Well, did you SPRING forward yesterday? Or did the loss
of an hour’s sleep make yesterday morning more of a challenge than it normally
would be?
There’s a debate about whether there is much point in
changing the clocks in spring and autumn any more, or whether we should simply
have summer time all year round… If that guaranteed us actual summer time all
year round I would be one of its greatest supporters, although in any normal
year here that isn’t a great boon… where summer usually just means that we get
slightly warmer rain…
But the lack of sunshine in summer is not the only
distinctive about this province. Every time the clocks change I am reminded of
the old joke about the passenger plane landing at Aldergrove and the pilot
announcing over the PA system, “We have now landed at Belfast International
Airport, please set your watches back 300 years.”
We do sadly, have a reputation for being more focused on
our past than other places… Whether that past is hundreds of years ago… or the
past 40 years or so…
Our past is important… it shapes the present… And knowing
our past as a person and as a people is vital if we are to be more than 2
dimensional… The characters in the best dramas and novels always have a back
story, whether the audience are aware of it or not. The problem with the narrative
of Northern Ireland is that there is so much back story that the script never
seems to progress…
We need to know and learn from our past if we, and our
children are to have a better future… but currently we seem to be stuck in an
infinite loop revisiting the same old stories again and again, with no-one willing
to break the cycle and help us move on… And until the next lot of elections are
over in May there seems to be little political capital in doing so… Instead we are
likely to continue to get the same never decreasing circle of whataboutery…
I long for leaders in the political realm, in wider civic
society and in the church who will help us focus our vision firmly on the
future; not sweeping the problems of the past under a psychological carpet, but
seeking to learn from them and shaping a place where we may embrace each other
and whatever lies ahead, with hope…
The Psalmist said
a future awaits those who seek peace
I believe it works the other way too,
that peace, real peace, not simply the absence of conflict but the presence of reliable
hope and genuine justice, awaits those who seek the future…
Are we just going to fall back into familiar patterns of enmity?
Or spring forward into a hope filled future?
Shalom
(This was what I finally settled on as a piece for Good Morning Ulster's Thought for the Day at 6.55 and 7.55am... it should be available on iplayer for th enext 7 days for those who would like to hear my dulcet tones... I will be returning to some of the ideas in yesterday and today's pieces over the next couple of days... I'm back in the groove...)
Comments