Guest Speaker Featured for Peace Work
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Source: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/features/blessed-are-the-peacemakers-the-risks-they-took-for-peace-in-northern-ireland-36136762.html
Recently, the Belfast Telegraph featured Rev. Gary Mason, a guest speaker of numerous EO Tours, for his peace work in Ireland.
The article quotes Rev. Mason:
“I remember a wet November night, sitting with a guy from Tigers Bay. His wife was there and he was coming to his last breath. In the next bed, there was another man with his wife by his side, I think from the New Lodge, and we all got into conversation. I said, ‘It’s quite strange, isn’t it? The old Orange and Green aren’t too important now.’ And they both said, ‘You’re right, Gary’. So, it’s a balance of what is important and, hopefully, a meaningful pastoral approach helps people to see that the totality of life is not a piece of land.”
The article continues:
"Forging these relationships was often a matter of small steps, when opportunities arose. For example, the Rev Mason recalls a loyalist hurling a brick at a house on the Springfield Road and missing a young mother and her new baby by inches.
'I went over the see the girl and say sorry and tell her that I was glad her child wasn't injured, but, of course, people (on the loyalist side) were saying, 'They're doing that to us, as well'. And I said, 'I know, but my job is to stop both of you doing it, because it's wrong - no one wants a six-month-old kid getting hit by a rock'. Through that incident and conversation, that young girl ended up crossing the Springfield Road and coming to the cross-community parents' and toddlers' group we had set up, just because I had gone across and spoken to her. It was about relationships and both sides need to hear each other'."
Read the complete article, here.
You can also learn more about our dialogue series of tours that are designed to explore social conflicts and social justice and discuss attitudes and practices that can be applied at home.
