4/11/2023

My dear Friend, JRB,

 Do you think Ireland is at Peace?

When I was a kid, news of the IRA bombings haunted me.

While the location of the violence was far away, it affected my life by making my father angry at the dinner table. The veins in the middle of his forehead would pop out & I would be on the edge of my seat as he turned into someone, I had a hard time recognizing. I can’t remember any of the details about the incidents that riled him, I just remember seeing that he had a button it was best not to push.

Would peace education have helped him control his rage & see that the shared humanity joining all humans eclipses the external differences of our “plural identities,” including culture, religion, class, gender, melanin & language, etc. We CAN make a peaceful world if we make “reasoned” choices to overlook egoistic economic & political interests. I ran across this idea in a 2018 piece by Harvey Oueijan who argues we should teach peace in ALL of our university classes.

I encourage you to promote peace education in Belfast where they continue to struggle with the question of whether past wrongs should be forgiven or atoned for. According to the Economist, their Historical Investigations Unit is reopening unresolved cases & balancing truth discovery with vindictiveness. Healing requires letting go & that’s hard to do. I hope your presence contributes to hope for a peaceful future in Northern Ireland.

 I’m sure you share my grief over the latest atrocity in Burma where a celebration for the opening of a new office of an administrative unit of the People’s Defense Force was ambushed by a helicopter & jet dropping bombs & firing on the crowd, killing dozens. It’s hard to imagine forgiving this kind of thing & I have no idea how the junta can atone for all they have done, but someday the people of Burma will resolve this. Let’s hold them in the Light as they come the conclusion that WINTA.

BYBS,

RCA