November is the month of memories, a time of reflection that mirrors the season of Autumn in the Northern hemisphere of our planet. Just as the Fall is glorious, with its multitude of colours and brilliant light, so too November begins with a spread of radiance  when we celebrate the feast of All Saints who now share in the joy of the presence of God. Close on its heels comes the commemoration of All Souls, those whose names we do not know, whose faces we may have never seen, whose journey is not yet over. The days of the month unfold in further, sombre memories.

  When trouble broke out in the Ardoyne district of Belfast in 2001, Ben Bradlee, one time editor of the Washington Post during the days of Watergate, was visiting Northern Ireland . His car happened to pass the hostile morning crowds outside Holy Cross primary school.

   A local journalist told him it was a complex situation, to which Bradlee replied: "It isn't complicated. It's simple. It's wrong."  He died last month and his memorial service was recently held in Washington DC . He was an outstanding editor of great integrity.  For a detailed account of the Holy Cross incident see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Cross_dispute

 The example of others sustains us in our lives. Just after the events of that turbulent Autumn in the Ardoyne, I wrote these few lines.

 Being young

 Between here and there

is a short distance

yet longer for smaller feet,

small people walking

 with up-stretched hands

amid the closing shouts

of angered faces

between here and there.

               Being young

you do not understand

the wounded view of  history

that tells each the other, so they

do, their personal story,

lived down many years

in company with the stone

the bottle, bomb and gun.

           From

hedge school

to

your school                 

from

house gate

             to

school gate

is

a long walk

between

here and there

    being young.

Later, in 2002, Archbishop Desmond Tutu visited

the school. He was shown the piece I had written.

At the bottom of the page he wrote

“It will be alright, God Bless, Desmond Tutu”.

I valued those few words. If ever a man showed

by a courageous life his Christian faith, then it

was Archbishop Tutu. His words of hope in the

face of adversity came from the experience of a life of witness lived in the South Africa of the Apartheid years.

 There has to be courage too in our ecumenical dialogue, the willingness to move with a freedom of spirit that prevents hesitation over small points, seeking a larger, broader unity. Francis was reported on the Tablet website this week as saying “…that Christians should not wait for theologian documents before forging closer ties. We each have in our Churches excellent theologians. That’s another way to walk together also. But we shouldn’t wait for them to reach agreement! That’s what I think.”

 In his path of reform, he has shown the courage of conviction, a realization of the necessity for change and a willingness walk a difficult path in pursuit of that goal. The long term consequences of the recent exchanges at the Synod remain to be seen.  Pope Francis began his address to the Pentecostal bishops visiting him in Rome by thanking participants for their courage, adding: “Yesterday I was at the door of the synod hall with a Lutheran bishop. I said, ‘You’re a brave man! In a previous age they burned Lutherans here!’”

 Maybe both men showed enormous courage.

 END

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