Learning Peace Building, Part 2

20 June 2026, Belfast, Northern Ireland
According to the step tracker on my phone I did over 16,000 steps today! I am weary and full – heart, soul, mind, and body.

We spent the day walking the neighborhoods on either side of the Peace Wall in Belfast. If you don’t know much about the Troubles of Northern Ireland, let me just sum it up this way: it is so much more complex than just the good guys and the bad guys. It is violence and hatred that stems from centuries of struggles fueled by religion, politics, and national identity.

There is a wall named the Peace Wall that runs between two neighborhoods. The wall has been there since long before the Berlin Wall was ever built. It started as a small wall and has grown taller in the decades since the Peace Agreement was signed in 1998. When asked about the Wall, the residents say it keeps them safe from the other side. They don’t see it as a tool of division but as a way to keep peace. The murals and memorial sites on each side vilify the other side. There are no joint memorials.

I’m not describing this as a way to make any of us feel morally superior to these folks but as a way to illustrate how defining ourselves by who we are against shapes our worldview. In our Leadership Cohort one of the principles of conflict competent leaders is “Anchored and Propelled”. We are each anchored in our own belovedness as God’s children and from that grounding we are propelled into the world to proclaim the belovedness of others. In the baptismal vows of the Episcopal Church, it’s “respecting the dignity of every human being” including ourselves.

I don’t find it a great stretch of my imagination to ponder how this worldview of being against the other is shaping us in the US. But when division begins to feel like a tool for safety, we can absolutely say that we not following Jesus into God’s Kingdom-on-earth-as-in heaven. We can’t look with apathy at the division in our country and say naively that what has (is) happening in Northern Ireland could never happen here. It can and if we don’t actively work to build peace, it will.

One of our teachers today, who works with a youth center that brings children and teens together from both sides of the wall, gave us three steps to moving beyond hatred: Acknowledge the pain for all of the past, look at out own attitudes, and commit to never again going back. Another said, “hatred is compromised by relationship.” The work that the peace builders in Northern Ireland do is cultivating and nurturing relationships that undo the dehumanization of hate and violence. It is slow, steady work. It is the work of God’s Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven.

What identity to we ground ourselves in? Our nationality, our political party, our neighborhood, who we are against? Or do we know that we are God’s beloved Children, Image Bearers of our Loving God and let this shape us? This isn’t a spirituality question. It is an identity question for our whole being – heart, soul, mind, and body. We are all God’s beloved.

Keep lovin’ louder than the hate, Y’all!

P.S. My suitcase and I are reunited!