Email: Hannah Williams

Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
And will raise up the age-old foundations
You will be called repairer of Broken Walls,
Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.
- Isaiah 58:12

Friends,

Everywhere I go there are walls. Walls and gates surround homes. Fences line churches protected by a plethora of locks. There are seven locks on my front door and five on my back door. Apparently, the former occupants of my home in Ballybeen (East Belfast) felt a bit unsafe. Frankly, I’m not used to so many walls, doors, gates, locks, and Northern Ireland has really thrown me for a loop.

Growing up in southwest Virginia, where countryside rolls on without impediment probably has a good deal to do with my perplexity over Belfast’s many enclosures. The fences in my hometown of Virginia are of barbed-wire, which typically stop livestock from meandering across my front lawn. So to see miles and miles of stone and plaster walls fascinates me.

It would be easy to visit Ballybeen over just a few days and take these walls, fences, and locks at mere face value. From the outset, they appear as statues marking an era of civil unrest. For example, there is an apartment complex at the end of my street that hosts a giant paramilitary mural on its exterior stone wall. Masked gunmen tower in the foreground of the mural. At its base a slogan encourages spectators to remember all those who gave their lives for the Ulster Volunteer Force, one of the many Loyalist paramilitary groups of the Troubles.

However, if you stay in Ballybeen for a while you will find that the fences, gates, locks, and walls are anything but stagnant forces documenting paramilitary influence or barriers to keep everyone out. In fact, there is a profound movement among churches here in East Belfast to open their doors, their gates, and their locks to the surrounding community.  Congregations have recognized that just outside the doors are countless single mothers struggling to make ends meet. Just outside the doors are teenagers struggling with alcohol and drug addictions. Just outside the doors are families burdened with debt and plagued by verbal and physical abuse.

In a response to these acknowledged needs, congregations are coming together, affirming the call of the church to reach out to the suffering and impoverished. At my worksite this fall, Dundonald Methodist Church, and its neighboring church, St. Mary’s, of the Church of Ireland, formed a partnership to reach further into the community. Every week these two churches facilitate programs for mothers and toddlers, counseling programs, and after-school clubs.

So three afternoons a week I walk down a long corridor in Dundonald Methodist Church with my set of what I like to call “janitor” keys to unlock a double-bolted door and a padlocked gate. As soon as my keys jingle against my wrist, the kids in DFCI’s after-schools program come running up the giant hill on which the church rests. They filter in through the church halls skipping and giggling. First two, then four, then ten, and they keep coming.

A steady buzz of laughter and voices at play bounce off of the church walls and fill the halls with a warmth that reduces the Irish cold to a mere pinch. And then, somewhere inside of me, the walls of cultural difference, of homesickness, of insecurity come crashing down, and I’m on my knees building towers out of Jenga blocks and Duplos. I’m stacking sippy cups of juice and readjusting a toppling mound of toast for snack time. I’m coloring Jesus activity sheets alongside the kids and mounting their artwork on bulletin boards with an emphatic “Ooooh!” or “Aaaah!”

After a bit of building, stacking, and mounting, it’s time to go home. The kids file out the door waving around buns they’ve baked in cookery or pictures they fashioned in arts and crafts. As the last one slips out with his parent close behind, I shut the outside gate and put on the padlock, then shut and bolt the side door. On one last look before going home, I notice a tiny pink fuzzy jacket that someone’s left behind. In the craft room there’s a bit of glitter gleaming from the wooden floor. When I turn off the lights and walk back down the long hallway, janitor keys jingling at my side, I always seem to make out the echo of laughter coming from the streets down below.