CÚIG GHRIANGHRAF-IRELAND Day 23

I don't have many words to offer today. We signed up for a a tour where the guides offered two competing perspectives about "The Troubles".

We first heard from Gerald, an Irish Republican man who was just shy of eleven years old the summer of '69. That's the same age that I was back then. It was the summer of the Stonewall Uprising, the summer that Judy Garland overdosed, the summer when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. And in Northern Ireland, it was the summer that launched a forty-year period of civil war, heartache and loss.

Gerald was imprisoned for six years for his connection and violence with the Irish Republican Army. He told a story that resisted Brirish colonization as inspired by the fight for Civil Rights led by leaders like Martin Luther King,Jr. He made the case that the growing tensions were bound to happen and that diplomacy is a better option. He told the story of lost friends from his neighborhood, Catholic homes being burned tu the ground, and of neighbors turning against each other.

We witnessed memorials to those lost at the sites where they perished., memorials honoring their martyrs, and angry murals beckoning observers to remember the loss.

Gerald turned us over to John after a perfunctory handshake with him. John is a Loyalist who supports the attachment to the UK He mostly told a story of what he viewed to be unprovoked bombings by the IRA against "the innocents".

We walked past the gates of a walled part of the Loyalist sections of the city. John remarked that the walls would probably last a few more decades until subsequent generations opt out of living in impenetrable fortresses.

We saw several more plaques and murals in tribute to those who fought or were murdered in skirmishes and bombings. We listened for reasons why Loyalists want to keep their attachment to the UK. We didn't hear it, and we were surprised by murals criticizing British Prime Ministers.

Years ago in my work, I was striving to mediate a fractured workplace that suffered unending turbulence. In a point of frustration I blurted out the following thought to all parties:

"I have never seen so many innocent victims of their own collective creation of misery."

That thought rings true here for me.

I think I left this experience with more questions than answers.

I don't understand why continued colonization benefits anyone as opposed to a unified Ireland.

I don't understand how progress can be made by futile attempts to negotiate a better past instead of creating a better future.

I don't understand how competing martyr stories are a source of pride rather than focusing on building unity.

I found three hours of this experience to be emotionally and physically exhausting. I can only imagine enduring the division for over forty years.

I worry that we are facing the same dilemma back home. Too many are demonizing those who differ from them, entrenched in their own shifty narratives about the other. I recognize my part in it as well although I'd like to believe that I subscribe to the notion that my happiness is not rooted in someone else's misery.

I hope that we find a better way to lift each other up, but the prospects seem a bit elusive right now. I hope that I'm wrong.Read more