I felt another moment of brokenness being healed
Meeting with South Belfast Quakers
I had hoped to visit Lisburn Quakers given it was the nearest to the town I grew up Portadown. I had sent my email late on Saturday afternoon so I was aware that I may not get the details. I didn’t but keen to continue my virtual Northern Ireland (NI) weekend I ‘hoked’ ( NI word for ‘looked for’) out an email I received some months ago which gave me zoom details of some Irish Meeting Houses. South Belfast was on the list. I felt a little resistance. I was fighting against my past which placed me in a working-class / underclass category and perceived South Belfast as middle class.
When I revisit Northern Ireland psychologically I can find myself regressing to ‘know my place’ it crops mostly in relation to class. Curious that given NI was known more for its religious divide.
I overcame it the moment I pressed that magical ‘join meeting’ button. I was welcomed and introduced myself and then waited silently until I saw the former leader of the church I was part of when I lived in Banbridge and his partner. I said hello and felt what I have experienced before a sense of a circle closing. It was from Banbridge that I left to migrate to England 27 years ago.
In the meeting, a friend continued a theme that was emerging as he referred to Adam and Eve’s decision to eat the fruit and lived with the consequence of that decision. That awoke a part of me as I began to see that due to decisions I made in my early teenage years I was still living out of the consequences of them. Like Adam and Eve, it seemed I would spend my life seeking to find my way back to paradise and in the process what was broken would be healed. Here now in South Belfast, I felt another moment of brokenness being healed.
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