September 2006

PEACETIME AND HOPE

Dear Everyone
A friend drove us through the upmarket area by the docks in Belfast, where new low rise apartments sold for over Є 1,000,000. The sun shone on the river and a lone friendly looking policeman was walking along the road. “No one would have believed the police would ever walk here a few years ago” he said. The army hardly dared come here, it was dangerous even to drive here”
What looked impossible a few years before had happened. Where lives had been lost and fear had reigned there is peace. We stood at Falls Road looking at the murals, good PR here with pleas for peace in Palestine and pictures of Bobby Sands the MP who had died in a hunger strike.. We walked in Shankill road where the wall, high and topped with razor wire separated neighbours to stop them killing each other. The murals here were of old battles, King William and Oliver Cromwell, symbols of hard won freedoms. The kerbstones painted red, white and blue and the union jack fluttered across the streets.
But the gates between are no longer shut on the curfew, they stand open for all to pass, and they do. Peace has come , in that streets can be walked without fear and the parties are talking even if the politicians are not.. There are scars of course, deeper than a tourist will pick up, its hard to heal and regain trust... We noticed the double special security glass in the windows of an ordinary home, and surveillance cameras, which did not watch for thieves but for the bombs which had been thrown in the night. Our friend had been in the police at the time and he still found it difficult to drive in some places. The bombs had been too close and his house in a leafy peaceful country area had been attacked. A man of deep faith, he gave thanks to God that his family were safe and living in peacetime.
For there is a peace, one we had prayed for across the world, and in that country there were people who cared enough to keep trying and did not lose hope.
..
We saw so many ancient and former battle fields on our travels, so many memories of conflict being preserved, I wonder what we have really learnt?
Meanwhile we passed through the security checks, [unknown terror is a potent force] and I realised that we take peace for granted here, where the sun shines on the waters and the trees are bursting into blossom. Let us not take that gift lightly.
I found a poem by American poet Ann Weems which I though you might like to think about. She wrote this when her country went into Iraq.

On the edge of war, one foot already in,
I no longer pray for peace:
I pray for miracles.
I pray that stone hearts will turn
to tenderheartedness,
and evil intentions will turn to mercifulness,
and all the soldiers already deployed
will be snatched out of harm's way,
and the whole world will be
astounded onto its knees.
I pray that all the "God talk"
will take bones,
and stand up and shed its cloak of faithlessness,
and walk again in its powerful truth.
I pray that the whole world might
sit down together and share its bread and its wine.
Some say there is no hope,
but then I've always applauded the holy fools
who never seem to give up on the scandalousness of our faith:
that we are loved by God......
that we can truly love one another.
I no longer pray for peace:
I pray for miracles.

Ash Wednesday,March 5,2003, Copyright © 2003 by Ann Weems. All rights reserved.
[Ann Weems serves on the National Committee of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship: She has given permission to share this poem with others]

May God bless you and give you peace


Rev. Margaret Anne Low