Hebrew Bible and Christian Scriptures

I love pictures. I’m that weird person who really will look at all your vacation pictures. If you take fourteen pictures of the same cactus, I will make fun of you and attempt to introduce you to the ‘delete’ button, but I will still look. I take pictures all the time. I have thousands and thousands of photos that I’ve taken over the past two decades. I have about 100 that I’ve taken in the past three weeks. So thus, a prompt saying “post a picture you took” is a little stressful.

After much deliberation, I chose one of the photos of which I am most proud. Taken on YFC Staff Retreat in Whitepark Bay in November of 2005. I had just begun to fall in love with that wee nation, but had no idea how much that love would wind its way through my soul. As I put the finishing touches on my PhD proposal, I find myself often day dreaming of life back in Belfast and what it would look like to move in those rhythms again. This picture is a window into that world for me – one I hope to inhabit again.

Depending on who you ask, April-September in Northern Ireland is referred to as “The Marching Season,” “The Paramilitary Party Season,” or, by the most cynical of my friends, “The Silly Season.” The time surrounding July 12 is the height of sectarian activity, with the night before marked by bonfires in loyalist neighborhoods throughout the nation. “The July 12th Fortnight” is an unofficial holiday time – with many businesses on ‘vacation’ and families leave the country. For an explanation, check my blog entry from 2006. This photo was taken at the Annandale Embankment in East Belfast on July 11, 2006.

I woke up yesterday and knew immediately that it was July 11th. I don’t know how I still move in these emotional rhythms, but I do. I know that gatherings would be happening all day and long into the night, celebrating a reality that grieves me. I pride myself on being respectful of people and their opinions, beliefs and practices – but I will admit to having a hard time swallowing some of the traditions surrounding the 12th. It feels divisive and damaging and driven by hatred. I remember sitting on the hill and feeling the heat of the bonfire envelop me as I wondered how I would be celebrating this if I was a native.

Most of my friends shun the 12th, leaving the country for vacation – or at the very least, baracading themselves in their house on the night of the 11th and rolling their eyes at the activities of a minority of their fellow countrymen. Because it is a minority, I promise. But I had students who clung to these traditions for their identity. They understood themselves as part of this community and this is how this community carves itself out. What’s the line between valid expression and damaging division?

I’m not ashamed to say this piece of the culture grieves me. Celebration of difference as a ranking system grieves me anywhere, but even more in this country that has captured my soul. So, in light of all of that, I am sending thoughts and prayers of peace, wellness and calm to that wee isle today and I’d invite you to do the same.

In Martha Minnow’s book, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence, the author brings her law background into the discussion of reconciliation and restoration of societies destroyed by mass violence. Spending much of her time exploring the Truth Commissions of South Africa and the slave trade of the southern United States, Minnow explains the power of memory in societal restoration.

In honest review, this book is poorly written for anyone outside the law profession. The book is an examination of legal precedents that have little application to those not looking to work at The Hague or with the ICC. If those represent one’s chosen direction, I would measure this book invaluable and demand purchase and serious consideration. For the purposes of integration into the class structure and my work in other classes, the gleanable information was surrounding the power of memory.

Minnow makes the claim that ‘the past continues to torment because it is not the past’. For most societies and peoples in the midst of reconstruction, they are required to live and work among the persons who perpetrated the crimes. Even worse, they are not permitted to enter into their distinct and restorative society. One thinks here of both the Israelites of the exilic period and current internally displaced persons around the globe. As ministers and members of the Kingdom, we would do well to investigate the concept of reconciliation outside of a theoretical context. For instance, we are often unafraid to toss around the words ‘reconciliation’ and ‘forgiveness’ when speaking to abused persons. If the past is truly not the past and in fact continues to haunt every moment of the present, how can we ask persons to dwell among their abusers and behave as though nothing is wrong? The phrase “to forgive and forget” is horribly damaging and must be stricken from our pastoral counseling vocabulary, especially in light of psychological and cultural experts like Minnow that remind us memory is a powerful and driving reality.

As stated above, there are valuable propositions Minnow makes within her text which pastoral personnel and other persons who work with the souls and emotions within humanity. One simply wishes she had packaged the concepts differently. I plan to follow some of her resources within the bibliography to further explore this concept of memory and it’s interrelationship with exile and restoration.

