麻豆约拍

Good morning. When I was a school chaplain an eleven year old once said to me:
I have one important question for you, and I鈥檇 like you to answer. I know that God loves us and God made us, but I want to know why God made protestants.
This was a Catholic child from West Belfast. The story of a people is present in the question of a child.
I asked her what she meant, and why she wanted to ask it, and she said that she鈥檇 heard that Protestants hate God and hate Catholics.
She was easily put right. She was magnificent at football and I told her that every protestant I knew would want her on their team, and she was delighted at the thought.
But still. The story of a people is present in the question of a child.
Joe Liechty and Cecelia Clegg, two researchers from the Irish School of Ecumenics, described sectarianism as 鈥渂elonging gone bad鈥�. This girl came from a lively and thriving community, yet somehow that belonging had, for a while, taught her terrible untruths about those who were different.
Where else has belonging gone bad in our society today?
Often it seems like we need to make one identity superior to others, it seems like the borders of belonging can be more hostile than necessary.
In Irish, there鈥檚 a phrase 鈥淚t is in the shelter of each other that the people live鈥�. The word 鈥淪helter鈥� in Irish can also mean 鈥淪hadow鈥�. Belonging can turn both beautiful and bad.
God of all belonging
Help us see beyond
the borders of our belonging
so that we might see beauty
in faces as yet
unfamiliar to us.
Amen.