The fifth and final launch of my new book, Considering Grace: Presbyterians and the Troubles (Merrion Press, 2019), co-authored with Jamie Yohanis, was held 27 November at the Bridge Centre in Enniskillen.
The launch featured a response by David Bolton, a trauma researcher, writer and practitioner; and author of Conflict, Peace and Mental Health: Addressing the Consequences of Conflict and Trauma in Northern Ireland (Manchester University Press, 2017). His remarks are reproduced below, with his kind permission.
Considering Grace: Response by David Bolton
I am grateful to Rev. David Cupples for the invitation to be part of this evening’s proceeding here in Enniskillen and to have heard from the authors of the book and others involved in undertaking the studies behind Considering Grace. It was most appropriate that Jamie read from the book the account of David Cupples’ experiences in the hours, days and weeks after the Enniskillen Remembrance Sunday bombing. It is particularly appropriate that it is included in the book and honoured this evening in this place, Enniskillen Presbyterian Church.
I confess I am a bit nervous about offering a view on this book, Considering Grace. It is such a precious thing, a vessel that contains so much for us to take heed of, to remember or even to consider for the first time.
It is a sad and heartbreaking read in places. Then again, inspirational or challenging. Straightforward and obvious solutions to our quarrel, yield in the face of the complexity of the hurt, loss and trauma it contains.
The book has ‘released feelings into words’ – a term used by David Stevens and referenced in its pages. And the book does a lot more. It honestly and fairly releases into words, the origins and circumstances of our conflict. For many, myself included, we draw upon poorly formed and blunt understandings of how we got here and why we can’t seem to move beyond this point. For this reason alone, the book is required reading for those who seek to understand our quarrel. Also, there are important lessons in the pages of this book for those who would like to write the histories of our conflict.
Another writer, this time Michael Humphrey, concludes that “Trauma … brings violence to the surface of history”. The book, to our great discomfort, brings the violence of thoughts, words, deeds and inactions that have preceded and littered the last few decades – to the surface. In doing so it does us all an important service, lest we forget the price that has been paid. And to remind us that the hurt is not going to just go away – unless we find ways of compassionately containing it, acknowledging it and transforming it.
I find this to be a remarkable book. It is remarkable in a number of respects. It is about the violation of neighbourly trust; about hurt, loss and grief, and of trauma – much of which has lasted – unrelieved – for years. It is also about courage. And about love and care.
Notwithstanding the miseries described within, it is a book about hope and renewal.
More than anything Considering Grace is about ‘struggle’ – such as the struggle of a divided community, which for reasons which are themselves the subject of debate and dispute, led us into violent conflict – an early missed opportunity for grace.
It is about the struggle of people directly affected by violence or the threat of violence to make sense of, to live with or overcome their grief and distress. It is about the struggle with moral hurt and injustices – and the hard won responses that bring a measure of peace. It is about the struggle of a church, its leaders, pastors and people – to work out and live a Gospel-based response to the conflict, the violence and its consequences. And as the authors note, it is also about the wider struggle of our community and its institutions – to understand, define and respond to the Troubles.
Before addressing some of these issues further, I want to reflect upon my experience of reading the book.
Chapter 3 contains the accounts of those members of the PCI who directly experienced the violence. It was somewhere in Chapter 3 – I realised that I was reading this book very fast – at quite a pace. It took me a moment to understand why. I concluded it was its short compact sentences, most with less than a dozen words, it seemed. Coming from an academic stable this was perhaps a little unexpected. Such books are supposed to have long sentences with big words, frequent phrases in brackets, references and footnotes. This one doesn’t. I then wondered whether the inclination to move through the book at a pace, was in any way taking away from the depth of the experiences of those who had suffered loss and trauma.
Was I reading this too fast to take it all in? I concluded that, on the contrary, its economy of language, with not a word wasted, said all that needed to be said. Further, the understated and unelaborated style revealed a stark or arresting picture, freighted with feeling, provoking an emotional response in me. I found myself stopping from time to time, taken aback by some small detail or phrase.
