The Troubles as my [well-timed] teacher

A couple weeks ago I took a trip to Northern Ireland - on my own dime and during my vacation - to learn about The Troubles.

While attending the Othering & Belonging Conference in Oakland this past April, I heard Avila Kilmurray speak on a panel about her role in mediating conflict between Catholic and Protestant women in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, and while listening to her, I came to a quick and humbling realization about how ignorant I was about the sustained civil conflict between British Loyalists and Irish Republicans that sowed discord and ravaged their country for decades. That was enough for me to make the commitment to visit and learn about it firsthand this summer.

Prior to my trip, I crowdsourced recommendations - people I should meet, places I should visit, things I should read, listen to and watch - and it led to a beautiful learning journey that was initiated by a copy of the award-winning book, Say Nothing, staring me in the face while I drank coffee at my neighborhood book store, Allgood’s, in early June.

I gave myself two days and some change in Northern Ireland, booking a bed in a hostel dorm and renting a car to carry me across the country. Having to drive manual transmission on the right side of the car and the left side of the road during rush hour through downtown Belfast downtown after my flight landed ended up being the perfect metaphor for my trip - one of willingness and adaptation. I'll have the record show that I only stalled the car out three times and sideswiped one driver-side mirror on the ten minute drive to my hostel.

My first night in town I grabbed a bowl of Irish stew and a Guinness at one of the numerous "oldest" pubs in town, White's Tavern, before listening to an Irish trad music session in a cozy, crowded dive, Madden's. I got caught in a downpour on the walk home and had to call an Uber to finish the trip, but still woke up with a cold the next morning.

I carried those mixed feelings - and sniffles - of appreciation and fatigue with me on a downtown walking tour to start my first full day in Northern Ireland. We began on the front lawn of Belfast City Hall, where I watched a seagull assertively devour the carcass of a pigeon, before we spent the next two hours learning about the diminished quality of life - due to the persistent state of uncertainty and fear - that citizens experienced caught in between ongoing state-sanctioned and extremist violence for decades.

There were two things that I primarily took away from the tour. This first thing was the time we spent learning about the mural below titled The Son of Protagoras. Protagoras is thought to be the first recorded agnostic, and this mural, with its dual arrows lodged in a dove are marked with Catholic and Protestant symbols, respectively. It is meant to place blame where it is due - on both parties that perpetuated the conflict.

The second thing was reconsidering a common memorialization practice that I had previously understood to be universally beneficial - the public naming of every victim of atrocity. It was flipped on its head, when we were introduced to this mosaic that intentionally represented the first 1,500 lives lost during The Troubles with numbers rather than names; the anonymity protected their loved ones from retributive justice. It was a humbling reminder that widely-adopted best practices can quickly turn sour under the right conditions.

From there, I took a train out to the coast to meet a fellow peacebuilder and storyteller, Gareth Higgins. We were introduced by a close friend and co-conspirator, Jordan, who knows him from their mutual commitment to men’s work back in the States. With Gareth, a banter and insight-filled coastal walk that was only meant to last an hour or so, ended up taking the rest of the day. Amidst stories of his upbringing during The Troubles, the eccentricities of local Holywood resident, Van Morrison, and the mutual nature of our work and life's purpose, Gareth decided he would take it upon himself to taxi me to The Ulster Museum to view The Troubles history exhibit there. And then, we went to dinner at a countryside pub, where we discussed perspective on men's work as a remedy to so many societal woes. And finally, we took a walk through a tranquil, verdant park on the outskirts of Belfast, where we shared our earnest, heartfelt aspirations for what our work could make possible in the world.

Before he dropped me back off at my hostel that night, Gareth drove me past the Clonard Monastery, which stood a stones throw from the mural-covered Peace Wall that still represented a physical division, yet creative unification of Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods. From his car, he pointed to the room in the Monastery where the multiparty negotiations that eventually led to the Good Friday Agreement - which formally ended The Troubles - were initiated and led by Father Alec Reid.

Early the next morning, I drove out to the countryside to visit the oldest peace and reconciliation center in Northern Ireland, Corrymeela. The center stands on awe-inspiring cliffs that cast sights out to the coast of Scotland on a clear day; the ideal location for a place of respite and resolution of conflict across difference. The next week I would be grabbing happy hour drinks with a colleague and friend, Mohammed, in New York, and he would share with me that we had only missed each other by a few days at the center; if that isn't a testament to its serendipitous significance, I don't know what is!

