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Nordy at Corrymeela
Saturday 1st August 2015 @ 11:52 am

 With thanks to Sir Walter Scott,

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave …”

 

It all started a couple of weeks ago – bringing together, Irish and Northern Irish British – Catholics and Protestants. They came together with Israeli Jews, an American–living–in–Ireland Jew, and a couple of young Muslims, for a week of conversation and discovery on ‘living in contested spaces,’ at Corrymeela. (Some of my in–the–midst–of–it–all thoughts are contained in the last blog). We had Palestinians ready to come with bags packed, but guttingly they were unable to obtain visas. That act alone highlighted power–imbalance and oppression that those in Palestine live under – our small attempt at engagement was therefore hampered from the start by much larger issues of justice, control, identity, and freedom. The disappointment never fully left the room, but it did take a comfortable seat amongst us, as those present engaged fully and meaningfully  – discussing militarism, terrorism, nationalism, feminism, occupation, hope and much more.

 

And in the midst of it all, one personal contemplation

stubbornly refused to be shaken loose.

My own national identity.

 

I am a citizen of Ireland. I am also a citizen of Britain. I have lived most of my life in Northern Ireland, dreadfully aware of the dangers seeping through my tribe. I am a white middle class protestant – my family heritage is from the inner east and inner west of the city. The immediate generations of my family hold no sense of sectarianism – my mother reminded me only yesterday of my fathers walk to the Roman Catholic neighbours forty years ago offering them and their priest the use of our Methodist church as their RC Chapel was on fire after being attacked by ‘my tribe.’ One sentiment I heard my father preach several times during decades of ‘The Troubles’ was always stark. After protestant paramilitaries had carried out violence in the name of protecting the people of Northern Ireland, he would make sure there was no ambiguity, “You are not doing it in my name.”

We were not brought up to be afraid of, disengaged from, or intimidated by the other side … I just didn’t know any.

 

Violet Protestant reactionism never sat well with me. I never understood it, and never felt the need to be protected from an Irishness that I longed to know more about. As I became a young adult, the myths, the music, the romanticism and the beauty of whatever it meant to be ‘Irish’ was an ever–present question.

I bought traditional music.

I went with protestant friends to traditional sessions in Belfast bars.

I learned some Gaelic phrases – and learnt that whatever the words look like on a page, they never sound like that out loud.

I read Oscar Wilde and W.B. Yeats.

I holidayed in Donegal – and when my working life started I found myself circling the whole of the island several times a year. When I knew the route from Belfast to Limerick without having to look at the map, I knew I gained a notch toward my own Irishness.

 

Then in my mid 30’s I moved to Dublin.

And I learned I wasn’t Irish.

And I learned people in Dublin didn’t see me as Irish.

I was a nordy.

I still am. Eight years later.

 

The ‘problem’ is I was never quite British. I certainly wasn’t English. And now I discovered I wasn’t quite Irish either.

 

I am this strange thing called Northern Irish.

 

Carving such an identity is not easy. Issues of power, control, identity, freedom, militarism and terrorism are never far from everyday life.

 

Hence, I spent months working to bring together Israeli’s and Palestinians with Irish/Northern Irish – as engagement with ‘the other’ is one of the few things that has worked in this small corner of Europe. Yet I ended up having to face – again – just how strange it can be growing up on this beautiful,

tortured,

luscious,

character–full,

vivacious,

sad yet glorious island.

 

One hundred years ago today, Padraig Pearce spoke words beside the grave of a dead fenian. Jeremiah ODonovan Rossa died in USA, and his body was immediately brought back to Ireland. Pearce’s words at the graveside are amongst the most quoted in modern Irish history, and helped to ignite sparks toward another armed uprising against the British forces – which were mainly occupied fighting the Kaiser. That uprising would take place less than a year later, and would set in motion events that would see this island bloody beaten broken and divided by 1922.

 

Pearce’s oration captivated the listeners by tying together

occupation, oppression and liberty.

He enlivened a new generation for hope,

he entwined responsibility and history,

he exalted the soul of the nation

and he spoke spiritually,

seizing God for his cause, as amongst the crypts he proclaimed,

“This is a place of peace, sacred to the dead, where men should speak with all charity and with all restraint but I hold it a Christian thing, as O’Donovan Rossa held it, to hate evil, to hate untruth, to hate oppression; and, hating them, to strive to overthrow them.” 

 

He finished, uncompromisingly.

“Life springs from death: and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations. The Defenders of this Realm have worked well in secret and in the open.

They think that they have pacified Ireland.

They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half.

They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools!

They have left us our Fenian dead, and, while Ireland holds these graves,

Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”

 

 

It’s a stirring piece of oration.

And it worked.

Violence. Terror. Suffering. And separation followed.

 

As a Northern Irish human,

I wonder how God felt being pulled into it all.

 

And I wonder how God feels still being pulled into it all.

 

 

Thank God for Corrymeela.

And the hundreds of others who will celebrate there with me this weekend.

Well done to them for 50 years of believing people can live well, together.

Please, don’t stop.


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