I recently attended Wokingham Pride – what a joyful, celebration of life, love and acceptance.
The familiar rainbow Pride flag was designed in 1978 by Gilbert Baker. I learned that the colours of the flag are all significant.
Red represents life and passion, orange for healing, fun and celebration, yellow, the colour of sunshine, for new ideas and thoughts. Green is the colour of nature, prosperity and growth, indigo is for serenity, the ability to find calm and peace. Violet, the colour of royalty represents spirit recognising that we are all spiritual.
Those are all the colours of the rainbow which we are familiar with in many contexts, but the Pride flag has added brown and black to represent people of colour and baby blue, pink and white recognise those who are transgender and those living with HIV/AIDS.
It just struck me, looking at the flag and the myriad of people represented at the Pride festival, how wonderfully inclusive and diverse this movement is and how at its heart it is about acceptance and flourishing. For anyone to flourish they need to find a community where they are loved, accepted and encouraged, and to find peace with who they are.
As a Christian, I believe that these are all values encompassed in my faith.
The Bible shows me that God has a deep desire to reach out to everyone and connect them, not only to His life-giving self but also to one another so that in community and acceptance we can grow, we have so much to learn from one another, if we can learn the art of connecting across differences.
The Revd Becky Medlicott is curate at All Saints Church Wokingham, writing on behalf of Churches Together in Wokingham
