Protestant Enclave of Sandy Row, Belfast, Northern Ireland with UDA/UFF mural on Sandy Row/Linfield Road, 2005. Wikicommons/ Chris Yunker. Some rights reserved.Shortly after Christmas in 2013, I parked my car in one of the back streets of Protestant Sandy Row in Belfast. The area had changed in the nearly fifty years since I first walked there in the early days of the Troubles. Then, back-to-back houses had occupied row upon row. Now, traffic on a four-lane motorway speeds around the city.
Yet there was a familiarity. For a few moments I wondered why. Then it dawned. This was the street, now rebuilt with modern houses, where I had visited the boarded-up buildings during the riot torn 1970s. Here, unbeknownst to me nearly half a century ago, was both the ‘beginning’, continuing and ‘end’ of a striving to understand and engage in the ‘things that make for peace’.
Throughout those years I have witnessed in many strife-ridden places and communities, a search for peace and reconciliation. Those processes like the Peace Bridge that spans the river Foyle in Derry/Londonderry were complex. Tensions were frequent, often critical, and the tiniest miscalculation capable of bringing down the whole edifice, and destroying years of work. Tensions were frequent, often critical, and the tiniest miscalculation capable of bringing down the whole edifice, and destroying years of work.
