Our Troubles

This summer, I was a strange tourist among 15 Americans touring Ireland. My unconventional goals were shaped by troubles—both Ireland's and our own.

Pre-trip reading of Irish history revealed centuries of invasion, civil strife, famine, and, more recently, the horrific violence of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland. These lasted 30 years, starting in the Sixties, resulting in some 3,500 killed.

Flying to Ireland, I was leaving our own country sinking into its own troubles. While we hadn't reached Ireland’s murderous violence, political deaths were rising with no end in sight.

A Quakerly calling for my trip emerged when I learned of Ireland's small, but influential, population of Friends. Could Irish Quakers enlighten this visitor from a troubled land? I had come to question my initial responses to our rapidly emerging “Troubles.”

Earlier this year, I'd helped institute a placard-waving protest at a nearby ICE detention facility in Portland. But after a month, I had misgivings. Our goal was to let those held know we were "witnessing" for them. But our demonstration soon attracted anarchists set upon defacing the building and hurling invectives and stones. The media made no distinction between our non-violent witnessing and the growing violence. We were all "protesters." Lumping us with the anarchists led me to question my motives and my understanding of broader dynamics. I decided to stop joining the protests.

This long-scheduled trip to Ireland, with its own history of strife, suddenly seemed relevant. Could I find clarity in my sojourn by observing how Irish Quakers responded to 30 years of bitter division, fear, death, and violence?

Ireland has some 1,600 Quakers, 800 of them in the formerly "troubled" North (Ulster). The tour leader, Una, who grew up near Derry during The Troubles, was understanding of my calling and opened doors for me. Friends in Berkeley also provided a contact at the South Belfast Meeting of Friends.

Our group was scheduled to be in Belfast on a Sunday. While the rest of the group visited still-divided parts of the city via "Black Taxis," I chose to meet and worship with Friends at the South Belfast Meeting.

Before leaving the hotel, I got a hint of what I was to learn. When I asked the clerk for bus directions to the meeting house, she exclaimed, "Oh, Are you a Quaker?... I know the Quaker work well because of Quaker House. It provided a safe place in our neighborhood...especially for the children."

At the meeting house, I was warmly welcomed. At the rise of Meeting, I shared my special interest in how Friends were led to act during The Troubles. Immediately, Felicity McCartney, the person I had been urged to meet, was by my side. She pressed a book into my hands: "Coming from the Silence—Quaker Peace-building initiatives 1969 - 2007."

The book detailed how Quakers’ twin commitments to non-violence and neutrality led them to aid the victims of war on both sides. Families suffered from violence and deprivation. Friends sought ways to open communication and give hope.

Here were examples of their work:

• Quaker House was a Belfast "conciliation house" and safe harbor in the storm of fighting, fear and suspicion. Quakers used the house to invite dialogue between bitterly divided leaders. The Quaker House meetings played a role in eventual compromise, even reconciliation and the end of “The Troubles.”
• The Ulster Quaker Service Committee supported prisoners and their families. (A representative from the "Black Taxi" tour, Eddie, who served time in prison, later shared how Quakers brought prisoners from opposing sides together to lobby for their mutual release.). Much of the committee’s effort was focused on the many families under stress from the strife. Among resulting changes listed in one annual report were “children beginning to trust, learning to co-operate, trying to understand non-violence, and certainly enjoying themselves.”
• The Quaker Peace Education Project in Derry worked with “progressive” teachers in an education system divided into Catholic and State schools, The goal was to introduce conflict resolution exercises and workshops to curricula. The initiative allowed children of the two traditions to know each other. The effort also contributed to a close relationship to the organizational goals and educational themes of Education for Mutual Understanding and Cultural Heritage.

As I read and considered my exchanges, I pondered how the Quaker responses might apply here at home. Because our plight is often "framed" by the personality and goals of one political leader, we often forget the deeper, underlying "Troubles" that produced our crisis: victims of poverty, inequality, prejudice, and environmental destruction. There is blindness on all sides.

Non-violence is not a given here in the United States. We live in a culture that celebrates and profits from violence—in our sports, our films, and social media. We have more lethal weapons than people. In a real sense, we've taken sides without being aware of it. We are sadly far from overtly celebrating peace.

Sections of Northern Ireland are still divided, but elsewhere, you see public monuments honoring peace "at last." Derry, which experienced some of the worst horrors, now has a Peace Bridge and a Peace Flame. The United Nations recently recognized Derry as an "International City of Peace."

When do we celebrate not just the end of war, but the very state of peace in our country?

Quaker Friends in Ireland foresaw this need by teaching the young about peace and forgiveness. They taught adults about restorative justice, political harmony, and civility. Quaker callings, even in the worst of times, quietly spread the seeds of peace. Irish Quaker Lynn Finnegan says: “I have learnt that the stories we tell ourselves are more important than we realize... A lot of my work looks at how to shift this story to one of courage and hope."

Rick Seifert, a retired journalist, is a former clerk of Multnomah Monthly Meeting (NPYM). While he remains a member of that meeting, eleven years ago, he helped found a small independent worship group, Hillsdale Quakers, in southwest Portland, where he now worships. He works to help unhoused residents of Portland.