Happy New Year

I doubt it will surprise anyone to hear that Advent is a busy season in a church and I have not been an exception.  These past few weeks have been packed as I have, in addition to my normal jobs, I narrated the Lisburn Sunday School Christmas Service, I performed a narration and did a reading for the carol service, and of course, attended and helped to plan several Christmas parties.

Despite being so busy (and missing home, of course), I still had a great Christmas here.  Christmas Eve I opened presents from my parents with them and my sisters over skype, then went to the Christmas Eve service at 11:30PM, where we took communion and confirmed three new members, including one girl who I work with in Sunday School and Flame (Youth Group/Fellowship), so that was a bit of an exciting moment for me.  The sermon was also very interesting, focusing on gender roles in Christmas, and how it wouldn't happen without women.  Women cook the dinners, wrap the presents, keep track of who to send cards to, who to invite to a Christmas party, men are given the tasks the women think we can't screw up, often after women have attempted to remove as much difficulty as possible, and yet so often we still screw things up--the gifts are poorly wrapped, some critical family member is forgotten on the card list.   Even in the biblical account of the birth of Christ, it is Mary who does most of the work; all Joseph has to do is remember the names Jesus Emmanuel.  Further, though David didn't mention this, we can assume it would have fallen to Joseph to ensure they had a place to stay (at which he was at best only partially successful).

On Christmas Day I went to the morning service, which was light and informal, instead of doing a sermon, David just ran around asking the children what they got for Christmas, there were a lot of new shirts and jumpers (sweaters), and several toys, including transformers.

Then he got to me, the only person he asked over the age of 10.  I wasn't at all ready, and, unfortunately the first thing that came to mind was the Vietnamese silk dressing gown (robe), which my parents picked up on their trip, and gave the congregation a good laugh while giving my cheeks a bit of color.  After the service, I went up to Joseen’s house for Christmas dinner.  Joseen is a member of the Harmony Hill session, and is involved with the Base as well.  Joseen’s daughter, Mary, is the member of the Lambeg Project Committee to whom John reports, and is the step-mother of one of the youth at Flame, and was present with her family as well.  I was also excited to meet Joseen’s sister, Ruth Patterson, who is quite the amazing woman.  She was the first woman to be ordained in Ireland, and served as the minister of Kilmakee Presbyterian (where my flat mate works, and where she is still something of a legend).  She currently runs Restoration Ministries, which does work in peace-making and reconciliation.  Christmas dinner her is fairly similar to what I’m used to at home, the core of the meal consists of turkey, ham, stuffing, gravy and potatoes, and was an excellent meal, though I do miss sweet potatoes.

I spend Boxing Day with David and his family, including his parents and his brother’s family, and that was also an excellent meal, with pork and lamb instead of turkey.  Heather (David’s wife) is an excellent cook and hostess, and always makes me feel very welcome.  After the meal we watched David’s eldest son’s wedding video as David’s parents had not yet seen it, and while I didn’t know most of the people involved, it was interesting to watch to see where British and American weddings differ (the differences are pretty subtle, but they exist).  Once David’s family left, I hung around for a few more hours and just chatted about life and home.  David seems to remain excited about letting me take a few services in the coming months, and while I’m very nervous, am excited for the opportunity to get some experience, and hopefully to become even more connected on the Harmony Hill side of my placement, where I sometimes feel that I am not doing enough. 

Sunday morning came a bit too quickly—I was very disoriented when my alarm went off, and it took me a few minutes to remember why I had even set it the night before, since it certainly couldn’t be Sunday already (going to Church on 3 of 4 consecutive days is a bit disconcerting).  Anyway, David managed to work the Vietnamese dressing gown into the sermon again, once again turning me a bit red.  It seems the consensus is that I’ll keep hearing about it until I wear it to church, since after that it can’t be trumped.  If it happens, I’ll post pictures.

Today I played football (soccer) with a bunch of the men from Harmony Hill (and one of the women), where I pretty much made a fool out of myself, but at least I can hide behind the excuse of being American.  The game went well until the end when we had a minor injury, but nothing too terrible.  This evening I had supper with Clarke’s family, and then watched Taken.  Tomorrow Andy and I leave for Dublin, where we’ll be until the 2^nd of January, when we go to London, returning to Belfast on the 4^th.  Happy New Year everyone.

