Peace Walls Must Come Down
Peace Walls Have Outlived Their Usefulness
“If life is a relay, not a race
Doesn’t that somehow help to explain
Why progress is so often viewed as a loss?”
- from “Credo” by Pat Boren
In a time of unprecedented peace and unprecedented prosperity in Ireland, we are still loathe to live outside the walls, the protection, of our troubled past. To loose the strings that have held our identity for so long is difficult, and in many cases, against all we have been taught. The land of saints and scholars, poets and sad songs; things that are as part of our blood as oxygen, are tough barnacles to break off. Maybe it is time to not hold those strings so tightly, to let a little slack free, to see what it catches. At the very least, to not hold the sins of the father against the son, grandson and on. We could do this, in order to come to grips and full realization of the Celtic Tiger. Perhaps, it is the only way that we can, before it has burned on by, and taken the soul of the country with it.
Of North and South, borders blur and traditions are often lost in the mist. The boom has peaked. Seeking, finding and capturing that balance between prosperity and our soul, just as our ancestors struggled to find the balance between survival and holding onto their Irishness. In either case, our Irishness, our soul, is still the battle, whether our opponent be The Stranger, or the stranger known as prosperity.
Preserve what we must, but no one wants to, nor should be, judged by their religion, the street they live on, or their name; to be bunkered in. Let it be their character that judges and God the judger. The peace walls must come down. Not all at once, not without forethought, but the walls must come down.