October Journal

Greetings Gentle readers, once again it's time for a monthly update. Here's October's. Happy Halloween all.

October 5, 2004

Sunday morning, I got up early and resolved to shine my shoes and listen to some music while my housemates slept. Mel Prentice came downstairs and made some breakfast and sat in the front room, the one that looks out onto the street in front of our house. Mind you, this is the same street that we play nightly on with the kids in the neighbourhood. It's where we hang out, play football, basketball, and hurling.
All of the sudden, Mel was in the middle room with me, looking like she had just taken a big gulp of Tabasco sauce, or was eating food that had burnt her mouth. I asked her what was wrong and she replied that a solider, in full fatigues, M-17 in hand had just marched past our house. I picked up what I was doing, and stepped out the front door, to see exactly what she was talking about.
What I saw was jaw-droppingly scary: A military patrol, armed, deadly serious looking, scanning houses with their eyes and alert to any disturbance, slowly stalking down our street. They were spaced on either side of the sidewalk, staggered in stance, about 10 yards apart. I stepped outside, not really thinking my decision through, and catching the eyes of the next solider coming my way. I walked back inside and told Mel to get her camera. As the solider walked past, he looking in at me (still holding my shoe and the polishing rag in my hands), and nodded at me. I nodded back. It's about the most eerie thing to ever happen to me.
When I mentioned this to the woman who picks Mel and I up for work, she seemed nonchalant about it. When I told my co-worker, Nigel, he said that would have been quite a bit more common a few years ago, and that the patrols were part of Peace concessions.
There would have been a trade-off of the British military giving up a certain number of patrols through the city in exchange for some sort of gesture on the part of the Catholics. Nigel wasn’t sure what the exact nature of the exchange was, but he was pretty confident that that would have been the case.
It should probably be mentioned that the army and most military forces are Protestant in N. Ireland. Essentially, the police, armed forces, and other sorts of ‘official enforcers’ are almost solely Protestant. The reason is that those organizations are a part of the British (Protestant) government. Very few Northern Irish Catholics, who tend to desire unity with the Republic of Ireland, would voluntarily support a governmental regime or program established and managed by London.
October 26

I rode my new (repaired) bike to the Ozone to go climbing with Whit. While there, I met a guy from Ohio. It was really nice to finally see someone wearing and Cleveland Browns T-shirt. He’s here on another mission project called ‘the good book’. It essentially takes the gospels and combines them into one, comprehensive story for kids. It’s a school ministry where they do programs and work out skits.

I really didn’t want to get into it with this guy, but I might as well here…this program that he’s here on is about 3 weeks, and then he’s gone again. He commented that ‘the kids here…they’re so hardened, so tough.’ Although I really wanted to confront him on this, feeling like I know more about this place than he does, I restrained myself to saying, “Well, you know these kids are just responding to the environment that they’re being brought up in.”

Moreover, looking at some of the children here in N. Belfast it’s pretty easy to see where this guy could get that impression. These kids are not Cleveland kids, Tiffin kids, or DeKalb kids. They are their own, unique animal. Honestly I haven’t wrapped my head around it much better than that. I can look out my window right now and see some of our neighbourhood kids. They run down the middle of the street and when cars pass they kindly hold up select fingers at them. They cuss, litter, hit each other, fight, and vandalize without thinking twice about it. In less than 10 years many of them will be at least smoking cigarettes, and many of them will be drinking and doing drugs, as well. However, each of those decisions is a response to this street, this block of buildings, this demographic, this environment. From this bedroom, I can see absolutely no advantage to commenting about how ‘tough’ or ‘hardened’ the kids outside are. It would get my nowhere.

Who would I be if I were born here on Thorndale Ave.? Would I be violent? Would I be in a paramilitary group? How would my parents have cared for me? By now, wouldn’t I have a few kids of my own?

I feel like the only difference I make sometimes is to be with the youth groups I’m attending. Being with these kids, from age four to age eighteen, and acknowledging the things that make us different, the things that make my life different from theirs is sometimes the only ministry that I have. I felt like this the other day, at Thornbush. I was in the ‘16 and over’ room (really loud techno music, mess, kids talking about drugs, sex, jobs, and their world). One of them asked me in some very racist terms if I had many people from Pakistan or African Americans in Ohio. Instead of answering, I said, “First of all, where I’m from, we would never say what you just said. Racist terms like that you might hear in movies or inappropriately used in jokes, but my circle of friends wouldn’t accept that question.” From the young man’s reaction, I think that may have been the first time anyone has confronted him on his use of racial slurs. Ever.

As I look back on it, it seems like that was a better way to work with (as my new, Cleveland friend put it) ‘these hardened, rough kids’: By meeting them where they are, acknowledging both their beauty and their flaws, and not only questioning those flaws, but demonstrating another way of living and responding to this place.