrace, to those who cry in pain or disgrace, Christ makes, with his friends, a touching place.’

After the service the “misogynist” approached me, to my surprise, and gave me a hug, quietly saying “Thank you.”

Over the years since then the Gay Pride movement has slowly increased awareness and acceptance of the fact that a percentage of the population will always be homosexual- not by choice but by birth.  Alas, there will too, no doubt, always be homophobia – for all sorts of reasons.  But inclusiveness has increased – with the result that Linda and her beloved Bex will, this Sunday, be celebrating their seventh wedding anniversary.

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