Northern Ireland
I have been in Northern Ireland now for 4 days. It has been fascinating.
On Thursday my host, David Brown, the Church of Ireland (Anglican) Youth Director, took me for a wee tour of Belfast. Shankhill, Falls Road, along the "Peace lines" where there was rioting, shooting and protest last week. It feels hard and brutal. The murals are so sad. Republican areas fly the Irish flag (which includes the Protestant Orange) and the murals are largely of their glorious dead, and the IRA and Sinn Fein. Loyalist (Protestant) areas are bedecked in red white and blue, little pendants flying zig zagged down the street, like a party, only not. And Union Jacks on every pole. It was oppressive as an NZ republican. And so many of the murals are for the various Paramilitary groups, and depict armed masked men point an automatic weapon out at the viewer. Kids grow up seeing these. It is so sad. In the face of all that I can only say I found Belfast harrowing. The divisions are so deep. It is so hard to see any hope here at all. And the divisions are deepened by unemployment, poverty, drug abuse and alcoholism, and ignorance and fear, even where and perhaps mostly where the two communities meet. Sad.
On Friday I went to the Ulster Museum, and spent quite a while at an exhibition on conflict in Ireland. What I didn't appreciate is the long long almost (it seemed) constant history of conflict in this land. It is steeped in it. It almost seemed that without conflict the Irish wouldn’t know how to define themselves. That perhaps is too bleak, and yet there is a lot of truth in that.
The Guinness is however good.
On Friday I came to Corrymeela. This is a community which for 40 years has worked for peace and reconciliation. It is a safe place for communities to meet and to break down the fear and build relationships. I have sat in with a group using this place for their youth weekend. That has been surreal really. Open Doors has been speaking about persecuted Christians overseas. (Although even they conceded that the reasons they are persecuted are not so clear cut, and are tied in with tribal issues, land issues, and anger at America and the West.) What is surreal is that there is no suggestion on how to apply this back to here, where Catholics and Protestants are persecuted for being Christian by other Christians. The message is "get involved in helping Christians overseas!” But it just felt so weird when there is so so much Christians need to be doing here in Northern Ireland to end inter Christian persecution. How do we hold the tow together I wonder?
I was also left wondering about the wisdom of Open Doors. It does Amnesty International Work for Christians only. But what about non Christians? Should we not care for them? And as I say, too often the real reason for the persecution was too unclear. The danger is that we end up with this Christian ghetto mentality. And if that goes too far, well you can see the results of that here.
What I am left with though is a growing conviction that youth work in Aotearoa New Zealand has to include a large dollop of bridge building and reconciliation work among Pakeha, Maori and PI young people. Training at 3Tikanga youth events has to focus on that for the future of our land and our church. One of the workers who I am attached to talked to me about the need for each side to be strong in their identity. One of the problems here is that Catholics are clear about who they are and have over the last long time built up both a sense of community, and the structures within their communities to maintain those communities. The Protestants have much less idea of who they are apart from Not Catholic, and their communities are much less developed. They have relied on the State, which they can't any more. So they resent that, and the peace process, and everything that takes their identity away. I was struck by the similarities in NZ with Pakeha. The task is there both developing Pakeha identity, and building cross cultural relationships and corporate identity.
I look forward to getting home and talking more about that.
Tomorrow I head off to the south, the Republic.
On Thursday my host, David Brown, the Church of Ireland (Anglican) Youth Director, took me for a wee tour of Belfast. Shankhill, Falls Road, along the "Peace lines" where there was rioting, shooting and protest last week. It feels hard and brutal. The murals are so sad. Republican areas fly the Irish flag (which includes the Protestant Orange) and the murals are largely of their glorious dead, and the IRA and Sinn Fein. Loyalist (Protestant) areas are bedecked in red white and blue, little pendants flying zig zagged down the street, like a party, only not. And Union Jacks on every pole. It was oppressive as an NZ republican. And so many of the murals are for the various Paramilitary groups, and depict armed masked men point an automatic weapon out at the viewer. Kids grow up seeing these. It is so sad. In the face of all that I can only say I found Belfast harrowing. The divisions are so deep. It is so hard to see any hope here at all. And the divisions are deepened by unemployment, poverty, drug abuse and alcoholism, and ignorance and fear, even where and perhaps mostly where the two communities meet. Sad.
On Friday I went to the Ulster Museum, and spent quite a while at an exhibition on conflict in Ireland. What I didn't appreciate is the long long almost (it seemed) constant history of conflict in this land. It is steeped in it. It almost seemed that without conflict the Irish wouldn’t know how to define themselves. That perhaps is too bleak, and yet there is a lot of truth in that.
The Guinness is however good.
On Friday I came to Corrymeela. This is a community which for 40 years has worked for peace and reconciliation. It is a safe place for communities to meet and to break down the fear and build relationships. I have sat in with a group using this place for their youth weekend. That has been surreal really. Open Doors has been speaking about persecuted Christians overseas. (Although even they conceded that the reasons they are persecuted are not so clear cut, and are tied in with tribal issues, land issues, and anger at America and the West.) What is surreal is that there is no suggestion on how to apply this back to here, where Catholics and Protestants are persecuted for being Christian by other Christians. The message is "get involved in helping Christians overseas!” But it just felt so weird when there is so so much Christians need to be doing here in Northern Ireland to end inter Christian persecution. How do we hold the tow together I wonder?
I was also left wondering about the wisdom of Open Doors. It does Amnesty International Work for Christians only. But what about non Christians? Should we not care for them? And as I say, too often the real reason for the persecution was too unclear. The danger is that we end up with this Christian ghetto mentality. And if that goes too far, well you can see the results of that here.
What I am left with though is a growing conviction that youth work in Aotearoa New Zealand has to include a large dollop of bridge building and reconciliation work among Pakeha, Maori and PI young people. Training at 3Tikanga youth events has to focus on that for the future of our land and our church. One of the workers who I am attached to talked to me about the need for each side to be strong in their identity. One of the problems here is that Catholics are clear about who they are and have over the last long time built up both a sense of community, and the structures within their communities to maintain those communities. The Protestants have much less idea of who they are apart from Not Catholic, and their communities are much less developed. They have relied on the State, which they can't any more. So they resent that, and the peace process, and everything that takes their identity away. I was struck by the similarities in NZ with Pakeha. The task is there both developing Pakeha identity, and building cross cultural relationships and corporate identity.
I look forward to getting home and talking more about that.
Tomorrow I head off to the south, the Republic.
Comments
It's good to know that other people are on the same wavelenght, I really admire the steps the anglican church in NZ have taken in building bridges between NZs different cultures.