Myself and Raymond O’Regan pictured yesterday at First Presbyterian Church on Rosemary Street. In his hand, Raymond holds his sign announcing to the world that the church is closed whilst he goes to mass each day at St Mary’s. His old sign was a bit dilapidated and the people at First Church made him a new one like the good Protestants they are.
All my tours finish at the church which is my favourite place in the city. It’s a beautiful space but what it represents is even more important; humanity and rationality over prejudice. Thomas McCabe from the church successfully opposed the formation of the Belfast Slave Ship Company. Members set up schools, libraries and hospitals in the late 1700s when Belfast was once the ‘Boston or Athens of the North.’ The Church describes itself as liberal, ‘new light Presbyterians’. The fundamentalist despise the Church and its members because fundamentalists trade in binary certainties. The older you get the more you realise, ‘There are no easy answers’.
We’re looking our age in the photo. Raymond’s mobility is not what it was and my fine, fly away hair has …flown away. Raymond still has a full head of hair. I find this deliberately provocative. A few weeks back, someone offered me a seat on a bus! I was affronted but it was an act of kindness.
This day last week in Belfast a pogrom was enacted; people of colour were attacked, houses and cars burnt. We live in some dark times but there are always points light. From thousands attending an anti racism rally on Saturday, to a cantankerous historian who will not be defined by his conditioning to a kind person on a bus giving up a seat to a bald, old git. The light will out.