#74
Yesterday's Nice Thing: Hearing my first chiff chaff of the year
Today's Nice Thing: Hanging out with Emma for the Dawn Chorus before heading back
Last week was all about recovery. Last week was all about feeling normal once more. Last week was all about having the very ground I was standing on resolidify and returning to the possible - the present and the future.
For about two weeks I feared that I was suffering from an autoimmune illness. Did I have CFS? Was at the start of MS? What was happening to me?
This week was about once more reentering the world - with all its wonders and disappointments. Sometimes I don't know where to put the disappointments. They hang around, literally sometimes, like a bad smell. A feeling in the pit of my stomach. But it will be fine, it must be fine, I tell myself. They also delight in tormenting me.
This week we were in Derry. Derry is actually an exercise in what denial can be all about. I was really interested in how people constructed their narratives - there we had a huge deal of pain still evident and a refusal to confront the past.
Especially interesting was the Apprentice Boys' Hall. There is now the reality of living in the 21st century when being a specific religion means simply being in a specific religion. The beauty of living in the 21st century is that for years and years now, there has been a concerted effort to recognise equal opportunity. It doesn't matter what race, religion, gender or sexual orientation or age you are - it does not matter - you should be treated the same. In theory any way. We are still struggling towards it. There has been less than 100 years of this. Social Darwinism was a term coined in the 1900s and led to the eugenics of the West and eventually, of course to Hitler.
So there is a very short history of this.
So for the longest time, there were shades of varying privilege. If you were a white male, of certain religion in Northern Ireland, you would have most of the cards staked in your favour. Being a Protestant certainly meant that you had access to education, jobs and votes. If you were Catholic, you were effectively a second class citizen. This was what the Civil Rights Movement was all about.
Therefore there was a degree of disingenuity when in the Apprentice Boys hall, they chose to focus on two things: the Siege of Derry - where Protestants were opposing the then King James because he was Catholic - and who they were today. In between there was a massive gap. It is such a pity that they do not acknowledge the radical tradition of Protestantnism which opposes the corruption of the Catholic Church, of the United Irishmen and even someone like Martin Luthur King, Jr. It would also have been massively useful for a recognition that in the past to be Protestant was to claim an ascendancy which through a really stupid idea in history, resulted in the completely unjustifiable oppression of the local population. It was an oppression which was also unsustainable - unless you killed off everyone - and god knows that they tried doing that. However, history was against them. Unlike the many Native American peoples whom they did make extinct, the Irish didn't go extinct and as a result, they can now speak of and write their own histories.
These horrors need to be acknowledged and only then can everyone be free of the spell. And perhaps nothing will appease the Bogsiders or the very very angry Catholics who hold an intense fury to all this, but sometimes, you just have to do the right thing - especially now, when it is safe to do so.
In any case, it is very brave of them to open the Apprentice Boys' Hall - because it does open them up to questions. Question perhaps which are uncomfortable - and while the truly hard questions are not being answered or claimed yet, it is a true breakthrough that in the 2019 we are able to walk from the Apprentice Hall into the Museum of Free Derry on the Bogside. Yes there denial and the pain and hurt are still there, but already that is a massive breakthrough. The murals of the Bogside are of course constant reminders to the Apprentice Boys' of the discrimination and violence endured by the Catholic Bogsiders. But now, there is a trail, a different kind of trail. People are speaking their stories. In one hour you can listen to one story and then another - and the pain, the emotional impact of walking from one place to another - that is not lost on anyone who is paying attention.
I hope that the conversations continue. That is all we can do, to continue talking. That is how the Peace Process was built - or rather how the Peace Process tore down those walls. It was so hard to watch. But it was something everyone wanted, knew that they needed.
Twenty years on, nothing can be taken for granted. I told the class - before we entered the Free Derry museum. You are to be serious and respectful. The people who look after this museum they had relatives killed by the British Army. You are not to laugh or be giggly or silly.
Remember that history is not in the past - it lives with us today - it shapes who we are... and this is YOUR history. It isn't anybody's else's history - it is YOURS. And you are the future - and you can choose what you do with history.
It is a Voyage of Discovery - in our encounters with people we can choose, we must choose. And if we do not do this then we will be yanked hither and tither by the tides of those who will.
We can be masters of our own ships, or passengers in others, bouyed away by the ceaseless currents.
