Clonard Monastery

Rainy rainy day. Deluge rain. Sat soaking in one of the back rooms at the Clonard Monastery speaking with father Gerry Reynolds and later with Jean Doyle. Father Reynolds has been at the monastery for twenty-five years (only just twenty five, as he would inflect it) and has been an active force in community bridging efforts with protestant parishes. He spoke simply in, with an eloquent calm, about the peace process, about the difficulties of reconcilliation, about the ways that the pain of war is carried through bloodlines. Jean works as a receptionist at the church, having taken leave from work in the private sector, looking for a kind of respite. She grew up in Belfast and has vivid memories of August '69 - of Belfast descending into a fiery choas overnight, of all of the conventions of coexistance dissolving in violence. She has deep wounds associated with the Troubles, friends and family whose lives were bruatally disrupted, or ended outright, by the conflict. But she also has touching stories, stories of unlikely reconcilliation, of finding estranged family members (she has mixed religions in her genealogy) of meeting with Belfast natives outside the country who would have been mortal enemies at home but who easily found common ground in a place removed from the conflict.