20 Years

When I was a senior in high school I was, like many others, approached by an army recruiter. I had no intention of enlisting, I had, I think by that point already been accepted to Virginia, but thought it polite, to go and hear him out, to do my best to consider all options. While there we discussed the fact that I had been accepted to University, and that I felt called to the ministry--he told me he could get me a position as a chaplain's assistant where I could acquire some practical experience before later going to university and seminary on the army's dime. I politely turned him down, but army recruiters are a persistent bunch, and he passed my name up the line, so that later that week I received a call from a colonel who was, I believe, responsible for recruiting in the region including Virginia. This colonel had clearly been briefed on the substance of my discussion with the recruiting sergeant I had met with, and closed his pitch with the line "The army needs more Christian soldiers."

It's a line that has stuck with me, partly because at the time my thought was quite different. I felt then that the army needed more Muslim soldiers, more soldiers who better understood the complexities of Iraqi and Afghani society, soldiers who wouldn't be viewed as the beginning of another wave of crusader invasion. Now, I have even greater doubts about his statement. I want to be a peace maker. I do not doubt the necessity of military action in some circumstances, but I doubt the ability of the military to create peace. Peace is not an absence of fighting. Peace cannot be obtained just through the removal of a dictator, the destruction of an insurgency. These things are often necessary, I'm not so naive as to argue against that, I only doubt the ability of the military to create lasting peace on its own, it seems that military alone can at best cause the cessation of open hostility necessary for beginning the process. We don't need more Christian soldiers in the army; we need more Christians on the other fronts. We need more Christians doing the charitable work that heals and rebuilds communities. Peace is more than the absence of violence.

This point is especially apparent to me here with the combination of previously mentioned Remembrance Day and that this past month marked the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall (9, November, 1989). The poignancy of that moment is not one lost here in Belfast. This past weekend I saw someone wearing a shirt that read "Berlin: 1961-1989 Belfast: 1969-?" Much has been made of the success of the peace process in Northern Ireland. The paramilitaries have largely disarmed. There is a power sharing government in place that is at least mostly functional. The Good Friday Accords seem to be a success on those fronts, but those are not the only standards of peace. Berlin had one wall. Northern Ireland has 47 "peace lines," 36 of which are in Belfast, and there are at least 15 miles of wall just in North Belfast..

The walls vary greatly in nature, some are large and imposing, others are mostly wire fence, with plantings attempting to conceal them.

This wall to the left is a section of what is possibly the most famous wall in Belfast, the one that divides the Shankill (Unionist) from the Falls (Nationalist) neighborhoods.  This wall is something like 20-25 feet high, and has grown both taller and longer since originally built.  In fact, these walls, which began as temporary measures, not intended to last more than 6 months in the beginning of the Troubles in 1969 continued to multiply and grow even after the 1998 Good Friday Accords.

One of the great difficulties faced in Northern Ireland is the way in which the walls reinforce themselves. 50% of the population lives in an area where more that 90% share their religious and political background. In 2002, 68% of people between 18 and 25 reported having never had a meaningful conversation with someone from the other community.   Just 5% of children go to an integrated school.
Conventional wisdom holds that no one wants the walls to come down, this was supported by a 2008 survey administered by Millward Brown Ulster for the US-Ireland Alliance, which found "strong agreement that the walls serve to help residents feel safer by keeping the communities separated."  21% of respondents felt that the walls should come down now, but an additional 60% want the walls to come down eventually, but do not feel it is currently safe to do so.  A major obstacle to these feelings of safety is continued lack of confidence in the police--58% were fairly or very worried about the ability of police to keep the peace if the walls were to come down.

This is not entirely unjustified, people still throw projectiles over the walls, and Belfast is prone to what some call "recreational rioting," which is exactly what it sounds like, young people with nothing better to do decide to cause trouble, but in addition to the standard teen thrills, come together in the interface areas to riot.  Originally, there would be police officers stationed at the most common flash points, but then it was discovered that police presence really just provided a target, so they were replaced with CCTV cameras like the one to the right, which allows the police to respond promptly without risking instigating (or preventing) anything.

This presents two immediate concerns; first, if the police presence acted to instigate violence, do the walls do the same.  The walls themselves may not present a target, but they most certainly show exactly where the divides are in a country where around half the population lives in an area that is at least 90% of their own community.  The walls show exactly where the "others" live, and I cannot imagine that they do not contribute to the sense of the other community as "other."  In many places the walls (and some murals, more on those later) are among the most prominent features of a community, and it becomes impossible not to wonder how much the define not just the geography, but also the people, all too many of whom have grown up knowing little about the other community other than that they have to be kept apart.

Edit:
I tried to resist, because it seems at least a little cliché, but I just had to at least link to Robert Frost's "Mending Fences"