Such a style within a book does not come by accident. Mark Twain is credited with saying, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” It takes time and care to write a book like this, which because of its approach is immediately accessible and will be read by many more people than otherwise might be. The other thing that struck me was the voices I heard through the pages, with experiences, feelings, disappointments, loss, realisations, hopes and recoveries – all to be found in the honest use of people’s own words.
There are few books that I write in or mark to highlight something to go back to. In this book I have marked many such places.
In the past, I have undertaken and supervised qualitative research, much of it into the impact of the Troubles, and I think I understand some of the efforts that must have gone into the formation of this book, of the selection, categorisation and summation of the contributions and the extraction of conclusions. So with that background I commend the authors and those who guided them on what they have put together and admire and appreciate the value of what has been produced. If we truly want to understand the price that has been paid for our quarrel, then this is a book most worthy of being read – not just by members and leaders of the PCI – for its lessons have acute relevance for all churches, church people, and, yes, for others who do not darken the door of a church.
So what of grace and what can we learn about it from this book?
Grace has much to commend itself as a means of getting through life. I favour the idea of grace as a way of thinking that brings us to a better place, that opens up unexpected and surprising possibilities, that stirs up the generous spirit that is surely within us all, and in response opens the possibility of a gracious response or outcome in others. It unlocks things that seem impossible.
So, when I saw the title of the book it immediately caught my eye. Its ambiguous syntax caused me to retrace my steps and ponder. I therefore approached it hopefully. On the other hand, I wondered about a book that talked about how a church and church people had been affected by and coped with the Troubles. It had the chances of being, one way or another, a difficult read – either because of the possibility of being faced with the awfulness of those times and their consequences, or having to wrestle with some high religious perspective that failed to get to grips with the reality of it all.
The invitation to consider grace is also about being gracious to ourselves.
So much of the hurt in this book is about the missed opportunities and personal shortcomings, the wish that we might have been more courageous, outspoken, acted sooner, been there, and such like.
We can deal with ourselves very harshly when we fail to meet our expectations or when we look back with deep regret and see how we might have acted differently. Or in the context of conflict, where harm has been done to those we love or have sought to serve and protect, our grief is for the loss we have endured. At the same time is is about what we think those we have lost might have expected of us. Our response to hurt can be to live out a life shaped for evermore by a duty of remembrance and commemoration, driven by love or service – a response that is frozen in the moments when everything changed.
This half-way-house, this liminal state, where we can’t go back, nor can we go forward, was so tangible in the pages of the book.
The accounts of those directly affected by violence, those who served the community or those engaged in church leadership and pastoral care tell of this struggle.
And, importantly, as the authors note, there is no single solution. We cannot hurry those who hurt along to some better place they cannot recognise or cannot see as relevant to them. We wouldn’t want to be so hurried ourselves.
That no man’s land of unresolved grief and trauma, is also a description of where we are as a community. Our contrasting political visions of what this place could be like bring no consolation – often only further hurt. There is no clear way forward. No unifying vision around which we are invited to gather. The book gives us a glimpse into the honest conversations we need if we are to find our way through our current struggle on how to deal with the past. The distance travelled by those who have suffered so much is in sharp contrast to the ambitions of our limited bi-polar political discourse.
Into circumstances such as this, the possibility of grace brings possibilities – if only we would consider it.
Grace is seldom a finished work. At first it might be no more than a distant glimpse – that invites us to look again. It is about deciding to move from where we are, going no further than we can. It is about giving up the self destructive choices that work against any chance of finding peace of mind. It’s about deciding to live generously. And it is about having the aspiration to forgive – even if we think we can never forgive. It is about placing our feet into any crevice of hope and creativity we can find, and, when things seem impossible, to lean on the everlasting arms.
David Bolton Enniskillen 27 Nov 2019
Image (L to R): David Bolton, Rev David Cupples, Gladys Ganiel, Rev Charles McMullen, Jamie Yohanis, Rev Tony Davidson