Belfast Beginnings

I'm here! At last! After a week of an amazing orientation in Louisville, Kentucky, we arrived in Belfast, jet-lagged but ExTrEmElY excited! There are eight of us YAVs working in Belfast this year. Alex Creager from Ohio, Joel Pier-Fitzgerald from Michigan, Emily Wilson from Ohio, Jessica and Kevin Crossan from Pennsylvania, Megan Buff from Washington, Elizabeth Cluff (my housemate) from Texas, and myself make up the team. Elizabeth and I live in Dundonald, a district in East Belfast, a predominantly loyalist section of the city. We have a very spacious apartment, and are already getting to know our neighbors - many of whom consist of single mothers with children. Alex and Joel live in North Belfast not far from Kevin and Jessica. Megan and Emily are in Lambeg more towards the West side of Belfast. The past two days here have been full of rain, but also full of Doug-Baker-led orientation. Doug (our site coordinator) has had us up and moving about and has done a terrific job of introducing us to the city. Each day he has taken all of us to our placement sites to meet our supervisors and to witness the extent of the church's response to the underlying hostilities and past violence of the Troubles. Cross-community work is key to the peace-process. Not only does it involve bringing Catholics and Protestants together in a variety of environments, it also stresses relationship-building among its workers. The church has an evangelical role, but rather than focusing solely on the need to convert non-believers, cross-community work emphasizes relationship-building as key to developing opportunities for sharing the Gospel, but most importantly for sharing the love of community that God calls us into. Doug put it this way to us: Jesus said "Go therefore and make disciples." He didn't say believers. Disciples are those who seek to continually grow in Christ and who seek to imitate Christ's commands. The greatest commandment is found in Matthew when Jesus is questioned by a Pharisee and states that the Pharisee should: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself." Essentially, our greatest commandment as disciples of Christ is to love God, and in a reflection of that love and understanding of grace to love others so that we might live in the community that God has called us into. In the Good Samaritan story that follows, Jesus breaks down the walls of politics, ethnicity, race, and just about any other human categorization to suggest that our neighbor is anyone and everyone. I've discovered in the past couple of days, that the tension underneath many Northern-Irelanders revolves around a question of identity. There are physical (wired fence) boundaries that haunt the streets -markers of the deliberate separation of Catholics and Protestants. There is constant talk about Nationalists and Unionists, Loyalists and Republicans. And one cannot help but notice the giant murals of paramilitary groups hovering over the city streets. I learned in our tour of different community centers today that a good majority of the lower socioeconomic sections of the city face high suicide rates, teenage pregnancies and drug and alcohol abuse. This stems in a large part from low self-esteem, again, a factor of a blurred identity. A lot of the problems are by-products of paramilitary violence as well. Single mothers are often in their situations because fathers have not returned from prison for the violent crimes they have committed to prove their allegiance. Youth turn to alcohol and drugs as a means to alleviate their misunderstandings of themselves. But again, the work that is going on here is phenomenal. There are so many people that are living for the community. They are sacrificing their time, energy and financial security all for the sake of Christ. I hope that in the weeks ahead to begin developing relationships with the Irish people that will open my eyes to my own identity in Christ and how God is alive and working here.