November's Journal, Welcome Gentle Readers

Gentle Readers it’s time once again for my monthly long journal entry that lets you into a few parts of my life here in Belfast. This month’s instalment deals first with the Boys Brigade I work with, rather like our Boy Scouts, and secondly my own sense of self-transformation.

The BB tree planting:
So, I want to write about the BB tree planting. In 1954, according to this book that Capt. Kirkwood lent me, the BB in Belfast did this crazy huge tree-planting campaign. To commemorate, my contacts from the Conservation Volunteers of Northern Ireland and I had decided to plant some trees. My original thought was to plant just one, as an anniversary type of thing. My ideal spot for this planting was behind Macrory Presbyterian. I thought that if the tree were planted back there, by the boys, it would not only give them a reason to stay around this church building (which I’m not sure how many of them know that it is closing). It would also help them to remember when they are older, of their connection to that bit of land. Apparently there is a bit of space back there for the planting to take place, but ignorant me…
I suggested that the planting go on behind the church. We wouldn’t need permission, to know who owned the land, no worries about trespassing, and on and on…so many reasons to do it there. Whenever I told people about this idea, they diverted me away from it, without ever really telling me why. I would suggest it to the Captain and there would be a pause. I would suggest it to some of the other adult leaders and there would be shifting eyes, and hand in pockets. I finally suggested it to one of the older boys in the brigade, and he said, quite plainly, “Can’t do that, F-in’ Teegs all hang out back there.” To translate: The tree planting can’t go on behind the Presbyterian church, because that’s a hang out spot of local gangs of Catholic youth.
At this point, I began to think about the actual position of the church within the community and did realize that the back of the church does butt up against what’s called the ‘Greater New Lodge’ neighbourhood. (My neighbourhood). The boys in the church wouldn’t interact with, were afraid of conflict with, would fight, run, curse, throw rocks at, and slag, the boys that hung out behind the church. Each night I’m at the BB, I think about the back door that I pass to get to the snacks. I can hear on the other side of the door kids laughing, drinking, swearing, joking, just being kids. They knock on the door when thy see the light come on, knowing that I can’t and won’t open it. (Apparently a few years ago the church was broken into, things set on fire and the stove stolen, so now the door is kept pretty securely closed.) But, they’re being kids the best way they know how. They’re being the kids they were taught to be in this place. Just the same way that the kids inside the church are being the kids they have been brought up to be, knowing better than to blow a bugle (a symbol of protestant marches and official military groups) outside because the neighbourhood has a significant number of Catholic groups wandering around and through it.
I look at these BB kids and know that they aren’t doing anything but what they have been enculturated to do. They are being the kids they have to be. The question I have after all of this is what about the men that they are meant to grow into? What type of men are these boys going to be? Angry? Violent? Racist? Prejudiced? What about Tolerant? Open? Accommodating? Understanding? In a decade these boys will be my age…but how much like me do I think they are going to be? How much can I show them in a year about what a man can act like if he tries? How much can I teach by example, by silence, by asking hard questions, by being myself?

November 29

Today we had a meeting with Gareth Higgins at the Ecumenical school for our YAV meeting. For some reason I was in a quiet mood. I’ve found that living in this situation with these three women really is changing me. I find it much easier to be quiet, to not say anything at all. I know that this was going on last year when I lived alone and began to enjoy the silence and privacy I had alone. But this is different.

Here, I am not alone when I choose to be quiet. I can see my roommates and hear their problems, complains, issues, and all the difficulties they have to deal with where they work. I can hear the different sort of experiences that they are having, compared to my own. Oftentimes I am left with silence as my commentary on what they are facing. I don’t really feel qualified to give advice or opinion. More often than not, I am silent. If I am not silent, I find myself telling a story.

I know that for a decade I have really been the loud one. The one to stand out, the one to make a scene, the one to stand up and call it like it is. I really don’t think that is me anymore. I really do hope that over the course of the next few months here I continue on what seems to be a real time of contemplation and examination of the people and situations that surround me.