Negotiating peace

What leads to the eruption of physical violence – the fist fight, the storming of the Capitol, the bombings, the kidnappings of hostages? What does it take to change the entrenched stories that keep “them” apart from “us”? How do you bring sworn enemies to the same table to discuss peace?

These are the questions we considered in a circle of chairs last summer in Derry, Northern Ireland, along with Kathleen Gillespie and Robin Young. On October 24, 1990, Kathleen’s husband Patsy was kidnapped by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and forced to become a human bomb. He was chained into a van loaded with explosives and made to drive into a British army checkpoint. He was killed, “vaporized,” commented Robin, along with five soldiers, even as his shouted warning saved the lives of others. Robin was a police officer at the time, one of the first on the scene as part of the Body Recovery Identification Team. Today, both Kathleen and Robin actively campaign for reconciliation.

I was in Ireland along with 16 others as part of a Peace and Justice Studies program offered through New Brunswick’s St. Stephen University. It was a two-week study abroad component focusing on “The Troubles,” the sectarian violence that marked Northern Ireland from 1969 to 1998. It felt like a pilgrimage, similar to Abram and Sara’s: destination unknown and marked by more questions than answers. Each pilgrim came with questions arising from tensions in their own countries: Rwanda, South Africa, Germany, the Netherlands, Scotland and different parts of Canada and the U.S. We were all spurred on by a deep desire to understand the polarizations in our own lives.

Political solutions are one step towards peace; and then there are the scars that a war leaves on human hearts. Kathleen, who now works with former IRA prisoners, has not forgiven the people who murdered her husband. They were never convicted due to “lack of evidence.” “But if they came to my door,” she told us, “I would invite them in for tea. I would put one question to them: ‘what made you think you had the right to plan and carry out such an act?’” Her response has the aroma of forgiveness alongside an emphasis on accountability and repentance. The road to peace is long and complex; that said, peace is within reach.

Conversations you never wanted

The landscapes of Northern Ireland are beautiful. Sheep and cattle peacefully graze among the rolling hills that inspired C.S. Lewis’ descriptions of Narnia. But this place was also, for decades, a battlefield made bloody by paramilitary groups. Protestant Loyalists, wanting to keep ties with the U.K., fought Catholic Nationalists who wanted to end what they experienced as a centuries-old U.K. occupation. Citizens were terrorized as their homes were fire-bombed, as bars and town squares erupted with shootings and car bombs. Checkpoints appeared in remote places; people were dragged out of their vehicles and shot. In a population of just 1.7 million, The Troubles claimed 3,500 lives and left nearly 50,000 people wounded. No one was left unscathed.

We pilgrims had the amazing privilege of meeting people like Kathleen and Robin who have made the journey from the shock of piecing together bodies and the grief of losing a loved one to reaching out to those responsible; they are among those whose lives have forever been changed by war. We visited the back rooms of religious communities where, away from the public eye, enemies from different camps were brought together for secret talks that led to the slow building of bridges. We visited and stayed at Corrymeela and other communities dedicated to continuing the work of intentionally reaching across deeply rooted divides.

“Peace is having conversations that you never wanted, or thought you’d have,” says contemporary Irish poet Padraig O Tuama. “Peace is learning to understand things that you find abhorrent. Peace is sitting in a room with someone you have considered your enemy.”

We learned about prayer, among other things, from Eugene Reavey, whose three brothers were shot dead in their living room while watching a football match on TV. No one else was home. Eugene’s family was Catholic but had no connection to the IRA. Though it was eventually proven that a Loyalist gang was responsible, no one was ever charged with their murders.

In the wake of this tragedy, the response of Eugene’s parents deeply shaped him. His father made his surviving children promise not to allow revenge to push them into retributive action. And his mother lit candles and prayed daily. Each candle was for a specific person in some kind of trouble or who had some need. The last candle she always lit was for the men who had shot her sons: “My sons don’t need prayer,” she told Eugene. “The fellows who shot them need all my prayers.” In these ways hearts can slowly be forged, even in the cauldron of violence, towards peace.

