The Peace PeopleA chara - Brother/Sister
You will have noticed very often how salty are the tears that roll down into your mouth. I often experience this, especially when I sit in the little Chapel of Adoration on the Falls Road in Belfast, where I am now writing this letter.
I find myself today, experiencing here even more deeply, the pain of the people of this community; and I weep at the pitiableness of it all. I was born a short distance away and went to school around the corner in St Vincent's. Here is home: this is where I come from. I love this place. More than that, I love the people of this community. Some will say "you moved away, you live in the country now". I do. But suffering from a distance heightens the pain of separation and solitude. Thankfully, the pain has eased, and often turns to joy when I talk to the people living along this road. They have a deep faith, a faith which leads to hope and perseverance. They know all will be well. For many years they have prayed for peace, as have many others in Northern Ireland. Here, though, the desire for peace is passionate, tangible: you feel you could reach out and touch it. Without their having to explain it to you, you know that the people here have a deep sense of what peace is, and what peace is not - something born in them out of a long history of never knowing real peace. The question they always ask me, but now even more so, is whether there will be genuine peace. I sense in this community an excited anticipation that the time is now, and that the opportunity for a genuine peace has never been greater. The people want this creative peace; they yearn for it, they cry out, they pray for it, with an earnestness that inspires and energises me. There have been times before, though not so intense, when people have cried out for peace. In 1976 during the Peace People rallies, more than half a-million people (north and south) walked for peace. This movement began when my sister Anne and her husband Jackie's three children, Joanne (8), John (3) and Andrew (6 weeks old) were killed in a clash between the army and the IRA. On the day the three children were buried - August 14 1976 - I took roses off their grave and brought them to Mrs Lennon. She was the mother of Danny Lennon, your young comrade who had been shot through the head by a soldier and whose car had swerved off the road killing the three children and injuring Anne. I mourned for young Danny Lennon and shared the grief of his family. I hoped and prayed at the time that his death and the deaths of my niece and nephews would be the end of all violent deaths in our country. They were not. In the past 25 years more than 3,000 people have died leaving unimaginable suffering and pain to their families. You, and your comrades in the IRA take responsibility for your part in causing this. All of you in your time will want to say 'sorry'. And so will others who for their reasons have inflicted so much pain on fellow human beings here. You and your comrades are not strangers to suffering. In the days ahead as you choose between the peace framework in the joint declaration or the "armed struggle"; Bobby Sands and many others will be in your thoughts. You will want to remain faithful to their sacrifice for a free and United Ireland. That's only human! But change is also part of being human. As John Henry Newman says: "In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change; and to be perfect is to have changed often." In the republican movement you are now faced with the need to change radically - to move away from the 'armed struggle' and into a nonviolent alternative. Your right to your political aspiration and national identity has been acknowledged. The way of active nonviolence is in tune with your Christian roots and heritage. You know that in your heart. As a child you learned to pray - "Help me to live like Jesus" - Jesus with a machine-gun does not come off as an authentic figure! It is time now for a new vision and a fresh wisdom.
Wisdom means the tough decision to walk the path of nonviolence. That risk of faith will take all your courage. No one doubts your courage and no one doubts your ability to carry on the 'armed struggle'. However, I doubt your ability to turn a deaf ear to the cries of people for peace now. I know that you have a love for people in your heart and I pray that your heart and their hearts may be as one. A new vision and a fresh wisdom are not only necessary for the republican movement, they are necessary for the future of humanity. Each of us personally has to search in our own hearts to find these treasures. In my own journey, I have come to know for certain that every human life is sacred and a gift. We have no right to take this gift of life from another, as they have no right to take our gift. I have come to know for certain that our first identity is not nationalist or unionist, but our humanity. I have come to know for certain that love and compassion are the greatest and strongest forces operating in our world today. I believe and work for a nonviolent, demilitarised, northern Irish society, and I hope our friends in the south of Ireland will begin also to work for a demilitarised nonviolent Ireland. Then we will truly be a 'light' in a highly militarised world. Our suffering will then have been the birthpangs of a truly civilised people living together as the community of God's beloved people. I sith agus i muintearas losa, in the peace and in the company of Jesus, Siochain, Peace, Shalom.
Mairead.