Today's Nice Thing: Hanging out with Emma for the Dawn Chorus before heading back
Last week was all about recovery. Last week was all about feeling normal once more. Last week was all about having the very ground I was standing on resolidify and returning to the possible - the present and the future.
For about two weeks I feared that I was suffering from an autoimmune illness. Did I have CFS? Was at the start of MS? What was happening to me?
This week was about once more reentering the world - with all its wonders and disappointments. Sometimes I don't know where to put the disappointments. They hang around, literally sometimes, like a bad smell. A feeling in the pit of my stomach. But it will be fine, it must be fine, I tell myself. They also delight in tormenting me.
This week we were in Derry. Derry is actually an exercise in what denial can be all about. I was really interested in how people constructed their narratives - there we had a huge deal of pain still evident and a refusal to confront the past.
Especially interesting was the Apprentice Boys' Hall. There is now the reality of living in the 21st century when being a specific religion means simply being in a specific religion. The beauty of living in the 21st century is that for years and years now, there has been a concerted effort to recognise equal opportunity. It doesn't matter what race, religion, gender or sexual orientation or age you are - it does not matter - you should be treated the same. In theory any way. We are still struggling towards it. There has been less than 100 years of this. Social Darwinism was a term coined in the 1900s and led to the eugenics of the West and eventually, of course to Hitler.
So there is a very short history of this.
So for the longest time, there were shades of varying privilege. If you were a white male, of certain religion in Northern Ireland, you would have most of the cards staked in your favour. Being a Protestant certainly meant that you had access to education, jobs and votes. If you were Catholic, you were effectively a second class citizen. This was what the Civil Rights Movement was all about.
Therefore there was a degree of disingenuity when in the Apprentice Boys hall, they chose to focus on two things: the Siege of Derry - where Protestants were opposing the then King James because he was Catholic - and who they were today. In between there was a massive gap. It is such a pity that they do not acknowledge the radical tradition of Protestantnism which opposes the corruption of the Catholic Church, of the United Irishmen and even someone like Martin Luthur King, Jr. It would also have been massively useful for a recognition that in the past to be Protestant was to claim an ascendancy which through a really stupid idea in history, resulted in the completely unjustifiable oppression of the local population. It was an oppression which was also unsustainable - unless you killed off everyone - and god knows that they tried doing that. However, history was against them. Unlike the many Native American peoples whom they did make extinct, the Irish didn't go extinct and as a result, they can now speak of and write their own histories.
These horrors need to be acknowledged and only then can everyone be free of the spell. And perhaps nothing will appease the Bogsiders or the very very angry Catholics who hold an intense fury to all this, but sometimes, you just have to do the right thing - especially now, when it is safe to do so.
In any case, it is very brave of them to open the Apprentice Boys' Hall - because it does open them up to questions. Question perhaps which are uncomfortable - and while the truly hard questions are not being answered or claimed yet, it is a true breakthrough that in the 2019 we are able to walk from the Apprentice Hall into the Museum of Free Derry on the Bogside. Yes there denial and the pain and hurt are still there, but already that is a massive breakthrough. The murals of the Bogside are of course constant reminders to the Apprentice Boys' of the discrimination and violence endured by the Catholic Bogsiders. But now, there is a trail, a different kind of trail. People are speaking their stories. In one hour you can listen to one story and then another - and the pain, the emotional impact of walking from one place to another - that is not lost on anyone who is paying attention.
I hope that the conversations continue. That is all we can do, to continue talking. That is how the Peace Process was built - or rather how the Peace Process tore down those walls. It was so hard to watch. But it was something everyone wanted, knew that they needed.
Twenty years on, nothing can be taken for granted. I told the class - before we entered the Free Derry museum. You are to be serious and respectful. The people who look after this museum they had relatives killed by the British Army. You are not to laugh or be giggly or silly.
Remember that history is not in the past - it lives with us today - it shapes who we are... and this is YOUR history. It isn't anybody's else's history - it is YOURS. And you are the future - and you can choose what you do with history.
It is a Voyage of Discovery - in our encounters with people we can choose, we must choose. And if we do not do this then we will be yanked hither and tither by the tides of those who will.
We can be masters of our own ships, or passengers in others, bouyed away by the ceaseless currents.
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