At my friend Michelle's recommendation, I had done cold outreach prior to my visit and, primarily due to the summer holiday, had been set up on a tour with a recently-hired administrator (rather than one of their program or executive team members), Elizabeth. The beauty of getting to spend time with her included learning about Corrymeela's history, place and purpose, but more importantly, came through hearing about her experience growing up locally as the daughter of a family whose pub served both Catholic and Protestant community members, through both threats of violence and the reality of unification.

After our time concluded, I set off for Derry/Londonderry. On the way I stopped for a hike along the Giant's Causeway, and a pass through Coleraine, where Union Jack flags flew with such an apparent patriotism that I felt like I was back in the American South. The day just so happened to be the 4th of July, and while everyone I knew was celebrating - or even protesting - the establishment of American independence from Great Britain back home, a consequential election was being held in the United Kingdom; one that would have potential implications for the future of Northern Ireland's own independence.

My destination that afternoon was the Museum of Free Derry - an institution that stood as a testament to the civil rights movement of Irish Catholics in Derry; it is housed in the heart of the very Bogside community where their movement for political representation and justice took place. As I timidly pulled my still unfamiliar car into an enclosed parking lot, I was met by an unassuming, medium-size building which had a Palestinian flag painted on it that matched the scale of the museum's own signage. The museum gift shop and neighborhood iconography would demonstrate a similar fervor of solidarity.

The museum itself housed an exhibit that told the history of systematic oppression of Irish Catholics in Derry/Londonderry through everything from physical ramparts dividing communities to gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement, which lead to the massive nonviolent movement for rights and representation in Bogside (and across the country). In the early weeks of 1972, the movement reached a tipping point that would cascade into the deadliest year of the conflict, when British soldiers opened fire on peaceful protesters, and Bloody Sunday cemented its place in history - the museum was located on the site where many of those protesters were indiscriminately murdered. The final section of the exhibit played a looped recording of British Prime Minister David Cameron's 2010 apology - over 38 years after the event - for the unjustified and condemnable actions of British soldiers against unarmed citizens on that fateful January day.

Steps from the museum, in the shadows of the Londonderry stronghold, is a community park that resolutely houses the infamous Free Derry monument, a number of memorializing murals decorating surrounding neighborhood flats, and various homages to current political events and issues, like the aforementioned Palestinian flags.

With all the symbols, monuments and signs present, what ironically made the most significant impression on me was actually the party-size bouncy house inflated in someone's front yard bordering the park. The children playing in it while their mother passively watched over them really drove home the point that first and foremost this was a community for so many families who had endured through generations and decades of undeserved oppression and hard-earned justice.

As evening set in, I set out on my return trip to Belfast. There was an onward flight to Birmingham awaiting me at 06:50 the next morning, but I still had the night before me. So, I'd manage to meet the former collaborator, Sean, of one New Pluralist colleague, Liz, and the brother-in-law, Daithí, of another, Colleen. Sean was a former Corrymeela employee who had made a career out of supporting then leading efforts for integrated education between Irish Catholics and British Protestants in post-treaty Northern Ireland; he offered a tremendous sounding board for my half-baked insights and ongoing understanding of modern-day Northern Ireland. Daithí and I were the same age, and as someone who grew up in Belfast, left for London to become an actor, and returned to Belfast to become a musician; he served what might have been the most important role of my short trip - a new, unassuming friend with an earnest perspective on their own community.

After Daithí and I parted ways, I made the chaotic decision to join my hostel's bar crawl and ended up sprawled in a twin-size bunk bed with three members of the staff at four in the morning - I made my flight, and began a day-long series of naps that took place on planes, in public parks and under the shade of camping tents shortly after takeoff.

I document and share all of this to demonstrate my process for experiential immersion that leads to integrated insights about everything that (as my LinkedIn bio would state) "unites, divides and compels us to participate in this crazy social experiment called life."

But also - as it is now in focus after the attempted assassination of former President Trump this past weekend - to try to get the point across that the civil conflict and violence we are experiencing in the United States is fairly novel for us, but has a broad precedent globally. As much as we fancy ourselves to be exceptional, our political strife is not overly unique, it is just intensely felt and experienced at this point in time. The sooner we accept that with humility, the sooner we can begin to integrate learnings from what other nations, communities and people have already experienced, the better off we will be.