Kids, this movie in INTENSE. It bills itself specifically about Bobby Sands and the hunger strike in Maze Prison in N. Ireland in 1981. However, it’s more acurately three films in one.

The first is mostly about the conditions in the Maze – and specifically H-Block – during the blanket strike. This was when the arrested IRA men demanded to be granted political prisoner status and be allowed to wear their own clothes. When Prime Minister Thatcher continually denied them that right – referring to the men as terrorists only in her national speeches – they decided that nakedness was better than degrading themselves and donning the clothing of criminals. This section is hard to watch because it makes no apologies. The prisoners smeared their excrement on the walls to show defiance : that is shown in the movie. A common act was to smuggle letters in and out through body cavities : that is shown, as well as the procedure used by the guards to retrieve the smuggled items. Like I said, rough and intense.

The second part is my favorite of the sections. A 20 minute conversation between Sands and his priest, the section largely deals with the nuances of the movement around this time. The priest questions the wisdom of the hunger strike; is it protest or suicide? Is martyrdom respectable if it won’t change anything and leaves families decimated? How does an oppressed people seek recognition and respect in the midst of an empire that would like nothing more than for them to go away? What role does faith play in the midst of the movement? I will not articulate the conversation here, but know that it is brilliant.

The third section is essentially watching Sands starve himself to death. Kudos to the make-up department and to the actor himself, because I literally felt nauseous at times as we watched this character slip towards his death.

My only complaint is that the movie did not explore the political aspects of the strike really at all. Sands was elected as an MP while he was on strike and both that event and the strike itself were formative in the arrival of Sinn Fein on the national political scene. I wish the film would have dealt with those aspects.

However, that being said, it is an incredibly well done movie and deserves all the accolades it received. Not recommended, however, for persons with weak stomachs or for those who need happy endings.

trailer embedded below

When I lived in Waringstown, I decided to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by going to the Church of Ireland celebration in Downpatrick. (blogged about it here) Ever since, the way that most Americans celebrate St. Patrick’s Day has annoyed me beyond all measure. The rector who gave the message talked about how he wised the nation of N. Ireland would embrace St. Patrick’s legacy in a new way.

Patrick was, after all, a Roman Briton who came to the island originally as a slave. According to his own Confessions, he later returned to the island, after being set free, because God told him to live among the ragtag collections of people who inhabited the island. He was instrumental in uniting the island under and some historians argue the four county division was largely due to conversations he had. Essentially, he was an outsider who became an insider and is venerated today as the patron saint of a nation that was not his own.

Instead of celebrating the day with dyed beer and cheesy t-shirts, perhaps we should celebrate it as a day of ultimate hospitality. That we would celebrate cross-cultural living and how people of different ways and means can do life together. His ideas were especially poignant in a nation that often has a hard time liking itself, much less offering permanent hospitality to outsiders.

The concept of “welcome” is at the core of the gospel. We are invited to come and to taste and to see and to be and to experience. It is out of “welcome” that we are then told to ‘go’ – but the sharing and spreading and conversations couldn’t happen if we didn’t open up our lives and allow others to walk around inside them.

However, community and hospitality both take bravery. In the same fashion that it took incredible faith and articulate bravery for Patrick to head back to the land of his captivity, it takes incredible faith and bravery for us to commit to community.

Therefore, if we really are to celebrate the spirit of St. Patrick and commemorate his life, we should call it “Bravery Day” or “Community Day” or “Welcome Day”. Now that concept is one to which I could raise a glass.

images of the “peace wall” that divides catholic and protestant neighborhoods in belfast. there are many barricades throughout the country, but the “peace wall” is probably the most famous man-made structure. it’s become tradition for people to sign it and paint graffiti on it – both to promote ‘peace’ or promote their own sectarianism. for further explanation as to the emotional mechanics of living on either side of this wall, i refer you to this article. note it was written in 2008, ten years after the Troubles supposedly ended.

Of all of the ironies that abound in N. Ireland, I suppose the “peace wall” that divides the Shankill from the Falls is one of my favorites. As I said above, there are many boundaries erected throughout the country. One of the towns I frequented had metal gates that were ever ready to be closed at a moment’s notice. Londonderry/Derry has the natural barrier of the river and most villages and towns throughout the country have natural dividers and such – but Belfast is a little different. Hence the wall.

