From the last pages of my Ireland journal
Our Ireland journals were due 3 hours ago, so I finally completed it, and here’s what I wrote for my final entry:
How can I put into words the incredible time we had in Ireland? I know that whatever I write here will not do it justice. In reading through my journals, a couple themes emerge: the role of sports in Northern Ireland, theology of reconciliation and reconciliation of theology, and my journey in my personal stance on violence and war. Yet there is so much more.
To try to craft a beautiful summary would be vain. I can only attempt to summarize, not beautifully summarize. We learned so many things in so many ways. We heard so many things. We saw so many things. We met so many people. We encountered so much. We experienced so much.
Even before leaving campus, we heard the quote “If Christians don’t have anything to say about reconciliation, Christians don’t have anything to say.” After seeing how the church in Northern Ireland has dropped the ball and perpetuated the division and violence, I cannot forget that quote. After seeing how the church in Northern Ireland is participating in God’s mission of reconciliation, I cannot forget that quote.
I think many of my friends would not consider me to be a particularly emotionally expressive person, but I can’t think of Northern Ireland without getting emotional. I can’t think of Belfast without having my heart hurt. Since coming back, I’ve replayed in my mind every day the scenes from Derry on the day of the release of the Saville Report. David Cameron calling what happened “unjustified and unjustifiable.” John Kelly and the other relatives declaring their loved ones innocent.
I still am amazed by the hospitality we were shown. The owner of the SPAR in Rostrevor giving us a ride back from her store. Aaron Boyd taking Andrew, Beau, and I on a tour of Belfast, his city, and taking us to CNR neighborhoods, where he’d never been before. MLAs from Stormont taking time to talk to a bunch of college kids from a little college nestled in Santa Barbara.
The stories. Stories of hurt. Stories of loss. Stories of pain. Stories of hope. And telling every story was a human being, somebody made in the Imago Dei. These things happened to real people, who have real families, who have real lives. I’m tearing up as I write this. And I am not one to be melodramatic.
And the Church. Oh, the Church. The Bride of Jesus. In light of the history of the Church, in light of everything we had seen and heard in Northern Ireland, how my heart hurt when some of us could not take communion in Galway. And then I think of Corrymeela, and of the monastery in Rostrevor, and hope enters. And then I think of Westmont. I think of our group worshiping in the Cree at Corrymeela, Catholics and Protestants alike. And yes, Westmont is already a beautiful picture of people coming together, but there is still more to be had.
That brings me to our group. Group dynamics were better than I ever could have imagined. Sure, there were the clusters of people who gravitated towards each other, but we could all get together and have a good talk, in class, at dinner, or over a few drinks. For five weeks, a transformative community was cultivated. Maybe our group didn’t have some of the more dramatic differences in background, providing for some wonderful study in identity and reconciliation, but the group was what we were given, and with what we were given, we practiced what we were learning. Not perfectly, and not always, but I can say with confidence we did.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget our time. I don’t want to. And I’m going to pray that Northern Ireland be able to journey with her wounds.
“Let us say together in the desert of our hearts
Let your healing fountain start.”
Dude, I just read the blog below this one with all the brief reflections.
It sounds SOO incredible man! What a sick trip. I’m glad you got to go on it man. I’m excited to hear more about this man!
austincrowder
July 19, 2010 at 11:51
Hey Felix!
I know this post has been up for a while, but it reminded me of a poem:
The Task
It’s from the massive Norman earthworks I glimpsed through a curtain of trees
as I drove quickly past,
somewhere near Kilmainham, County Meath,
that the place took its name. Nobber. From the Irish an obair, ‘the task.’
From that and my dearest friend slowly dying
in the Adelaide Hospital; the photograph deep in my pocket of us as young women,
taken on a March day, the first day of spring in the Botanic Gardens in Ankara,
laughing, with no sense of what was to come;
the face of the Muslim woman from Algeria I saw in a newspaper lately
after she was told that the throats
of eight of her children had been cut; the major Serbian poet
who was the commandant of a major camp; the literary historian
who enjoyed an off-moment with his friends, playing ball with a human skull;
my own husband who spent six days in a coma while I looked out the windows
of the waiting room at the light going down on the bay
between Dun Laoghaire and Howth, at the come and go of the tide;
heavy traffic on the road as the entire population of Ireland rushed here and there,
countless as bud-blasts from the trees;
to take it all in, to make room in your heart without having your heart burst,
to take in not only this but that Norman motte and bailey
I passed near Kilmainham or thereabouts,
a place called Nobber. That’s the task. An obair. A task that’s far from easy.
-Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill (translated by Paul Muldoon)
Thanks for your posts about Ireland!
Alicia
Alicia
March 16, 2011 at 23:24