Northern Ireland

I'm back in America, back at home. It's weird having to adjust to being at home.

I find myself missing the city. I live in a lovely small town, and I really like it here, but there's something about exploring cities that now I'm suffering withdrawal from. First it was Belfast, then Dublin, then D.C. all in the span of 2 weeks. I'm adjusting to the slower pace now, the isolation, to things being more spread out. No more subways and trains. No more rainy European streets. No more national history down the block. I'm not sure I can even pinpoint what exactly it is that I miss. Those things don't quite capture the essence of what I miss.



I miss the country side, too. The ocean being out the back door. Fields of sheep and gravel roads winding through the hills. The nearest shop being a 45 minute walk along the coastal road, past the ruins of the friary left over from the late 1400s.

I have a lot of issues on my mind. I'm overwhelmed with the world's problems. Pollution and poverty, war and hunger, justice and peace... I've been asked to speak about my trip to Ireland in church on Sunday, probably for 3-5 minutes, and I don't know how to condense it. I'm too overwhelmed.

The biggest thing, maybe, is that beauty and ugliness are so often right up next to each other. Like the peace walls, put up in Belfast to keep Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods from fighting with each other. They have graffiti all over them, and you'd see a handwritten message of love right up next to a spray painted swastika. You have Christianity, the main tenet of which is supposed to be love and compassion, widespread throughout the country, yet, this history of killing and violence because they can't agree on what kind of Christianity to follow. You have this beautiful, peaceful landscape, and all this razor wire everywhere.

And somehow, even they can agree that the U.S. needs to stop killing people.

(Graffiti like this was all over the place in Belfast-- on nearly every other block.)