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A Sense of Community

Volunteers and participants in the Corrymeela Community’s work are part of a unique experiment to create a common space within which all the various groups involved in one of the world’s main trouble spots, can find an oasis of reconciliation.

It is Friday night and Corrymeela Community member Lisa Bullick is recounting for a group of listeners, an incident that took place on August 15, 1998, in the centre of the town of Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. A bombing in which 29 people were killed and many injured. There is silence as Lisa talks.

‘I cannot describe to you the feeling of sadness,’ she says. ‘It’s like a fog and cloud hanging over the whole town, and it will not lift.’

She was holidaying at a caravan site with her two young boys when a woman pedalling towards a telephone box shouted news that a bomb had gone off in the very centre of the provincial town in the midst of people doing their shopping. Lisa described her shocked reactions, and those of people she encountered. She told of going into the town on the Monday as a sign of solidarity.

Then she commented: ‘I have to say that belonging to the Corrymeela Community has been one of the greatest comforts in the last month that I will ever know.’ Her husband, Eric, also a member of Corrymeela, said he could not keep track of the numbers of people who had called to offer help, although the Bullicks did not lose any close relative in the bombing.

In the Oxford dictionary, definitions for the word ‘community’ are many and varied.

‘All the people living in a specific locality’.

‘A specific locality, including its inhabitants’.

‘A body of people having a religion, a profession, etc. in common’.

In many conflict zones, including Northern Ireland since the Troubles, ‘community’ can even be a byword for factions - as in ‘Catholic community’ vs ‘Protestant community’, for example.

However, when applied to Corrymeela, ‘community’ refers to an all-embracing spirit (as in the Oxford Concise definition ‘a feeling of belonging to a community expressed in mutual support’).

At the Corrymeela centre. Photo Belfast Exposed King St.

Corrymeela is centred at a residential site near Ballycastle on the North coast of Northern Ireland. But it is not just a place. Describing it as a partnership involving a whole range of community groups, would be closer to the mark. A flexible programmeme allows full participation in a range of projects covering schools, Youth, Church, Community and Family groups.

It is a quest for reconciliation through sharing. Corrymeela is, at its essence, about facilitating personal contact as a way of reducing tension.

Ray Davey, who founded the Community in the sixties, explains the idea underpinning it thus: ‘From the very start the idea of community has been very central in Corrymeela. No doubt, it was this that drew many people to it at the beginning and continues to do so. This search for togetherness is, indeed, very much part of everyone’s inner life. The desire to belong, to be accepted and to be wanted are parts of being human.’

A YMCA Field worker during World War II, Davey was captured in North Africa and was a prisoner of war in camps in Italy and Germany. His experience of the community spirit engendered among soldiers held captive was counterbalanced by the evidence he observed of terrible inhumanity and injustice on the battlefields. As Presbyterian Chaplain at Queen’s University in Belfast, Davey sought new ways to deal constructively with conflict situations and to develop new relationships between ‘traditional enemies’.

His emphasis on exploring and promoting a sense of ‘community’ occurred at a time of major changes in the world. In the sixties, Europe was enraptured in a mood of optimism. This spirit infected mainly young adults and students. ‘The early Sixties,’ Davey recalled, ‘were times of listening and learning to discern the signs of the times and the later Sixties of commitment to the journey for peace.’

Drawing from similar experiences in Scotland (the Iona Community) and Northern Italy (the Agape Community), the Corrymeela Community was set up as ‘...a place where...the ideals of Christian Community’ could be practised. Students, teachers, businessmen, ministers met and decided to obtain a building for use as a meeting place.

‘We would not affiliate ourselves with any particular denominational structure, but were anxious not to fall into the old Protestant trap of forming a new splinter group,’ recalls Bill Breakey, one of the founders. ‘So, we resolved that we would all remain active in our own churches. We wanted to have, for ourselves, the richness of community experience and the power that a community can have; even to move mountains.’

That was in the mid-1960s. Today, the Corrymeela Community operates on several fronts. There is the residential centre located just outside the town of Ballycastle in County Antrim. In Belfast, the administrative office - Corrymeela House - serves as a base for field workers, meeting place for Corrymeela groups in the city, and a resource for many other groups who share some of the same aims but lack a meeting place.

A range of School, Youth, Adult and Church projects and open residential events for people from all traditions on social, cultural, political and religious themes is undertaken. It is considered important that issues of politics, religion, culture and social environment are discussed and explored. Broader perspectives are sought in such discussions. ‘Encounters’ involving young people meeting and sharing their experiences and listening to each other, form the basis of youth work. A programme like the Seed Group brings young people together to reflect on issues, experiences and influences that have shaped who they are. Such programmes, in which 18-25-year-olds participate, lead many to become more actively involved in reconciliation efforts in their own communities.

Through the Department of Education, Corrymeela Community has developed various intra and interschool encounter programmes which are supplemented by community relations projects. Support is also given to new projects in peace and reconciliation work, and training offered in fields of conflict, mediation, Christian education and the like. Victims and those under stress are provided with sanctuary and support.

