February 2006

Friends,

It happened again last Saturday. Sitting at a men’s breakfast in our local church, two men next to me began talking about British government proposals for legislation to deal with perpetrators of murders carried out during Northern Ireland’s “Troubles” who have never been apprehended or tried.

No more than a few sentences had passed in the conversation before each man recounted their connection to a particular death and their unresolved trauma stirred up by this latest political debate. Leslie recalled witnessing over twenty years ago a fatal drive-by shooting outside a row of shops. The victim was a stranger to him, but having witnessed the event is, nonetheless, still traumatic. Robert spoke of a colleague at work targeted by assassins on his way home because he was also a part-time member of the security forces. Both were conscious that no one had ever been convicted for those murders, and both found the notion hard to swallow that perhaps no one ever will be. As I listened, I recalled standing in a small home over the open coffin of a 17-year-old youth who had been involved in a project I worked with. He was killed one evening when gunmen in a speeding car randomly shot into a group of “them” standing on a street corner.

The Northern Ireland conflict has resulted in more than 3,800 deaths, 48,000 injuries, 37,000 shooting incidents and 16,000 bombs. One in five people know personally someone who has been killed or injured. One in four people have been caught up in a violent incident.

It is now over eleven years since Republican and Loyalist ceasefires began. Although they have not been fully observed, the level of serious violence has been dramatically lower than in the previous 25 years. Nonetheless, the legacy of widespread public exposure to violence in the years prior to those ceasefires continues to cast a huge shadow over personal and political life.

For much of the population, the past ten years have been a transition from violence to relative security, from economic stagnation to prosperity, and from despair to optimism. But not everyone shares that experience. In some interface areas or communities controlled by paramilitaries, young people don’t feel they’re in transition to anything. Violence is still part of their everyday lives, and they fear males both in their own and other communities.

It is not at all unusual for voluntary groups working with those who have been injured, bereaved, or traumatized as a result if politically motivated violence to find individuals who had that experience five, ten or twenty years ago coming forward now for help. And their wounds still very raw.

Finding ways to move beyond the legacy of hurt inflicted on so many, and out of the trauma which still impacts so many, is one of the greatest challenges for this and other societies moving out of conflict. Murals on gable walls and memorial gardens dotted around different districts are reminders of what “they” did to “us.” What is largely lacking is acknowledgement from any side of what “we” did to “them” or even to “each other.”

For now the British government proposal that touched many raw nerves has been dropped. But the issues haven’t gone away. A fundamental question for this society and our world is “Shall we live by memory or imagination?” If we choose the latter, as I firmly believe God intends, we still have to find ways to deal with the past.

As this society moves into a new year facing difficult political issues, please pray:

• for God’s healing and grace to be upon those bereaved, injured or traumatized as a result of violence;
• for God’s strength and compassion to be with organizations that minister to them;
• for God’s wisdom to be with those earnestly seeking to find ways to deal with the past that are both just and effective.

Faithfully yours,

Doug Baker

The 2006 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 175