Teaching the Troubles at NHA: First Day in Belfast

Dave and Saul with Alan McBride at WAVE

Dave on the Falls Road, with the mural for hunger striker Bobby Sands

Saul tagging the Peace Line in Belfast

We were filled with nervous excitement as we headed down to Belfast for the first time. Our first stop was the Wave Trauma Centre, where we were going to meet one of our heroes, Alan McBride. Alan's wife was killed when the IRA bombed the Protestant Unionist stronghold Shankill Road in 1993. He lived in complete rage for two or three years after. Then he decided it was time for peace. Formerly a butcher, Alan became a youth worker for young people affected by trauma caused by the Troubles on both sides. He has continued that work, although now he mainly works with adults. His Wave Trauma Centre is a remarkably full service organization, providing psychotherapy, art classes, massage, naturopathic medicine and many other services all centered around healing from Sectarian trauma. New entrants start with a hour to hour and a half session, in which they are asked, "What do you need?" The Centre also produces very high quality publications, such as a glossy monthly newsletter and books based on art and writing projects they have done.

According to Alan, Wave was started at least five years before he got involved. This was 1991, and it was a very small operation at first. At that time, a Catholic woman whose husband had died in the Troubles was looking for a therapeutic experience in Belfast and not finding anything. She found a nun named Sister Mary McNeise, and they began a morning coffee support group. In 1993, looking to soothe his own trauma, Alan spent time up at Corrymeela Peace Community, which we had just driven from in the morning. That was the beginning of his own healing.

Over twenty years later, Wave has partnered with Queens University in Belfast to provide a Masters in Trauma Studies. They also have a partnership with a similar program at the University of Harrisburg in America.

Some of Alan's own books include The Troubles and Other Losses (which tells twenty-five stories of deaths by heart attacks caused by the Troubles, as well as deaths from drugs and drink in Troubles-affected families) and The Disappeared (which details the cases of disappeared individuals during the Troubles). Fourteen of the seventeen disappeared bodies have been found at this point. The most famous of these cases was Jean McConville, a mother of ten who was tortured, killed and buried in a secret grave for the "crime" of offering comfort to a dying British soldier on the Falls Road. A tree and plaque in her honor hold a featured place in the tranquil gardens at the Wave. Trauma followed her family, as her children became wards of the state and her son Billy was repeatedly sexually abused by a Priest in his orphanage.

The pivotal moment in Alan's own journey came when an IRA man finally apologized to him without equivocation. His earlier letters to Gerry Adams got responses that always had a "but you must understand" after the apology. "Whenever someone tries to justify what they do," Alan says. "That puts up a barrier. It wasn't until I got that apology, that I started to do things differently."

Alan isn't an overly effusive person, but I think he was moved that we see him as such a big star in our teaching of the Troubles. He gave us about twenty or more books and periodicals related to the Wave's work to take back to our classrooms, and he arranged for us to meet with the woman who runs the Healing Through Remembering program affiliated with the Queens University education department and Facing History in Northern Ireland. He also recommended other books and movies to us, and invited us out to the pub with him for Thursday, to meet his friend Tim McGarry, a comedian who used satire to talk about the Troubles with the comedy troupe "Hole in the Wall Gang."

After we got settled into our flat and had lunch, Padraig O Tuama met us at a lovely spacious coffee shop filled with long brown picnic tables in the Queens University neighborhood of Belfast. Padraig is a poet and holds the position of "leader" at Corrymeela Peace Community. He wanted to talk to us about the Troubles from a new angle, that of the colonization and destruction of language. He began with the gaelic sayings "a land without a language is a land without a soul" (Tir gan teanga tir gan anam) and "broken Irish is better than perfect English" (Is fearr Gaeilge brote na bearla cliste).

He picked out codes hidden from English ears within Irish song, agricultural metaphors having to do with the distribution of land (I thought of the song "Four Green Fields"). He also spoke of "aisling," a word meaning "dream" that is used in a genre of poem where the poet awakens to lament his lost lover at sea, but the lover stands as a metaphor for Ireland. He mentioned the field of study of Hiberno-English, that looks at the syntactical and structural influence of Irish on English language and culture in Ireland. He emphasized that the Troubles are more than bombs and the narrow time frame; the Troubles started from a destruction of language, but the language has persisted.

"In Irish, there is no word for yes or no, so you must repeat the phrase to answer in the affirmative or negative," he said. "We see this when the Irish speak English as well."

"Can you give me an example of that?"

"I can."

"So can you give me an example?"

"I can."

"Oh, you are giving me the example?"

"I am."

Padraig recommended Lisa Goldenberg's 2002 book The Symbolic Significance of the Irish Language in the Northern Ireland Conflict. He then described his role at Corrymeela: he is the lead "vision caster." What he is working on right now is a cross-border examination of the Book of Ruth with Christian faith leaders, so that they can say to politicians, "Within the context of our traditions, this is what borders mean." He has also worked on making Corrymeela the public voice of faith-based LGBTQI inclusion in Ireland and Northern Ireland, and he has recently invited Judaic scholar Aviva Zornberg (author of Moses: A Human Life) to teach at Corrymeela about trauma in the biblical story of Moses.

Padraig insisted on buying our coffees, despite my protests. "It's culturally appropriate," he said, with a twinkle in his eye.

"If you are buying our coffees, then I will buy a copy of one of your books," I bargained. He agreed that this was a fair deal and led us to the nearby independent bookstore No Alibis.

"Get Sorry for your Troubles," he advised. "It's my one about the Troubles."

In the evening, we reconnected with Sean Pettis (mentioned in the blog post about Corymeela, "Where All Suffering is Honored") one last time before he leaves for Spain on holiday. His wife Sharon also joined us. We went to a lovely restaurant right near our flat in City Centre and then to a famous pub called the Crown, that features large cozy booths around most of the tables.

Sharon Pettis works with children on the Autism spectrum who have multiple diagnoses. Daily breakthroughs are small, but she is very attentive to them. She inspired me with what she said about bucking the curriculum when she can see a better way: "I do listening moreso than teaching. I didn't want to be a 'teacher.' I wanted to work with these kids." I like that sentiment.

As we departed on the street, a group of tipsy young Scotsmen came around to ask us where the craic was. We pointed out that we had heard some Irish music playing boisterously at a nearby pub, and we gave them directions. "Irish music... that's just what we're looking for," one of them said, and they moved on.

"That could go really well, or really poorly," Sean said, with a bemused smile, as he watched them pass along.

We went home soon after leaving Mr. and Mrs. Pettis. It was Monday night, after midnight. From our balcony, we could hear the sounds of Belfast partying on.