Sharing his home with humour and hospitality,
sharing his sport with passion and ability,
sharing his town with friendly jocularity,
sharing his land with sensitive generosity.
Sharing politics with relational humanity,
sharing negotiations with blunt integrity,
sharing a desire for peace with equality,
sharing words with vision and clarity.
Sharing suffering with compassion and bravery,
sharing his faith with kindness and sincerity,
sharing his legacy with graceful expectancy,
sharing Jesus life and death with devoted humility.
Tony Davidson
30th January 2020
The above is a poem by Rev. Tony Davidson, the Presbyterian minister who convened the group responsible for "Considering Grace", a book by fellow 4 Corners Director Gladys Ganiel capturing the stories of various people associated with the Presbyterian church in the light of “The Troubles”. He shared it at the 4 Corners Event last night where we were looking at this book in St John’s Catholic Parish on the Falls Road in the west of the city, a place where Presbyterian perspectives on the Troubles would rarely have been aired in recent years!
He shared his poem because Seamus Mallon was originally supposed to take part in the event as one of the “critical friends” of Presbyterianism interviewed by researcher and co-author Jamie Yohanis for the book (I was another such critical friend). Tony said that his engagement with Seamus in inviting him to contribute to the book had re-ignited a friendship, and had led to a discussion of Seamus’ own story in the recently published “A Shared Home Place” with himself and 5 other local Presbyterian ministers, and indeed ultimately led to the invitation to participate in Seamus’ funeral last week.
It was sad that Seamus was not there to take part in last night’s event in front of a packed hall. But it also reminded me that there is a whole generation who lived through the Troubles who are now passing away. Some like Seamus and those interviewed in Considering Grace, were given the opportunity to tell their stories openly. But many, many have not. And some of them are carrying with them stories of tremendous pain and trauma. But one of the lessons shared by a participant in last year’s 4 Corners festival is that trauma that is not transformed will be transmitted. And whilst airing stories is not transformative for all, it can help others around them understand some of the pain that they will, at times unconsciously, transmitting to those around them, and indeed to future generations. I have talked to people in different parts of this island and indeed from different parts of the world who are carrying the scars of conflicts that took place generations before they were born. Sometimes they can tell stories of what they were told had happened to their parents and grandparents, although only from the perspective of “their side”, but often whilst they don’t know the specifics, they have grown up with an inherited mistrust of other families, communities or entire nations.
Encouraging people to tell their story is an exercise in personal validation. It isn’t saying that their perspective is the only valid one, but it is saying that what they experienced and felt is legitimate. But if the process is “curated” with integrity and compassion, asthis book and event was by Gladys Ganiel, then it perhaps opens up a “space for grace” where others might feel able to tell their stories, not as competing narratives, but as different perspectives of a traumatic period of time… This in turn might help us in what Damian Gorman, a festival contributor earlier in the week and director of an earlier story-telling initiative “An Crann – The Tree” describes as our “sacred task”:
Each generation has a sacred task
To tell a better story than it was told.
Selah
The poem that those words from Damien Gorman are taken “If I Were Us, I Wouldn’t Start from Here” is included in a short anthology of poems and photographs entitled “Building a City of Grace” published in aid of the 4 Corners Festival and available at festival events and from Shanway Press. He will be coming along to St Bartholomew's Parish Church Stranmillis tomorrow afternoon at the conclusion of the "Wonderful Wander" to read the poem at the official launch of this booklet. Tony’s poem is unfortunately not included, but will probably be read…
Comments