Paddy and William Huge barriers separate the Catholic and Protestant areas of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Walls, rising as high as 18 feet, symbolic of both security and fear. Corrymeela Community has used a novel method to encourage dialogue between families on both sides of the so-called Peace Wall. A ‘feelings box’ was opened. Anyone can place into the box a single word written on a piece of paper expressing what it was like to live in the shadow of the Peace Wall. Then the pieces of paper are taken out and read without giving away the identity of the writer. Those listening to the messages being read could add whatever they wished. What emerged was that there were few differences between the ideas and feelings expressed by either side. Loss of loved ones evoked similar feelings from Catholics or Protestants contributors to the box. People on both sides shared common feelings about loss of loved ones, lost childhood, and other tragedies. The ‘feelings box’ also burst with varied opinions on the word ‘hatred’. ‘I don’t mean to say that I hate anyone,’ one woman said. ‘What I meant was that I don’t wish to carry on knowing that I am hated, and that my children are hated.’ What did they understood by the word ‘community’? Both sides wanted peace, better amenities for their children, jobs. They wanted a community centre where both communities could continue to meet and support each other. Children have also been embraced in this attempt to get feelings out into the open, and encouraging a sharing of ideas. Two boys who usually throw bricks over the Peace Wall met at Corrymeela. Paddy is Catholic, William a Protestant. Paddy was asked: ‘What if you hit William?’ ‘Oh, I wouldn’t.’ ‘How is that.’ ‘I’m a good shot. I wouldn’t aim at William.’ ‘But sometimes you can’t see who you will hit, the wall is too high.’ Paddy thought long and hard. ‘Yeah, you’re right. I’m going to have to climb up to the top of the derelict house where I can get a really good aim.’ ‘But Paddy, last weekend you could have injured William with a stone, because then you didn’t know him. How would you feel about that now.’ ‘Bad!’ said Paddy, and he and his friends decided to stop throwing stones over the Peace Wall.

At Ballycastle guests share in domestic chores as part of a living community with Corrymeela members, volunteers and centre staff. The place is a respite for families from different backgrounds and having a variety of affiliations. A similar, though smaller, ‘hillside retreat’ is located at Knocklayd. Opened in 1993, this is a smaller meeting space for groups and a quiet space for individuals. Its focus is on ecumenical spirituality.

During the summer family, youth and special interest groups visit that centre for a week in a programme adapted to suit the needs of each group.

Ballycastle, Knocklayd and Belfast are like resource centres for a dispersed Community of 200 people. In addition, there are 5,000 friends of Corrymeela spread throughout the community at large. In return for the assistance they receive from these centres, the friends and members feed their efforts into the development of the centres. These are, by and large, lay people: there is only a sprinkling of clergy. They span various social groups. There are members working full time in education, doing youth and community work, probation service, youth training and unemployment schemes, in health, industry, agriculture, the civil service, and the like. There are even politicians active among them.

It’s a vital two-way process, key to keeping Corrymeela open, and challenging the community to be flexible to the real needs of members and to changes in the society. Members are encouraged to maintain links with local churches, neighbourhood and local communities. They are also urged to live out their commitment to family, at work or in local social and political situations, so as not to become isolated and sever their roots in the society.

As William Rutherford, an early member, explains, the origins of Corrymeela, ‘belong to a very active form of Christianity, so in the beginning the burning question was ‘What should we be doing?’ Doing meant organising or running something. There was a fear that to meet just for the sake of meeting each other was very selfish. We were a Community dedicated to reconciliation, in a city and country crying out for reconciling acts.’

And John Morrow, who led Corrymeela Community from 1980-1993, wrote: ‘The work of reconciliation can only be understood within the concrete context in which we live and work. It is essential to understand the kind of divided society which we have inherited, if the witness of Corrymeela is to make sense. There are an overlapping series of dimensions to the conflict which include cultural aspects like British or Irish identity, religious tradition (Protestant or Catholic), social or economic opportunity etc. It is not possible to limit our work even to those dimensions and any approach to the Christian understanding or reconciliation must take on board relationships between people of all ages, disabled and able-bodied, from both sexes, from different social classes, of conservative or liberal temperaments and the wider issues of race, other religious or no religion.’

Morrow says the value of the Corrymeela Community is that it provides a centre owned by people from both traditions yet independent of the control of the official political or ecclesiastical establishments. At Ballycastle, three residential units serve guests. One of these is specially designed for youth and young adults. Learning through sharing of experiences is the focus. Dialogue and encounters are also tools.

Morrow notes: ‘Work for reconciliation must allow people to begin from where they are. For example, our awareness of the way in which young adults in urban society from areas of social disadvantage have been easy fodder for paramilitary groups has led us to work in this sphere.’

Care has been taken to draw young people from a variety of backgrounds.

In the years since 1965, the community has more or less stuck to aims it set, including training Christian laymen/women to play a responsible part in society and the Church, providing opportunities for retreat, so that people under stress, or wishing to discover new meaning in their lives may find quietness for readjustment, enabling industrial and professional groups to meet for conference and study, and through work camps bringing together crafts people and voluntary workers in a realistic Christian fellowship.

But as Morrow points out, the highly stratified nature of the society and the educational system (Catholic and State) makes it important to provide opportunities for people to meet in ‘lived’ situations. In this way they will discover themselves as human beings.

He adds: ‘The value of a centre jointly owned by people from both traditions, yet independent of the control of the official establishments either political or ecclesiastical, can only be understood in terms of the norms of Northern Irish society.’

This is a sentiment that found echo in the presentation of Lisa Bullick to the Community weekend, when after describing the horrors of the Omagh bombing and its aftermath, she spoke with warmth of the visit William Rutherford paid to the Bullick family the day after the memorial service. ‘I felt that the Corrymeela Community was in my kitchen.’

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