I understand the wall prevented so much violence and creates necessary barriers for a long period of time and still does. I am not necessarily advocating that the walls be torn down. To be honest, I’m not sure that would be healthy for either community at the present national mindset. However, I do wonder if the wall itself has become a self-fulfilling prophesy of sorts. Does the wall cause more violence and prevent peace because it prevents conversation? How can we teach children to live in a post-conflict land when they live next to a giant wall they’re told is necessary to protect them from the ‘others’?

When my friend Jon was visiting, we took a walking tour of West Belfast. To give you the community breakdown, West Belfast is mostly republican while East Belfast is mostly loyalist. North and South are both a little messy. As we walked through West Belfast, the tour guide pointed out the memorial murals painted to those who lost their lives in the struggles. I have many seared images from that walk (and from the rest of the year), but one that stands out even today is a large mural that proclaimed Dr. King’s definition of peace: “Peace is not the absence of war but the presence of justice.”

Peace is a word we toss around often. Rallies, posters, stickers, hand signals – the word is ubiquitous. However, if we take Dr. King’s definition seriously, we need to be striving for justice. Justice, much like true peace, is a messy and difficult journey. What does that look like? How can I be a part of it?

the second installment in my modern psalmists series

As faithful readers know, I spent a bit of time living in the wee land of Northern Ireland. I wrote a lot about it while I was there, but in re-reading the thoughts that I was willing to throw down on paper while there – they are not even scratchings of how I was processing life around me. I have emotionally committed to myself this semester that I will be faithful to the story that land has created in me and become more willing to talk about how it has shaped my present and my future. This post is the beginning of some of that. I suppose that there are levels to which I could argue that the below song by Brian Houston (found on his exceptional ‘Jesus and Justice’ record that everyone should own) encapsulates much of why I still cannot ‘move on’ from life there. I have spent the past three and a half years trying to explain to myself and those around me why the Church in Northern Ireland has behaved the way it has and why conflict looks the way it looks and why even the name ‘The Troubles’ is telling of the national processing process. I have not always been successful. But a large piece of my questioning is the idea of violence sanctioned by religious institutions and religious persons and how people can begin to claim that Yahweh is a God of sides and territories, of flags and colors. It is that reality that Brian is speaking to in this song. Some of the images in this song are specific to the culture he is speaking to (Orange Collars are a specifically Northern Irish entity, for instance, as well as the other references to parades) – but the idea is universal. The ideas that divide us are often what are talked about the most. We spend much time debating Yahweh’s preferences without often taking into account the preferences and commands that are explicit. We are commanded to serve and to care and to offer hospitality and grace. We are called to love. I believe that’s what Brian is speaking to here. That the ultimate piece of the gospel that is non-negotiable is love. Discussing theology is grand and deciding doctrine is often necessary, but to do either at the sacrifice of love is ridiculous.

“We Don’t Need Religion” – Brian Houston I see the people in the balconies, in the streets and in their cars Party going animals and in the backer rooms and the bars Saying “We don’t need religion, we don’t need religion” I’ve been a timberjack, been a laborer, been a shipyard man and a shirker I worked with builders building houses and heard a million McDonald’s workers Saying “We don’t need religion, we don’t need religion, We don’t need religion, but we could use the love of God” Well I’ve got false prophets on my TV tell me this Union’s doomed While the Spirit-filled believers shake up the floor space in the room Saying “We don’t need religion, we don’t need religion” Come on you preachers, you pastors, all you priests, nuns and scholars Come on and walk down those roads Without those robes, crucifixes and Orange Collars You know we don’t need religion, you know we can’t feed religion Well we don’t need religion, but we could use the love of God So is it Saturday or is it Sunday, the fact is I’m never sure Well, there’s a Sabbath in there someway Why can’t we try Yom Kippur? You know we don’t need religion, we don’t need religion And while we’re all so busy fighting, using up God’s precious time There’s a thousand starving homeless people saying “Buddy, can you spare a dime?” We can’t eat religion, we can’t eat religion, We don’t need religion, but we could use the love of God

Amen