Yet prayer is not easy or simplistic: it’s part of the tension, including between people of faith and their Creator. In Corrymeela, in a small building dedicated to prayer, a candle is lit every morning at 9 and every evening at 7. People gather in silence – reading, writing, praying. After 20 minutes a prayer-bowl is rung for a very short liturgy, and then visitors exit in silence, one by one. I like to think of pockets of people all over the globe praying – hidden, consistent. Prayer as vigil. As lament. As hope. To ward off bitterness. To not become numb. Prayer as part of the peace-building process.

The Museum of Free Derry

There can be no reconciliation without acknowledging the past. In Northern Ireland, structural and political injustices against Catholics were a root cause of the conflicts. For decades, Protestants held the power in all levels of government, and this affected housing, employment, the right to vote, and the makeup of the police force. Catholics, taking their cue from the U.S. civil rights movement, began peaceful marches and sit-ins. On January 30, 1972, British troops opened fire on a peaceful demonstration in Derry, now remembered as Bloody Sunday. The official story, that the 30+ people shot were “armed and dangerous,” took a painfully long 38 years to rectify. In 2010, then Prime Minister David Cameron assigned full responsibility to the British troops. The name of each victim was announced, followed by the word: “innocent.” The Museum of Free Derry which documents this event opened less than 10 years ago; it attests to the continuing struggle for the right to remember.

Anatomy of conflict

Colin Craig, a former leader at Corrymeela, and now founder of Dialogue for Peaceful Change, speaks of how conflict begins with difference – the things about which you disagree. At a low level, what movie to watch. Taken further, with issues that don’t go away, those differences can turn into judgment, defined “sides,” and accusations of being morally corrupt, at best; at worst, that the “others” are in league with the devil.

Colin Craig introduced the neuroscience of conflict with this question: where do you feel conflict? At some point, it moves from outside into the body. It starts to intensify until the tipping point. When do you lose your temper? What are the cues? The “quiet before the storm” may be lengthy, but suddenly there is an escalation, then an explosion. When tempers are lost, the blood moves away from critical thinking into the area of the brain that is the site of the “fight or flight” impulse. Being trained to notice what is occurring in one’s own body can be step one in the process of de-escalation.

No conflict can last forever, but without a “way out,” a reduction cycle, he said, old grievances fuel continued violence. Craig explained that transformation means leaving behind an old story and creating a new one. Those longing for change in Northern Ireland were crucially inspired by Martin Luther King, who did not describe a nightmare, Craig pointed out, but “a dream that included everybody.” A hopeful vision has to have more than winners and losers. It needs a different set of possibilities. And success isn’t linear; it will emerge slowly. “Bits will be right and bits will be wrong, but you’ve got to take that on,” he said.

A way forward

As war rages between Hamas and the state of Israel, the role that women take up in the on-the-ground and the political process comes to mind. Monika McWilliams, along with other Catholic and Protestant women, started the Women’s Coalition Party in Northern Ireland. They were the only women at the 1998 GFA negotiating table, the only party that represented both sides, and the only one to raise the issue of the victims of violence.

The intensity and trauma of events in the Middle East can numb the spirit. In a recent email exchange with my group of fellow pilgrims, one person wrote, “so heavy today. Lord have mercy, truly have mercy.”

“Be attentive to a surprise shift,” Dr. Andrew Klager, who designed and led our study abroad in Northern Ireland, responded gently. “Seize the opening that this surprise affords those who are suffering violence and injustice and those of us in solidarity with them. Vigilance and attentiveness to a surprise that could come at any time, and then take action.” Subconsciously or not, his language echoed the description of how violence erupts that we heard from Colin Craig.

Maybe peace can reach a boiling point, too.

“It’s not a slow trajectory that (seemingly) never ends,” Klager wrote, “but instead a slow trajectory that reaches a tipping point. That’s the surprise, and this is hope: crucifixion, tomb, tomb, tomb . . . and then, surprise – Resurrection! Stay at the tomb or else you’ll miss it.”
It is difficult to stay at the tomb and remain alert. And so I remember Kathleen Gillespie, Robin Young, Eugene Reavey and the children singing “Carry on, carry on” (see sidebar); they all seem to be saying: Keep vigil. Bear witness. Take the long view. Pray. Peace is possible.