Phoenix

I’m going to stick my head above the parapet with this post. This a vent against violence and dangerous decisions.

I grew up in Belfast. My very young years I lived on a council estate in North Belfast. My grandmother lived just down the road. Two streets away from her was a the peace line. A wall that divides the protestants from the catholics. My mother grew up in that street. The house had bullets holes in the bricks from the nightly riots at the height of the troubles. My mother would step over soldiers who were on watch, in the morning as she made her way to the bus stop to work in the town centre.

I walked passed my first sight of a kneecapping when I was walking down the next street. I was five years old. I grew up amongst the bombs and the bullets.

I left Northern Ireland was I twenty years old. I couldn’t live having to pick a side. My heart wanted to be open to everyone. When I was growing up you had to pick the side you were born in to. I was born a Protestant.

I had catholic friends but only because I frequented the gay pubs and clubs. We didn’t have religiously separated queer spaces, thankfully!

My heart has been heavy over the last week. The decision to let orangemen walk the Garvaghy Road in Portadown after a ban of twenty eight years seems incredulous. My grandfather was in the orange order. My mum was a loyal supporter. I think if she was alive even she would have been astounded at the decision.

The wounds of Northern Ireland still run deep. This recent decision was like plunging a knife deep into a wound that is yet to heal.

I may have left almost thirty years ago and it’s been fourteen years since I’ve visited, but there is so much that I can’t forget. I don’t have to still live there to know how fragile peace is.

The Good Friday agreement was signed in April 1998. The bombs stopped. That doesn’t stop the fear and lack of trust on both sides.

Northern Ireland runs in my veins. Whilst on my spiritual journey, that place has been in the forefront of my meditations for peace.

I’m not taking sides. I just want peace and that decision to overturn a ruling that had been in place for twenty eight years, seemed like a decision to cause friction and I just can’t comprehend it.

May all hearts be healed.

Phoenix