Good Friday Revisited (Again)

Like many others in Northern Ireland this past week I've been thinking about events of Good Friday 1998, last Wednesday, partly in the light of the other political bombshell delivered on Good Friday this year. Last year there were many opportunities for wistful looking back, self-congratulations and international talking-shops. But the lack of an assembly at that point demonstrated the frustrations of the previous quarter century. As I said this time last year, the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement, was NOT a settlement, as as illustrated by its bifurcated name. Rather it was a way marker on a journey that too many have been reluctant to take further. At that point so many things remained unresolved/agreed/settled, not least policing, paramilitary weapons and activity, victims and "The past" - not to mention bread and butter issues such as education, health, housing and others, all of which are tainted by our divisions. 

Against that background O wrote this, and one year further on, with an Executive in place, it still applies:

“It is finished!”

But no, it had only just begun.

Politicians and religious leaders

may have sighed with relief

When the deed was done,

But the story was far from over

So much remained unresolved

We can at least agree on that.

Eventually the international visitors

Went back home, with their own

Accounts of what went on:

Good news of peace on earth.

The world powers deliberately washed

Their hands of ongoing responsibility,

Leaving the blood to fall upon us

And upon our unborn children.

Those who stood outside

The seat of power for fear

Of being sullied by the process,

Still stand outside, yet dictate

What can and cannot happen.

Men (and women) of violence

Are set at liberty, while innocent

Victims remain nailed to their crosses.

For how many more quarter centuries

Will we re-enact with passion

The drama of those days?

Too many of the original actors

Have departed the stage,

Their understudies merely echoing

Words without having walked

The Via Dolorosa in preparation.

It is beyond time for the second act;

To cast off the grave clothes

Of the bloody past, and

Roll away the sizeable stones

To allow grieving women (and men)

To lead the rest of us,

Cowering behind locked doors,

Into the possibility of new life.