From Barricades in Belfast to the London Student Protests and St. Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace- in one week
The narrow alleyway leading to the St. Ethelburga’s courtyard, the courtyard and inside the spacious tent
In a smallish courtyard just off a main road in Bishopsgate, London - tucked in between high rise office blocks that seem to be made almost entirely of glass - sits a rather large, round and highly unusual tent. No I am not mistaken, most definitely a tent and a rather attractive one at that. Finding the creative canvas oasis of tranquility for the first time is no easy feat as to get from the bustling main road to the courtyard one has to enter a very narrow alleyway between buildings, one of which St. Ethelburga’s church.
The courtyard and the tent belong to the St. Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, a center that aims to inspire and equip people to practice reconciliation and peace-making in their own communities and lives, one way of which is to champion effective ways of building relationships between people from different backgrounds across boundaries of faith, tradition and culture.
When representatives of the Centre for Reconciliation and Peace approached the Saudis asking a few thousand pound donation toward building of a tent in the middle of a busy commercial area, they refused. “Actually, they said they wouldn’t give money but would give the tent,” Simon Keyes, the director of St. Ethelburga’s explained with a wide smile.
How I came to be visiting St. Ethelburga’s is connected to my work at the Givat Haviva Institute’s Jewish-Arab Center for Peace but before arriving there I had spent a week in Dublin and Belfast as a guest speaker at events celebrating the 100th anniversary of kibbutz, a member of such a community for over 40 years I am proud to say.
An inter-faith group from St. Ethelburga’s had visited Givat Haviva the week before I left for Dublin. Numbering a round dozen, 4 Jews, 4 Christians and 4 Muslims, I spent time with the group on campus and guided them on a tour of the surrounding region.
“We all very much enjoyed our time at Givat Haviva and the tour of the region, the input most useful in opening up the complexity and multiple dilemmas of the situation,” Simon commented.
St. Ethelburga’s in Israel and Marco Schneebalg overlooking East Barta’a in the West Bank during the Givat Haviva seminar
One of the Jewish participants, Belgian-born Manchester University student Marco Schneebalg, had spent a year in Israel together with other members of his Hashomer Hatzair movement group of contemporaries from Europe and had attended seminars at Givat Haviva during the year. During his first year at Manchester University Marco co-founded a Jewish-Muslim dialogue group at Manchester University and was invited by the St. Ethelburga’s center to join the Israel trip.
Disgruntled students on the streets of London with signs of the times
When I arrived in London, and still struggling to absorb all I had heard and seen in Dublin and Belfast, I took up the invite to visit St. Ethelburga’s. I had the misfortune, however, to get caught up in a large student demonstration on the streets of London on my way there. After being shoved rather rudely by a couple of policemen who thought I – a 65 year-old grandma – was directly involved (some compliment) and a few minutes later almost decapitated by an agitated student waving a large wooden sign, I decided to just duck in to an already crowded coffee shop and wait it out until the streets were a little less threatening. I had arranged to meet Marco, who had come to London to both participate in the student demonstration and attend the meeting in St. Ethelburga’s in the evening, but he called and said he was going to be late. The street where he was had been closed off by the police and none of the students allowed to pass.
Eventually we managed to meet up outside Liverpool Street Station and make our way to the nearby church, reconciliation and peace center to meet up with the rest of the group that had traveled together to Israel.
When in Belfast I was taken on a tour of the city and although thought I knew something of ‘The Troubles’ realized what I knew was very little relatively quickly during a visual sojourn to The Falls and other areas the names of which I recognized from those terrible events of the city’s past. The irony was not lost on me that the group from St. Ethelburga’s when they had been in Israel had told me that the medieval church, one of the few that survived the Great Fire of London in 1666 and after suffering bomb damage during the London Blitz during the Second World War was restored in 1953, had been almost completely destroyed by a devastating bomb set off by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Bishopsgate in April, 1993. The Church of England had proposed demolishing the remains of St. Ethelburga’s – the insurance policy on which had run out just 3 weeks before the bombing - but following a public outcry it was rebuilt to its original plan although the interior somewhat different.
Over 50,000 people from dozens of countries, many of them countries in conflict, have visited the Center for Reconciliation and Peace that arose from the ruins of the IRA bombing and which is completely independent of the Church of England although the church itself remains a consecrated Christian space.
People come together to share their stories, experiences, insights and skills about how people can build a relationship across divisions of conflict and religion. St. Ethelburga’s has become a powerful symbol of how the chaos of conflict can be transformed into a new creative order.
“Our experience and ideas come from listening to these people, rather than from any particular theoretical or theological position,” explains Simon Keyes.
“We offer a safe place for a new type of conversation in which people can have an opportunity to build relationships with people unlike or even opposed to them.”
During the visit to Belfast – and even though I had seen the so called ‘peace wall’ and famous murals of Belfast on television news reports – seeing for myself the massive murals with their powerful portraits of one persons hero and enemy of another, republican and loyalist living a few streets apart, divided by a wall, fence and in the middle of an access road a number of large steel pillars.
Confused as to what they were doing in the middle of the road, my companion explains that these steel girder type whatever can swing around at the touch of a button – somewhat like the Thames Barrier blocking out rising sea waters so as not to flood London. I found it all shocking, horrific and yet … am I not dealing with the same physical sights (minus the swinging girders) in much of my work in Givat Haviva.
Maybe seeing it somewhere else, where the conflict is sort of on hold – nobody I spoke to thought it was the end of the ‘troubles’ altogether – made me stand back and take a good look at how those I deal with from abroad react to seeing the security fence, checkpoints and ominous concrete wall snaking its way across Jerusalem.
Shared scars of the past and evidence of the ongoing fears and distrust carried by people in conflict moving forward to the next round of physical confrontation whilst at the same time declaring they are seeking peace.
Guess I don’t have the answers to many of my own questions nevermind those of others.
Too many swords and not enough ploughs.
January, 2011
Photos & text: Lydia Aisenberg
