Lived here long?

Here's a thing. I have a desperate need to be understood. The best way to describe it is I feel the distress of being misunderstood physically. It's something I have to consciously let go in social situations or conversations are ruined, gatherings rendered awkward.

Here's another thing. The most rewarding work I ever did, certainly the stuff I felt most passionately, was for an aspiring community arts charity, running projects and helping organise our town's revived annual feast of St John using and adapting what remained on record of the traditional festivities. It blossomed in to a long weekend of fairs, markets, gigs and huge colourful processions and dances through the town's traffic free streets. In time it became a ten day arts festival. Most importantly, we sought to use it as a vehicle, as a means of instilling pride and sense of place in one of the UKs most impoverished communities with year round projects. 

In a nutshell, our ambition wasn't matched by funding and a few years back the whole edifice came crashing down. The charity wrapped up, our year-round work and our wider agenda died with it and some well meaning folk stepped in to "save" the annual celebration as a standalone endeavour.

Now, how do you feel about this joke?:

Two sailors from Newlyn were shipwrecked on a desert island. After the initial shock they found the island had an abundance of food. They built a comfortable shelter and over time various outbuildings. A settlement.
One morning they spotted a ship on the horizon. Beside themselves with excitement, they hurriedly lit the bonfire they'd built on the islands highest point ready for this very day.
Their signalling was acknowledged by the ship and soon the captain was being rowed ashore. Salvation.
The captain was hugely impressed by the shipwrecked Newlyn men's endeavours and was fascinated by what they had built. They showed him their pig sty, vegetable plot and how they had salvaged a semblance of civilised life from what could have been a fatal situation. 
"Tell me, what's that building half way up the hill?" asked the captain.
"That's our chapel" said one of the sailors
"This is extraordinary" said the captain "A testament to faith and mans will with God's breath behind him." 
The men glowed with pride.
"And the building a little further up?" asked the captain
"Oh, that's the chapel we don't go to."

Anyone born here, or indeed anyone with roots in a small community, will recognise this joke and for what it's worth I think it's one of my favourites.

Not so one of the new leading lights of our "saved" festivities - a person from somewhere else - who not only didn't find it even vaguely amusing, but expressed great sadness at how hateful it is and bemoaned the damage religion does.

Which is where I came in. The need to be understood. I don't mean to single out individuals here and I trust I've stayed just the right side of not identifying anyone - But imagine. Imagine arriving from elsewhere in to the middle of something fundamental to the character, the very being, of a place and being so incapable of understanding what you're in the middle of that you think you can run it.
  I need to be understood. Instead I see what I understand to be the embers of my culture appropriated and presented back to me as carnival. Still a spectacle, yes, but at it's heart interpreted as no more than a huge party.
Not only that, when what I understand as my culture has the temerity to assert itself, say in that joke or at Christmas with our local carols sung in pubs, it's thrown back as regressive. "Do you HAVE to include religion?" or "I don't come to the pub to have religion rammed down my throat, sing something cheerful" (an actual comment AT CHRISTMAS).

So here we are. Not being understood and some are incapable of understanding. An upshot of this is I can never go back to the thing that at one time was my life's passion - Infact, I'm not sure I can go home, even though home is where I am. 

Someone asked me if I'd ever thought of getting involved in the events the other day. I made a joke about not playing well with others and walked away.