Year: 2000Price: £7.50
Forward:
I love Ireland. Is it because my grandmother was a Maloney, I was told, originally from County Clare? Or is it because of the Irish people's friendliness, their faith, their laughter, their jokes, or because of the windy, rainy days and the land frequently surrounded by angry waves? One day however I discovered another Ireland; huge wire barriers separating streets in Belfast; guns held sometimes by young, fearful soldiers from England; mothers telling me of their sons killed by 'the other side', their bodies left lying in the open streets; people in the south asking "Aren't you afraid to go up there?"
Two faces of Ireland reflecting two sides in each one of us; the place of faith and laughter and the more hidden place of fear and darkness. Then I met the Corrymeela community; a sign of hope where both 'sides' come together and are welcomed in love. They begin to meet each other. Person to person. Heart to heart. No-one is seen any longer as being part of 'the other side' but only as a person, a heart, a wounded heart. Barriers begin to fall. A communion of hearts is born. Life begins to flow. Hope rises up.
In 1975 I met Ruth Patterson when a group of people from different Christian traditions came together to organise an ecumenical 'Festival of Faith and Friendship' which took place the following June. There, some 150 people came together to pray and to worship and sing, to listen to the words of Jesus, to meet each other and celebrate. We reflected together on the beatitudes, on violence, on conflict resolution, on forgiveness and on peace making. We ended by washing each other's feet as Jesus asked us to do. A ceasefire had been declared just a few months earlier so the perfume of peace quietly filled the air.
While in Belfast I visited Restoration Ministries. I saw and heard the passion for peace that filled the heart and work of Rev Ruth Patterson, the first woman ordained as a minister for the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. I witnessed her passionate love of Jesus and her yearnings for His Kingdom of peace to come, her desire for truth, her capacity to take risks and to walk on untreaded and uncharted land. This book talks about her journey as a living, faithful friend and disciple of Jesus. It is a book filled with a song of hope, a hope in God flowing out of a pain-filled land, a divided people, where the smell of death and civil war is present too; where also people of different Christian traditions can sometimes strongly and fearfully hide behind the barriers of their certitudes and their refusal to meet those from 'the other side'. I believe that Northern Ireland has a message for the rest of the world.
Does not the light of hope in Jesus shine out more clearly and strongly in places of darkness, where human hope is failing? In the North, many men and women are risking their lives for peace, followers of Jesus who take His message seriously. This message is chartered in the beatitudes, in the love of enemies, in forgiveness, in Jesus' presence in the poor and the downtrodden, in His gift of the Holy Spirit. Ruth Patterson is one of these followers of Jesus. It is important to listen to her and others who, in the midst of darkness and despair, see the light of dawn emerging. Christians all over the world are being called today to discover that, in and with Jesus, a new hope is given, that with Him, the impossible can become possible. We are all called to the risk and folly of belief in Jesus.
Jean Vanier
President Mary McAleese accepting a copy of 'A Farther Shore' from Reverend Ruth Patterson.
About This Book:
When the idea of writing a book was first presented to me I never imagined that I would end up doing what I have done. Initially, the thought was to gather together various pieces of reflective poetry that I had written over the last few years, with an introduction to each one, giving the background out of which they came. There is a sense in which I feel that these poems have been 'given', because I never was able to write them to order. At certain times they just seemed to be there. I believe they were God-given. They emerged largely out of my own life experience of being part of Northern Ireland during the last thirty-one years, and out of my spiritual journey that is inextricably linked with that experience. They also spring from an unshakeable belief that Ireland has a destiny under God that has yet to be fulfilled. That destiny centres around the call to reconciliation. In fact, I believe that that call to the ministry of reconciliation, to be peacemakers is the chief call of God to those of every tradition in Ireland who profess to be Christian.
Because of what has been happening here, not only over the last thirty-one years, but sporadically throughout the centuries, and because simplistically, other parts of the world have seen the 'Troubles' as a religious war, we have caused the name Christian to be an object of scorn and division. We still have time, although it is running out, to turn that lie on its head and to beam another message around the world; one of acceptance, of mutual hospitality, of forgiveness, of peace with justice, of a love that creates room enough for all. The road to such a goal is a hard one, a costly one, often an unpopular one. But it is possible, and each person has within them (could it but be released) what it takes to travel that road.
The poems in this book deal with such a call, such a challenge, with the joy and the pain, and with the deep connection that 'one small flame is all it takes to let the darkness know it cannot win'. It seemed, however, that the poems on their own were not enough, that something was missing. That something was a call to even more openness and vulnerability on my part.
At first I did not want to hear that call, because Ireland, and Northern Ireland in particular, is such a small place with so many face to face relationships and so many inter-connections, that to write something of my own personal journey seemed sheer madness. Yet while being tempted to say 'No', there was a deeper inner voice urging a 'Yes', a sense that I, first of all, had to share more of myself in order that the poems which follow could be fully gift to others. What has emerged has not been a chronological account of the life of Ruth Patterson, but rather in-depth glimpses of certain stages of my journey, and the accompanying enrichment of a deepening spirituality that has come and continues to come sometimes as a gentle gift and sometimes as treasure salvaged from the wreckage of battered trust, broken dreams and shattered vision.
When one looks back, it is very easy to gloss over events or to imagine that one had had particular thoughts at a certain point in time. I have tried to avoid such temptations and hope that what has emerged is a fairly open and honest statement of faith and of life as I have sought, however stumblingly, to walk my particular road. I pray that this book would be an encouragement to all would-be pilgrims of peace, of unity. As we collectively 'begin again' in Ireland, as we seek to be restorers of the waste places of centuries, it would be a joy to think that some, at least, might be inspired, through reading this simple text, to discover again the difference that one person can make when they realize that they and God are a majority!
A Farther Shore' can be ordered directly from Veritas via their web site.
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