Belfast is Changing

I ambled across the piazza until I saw my friend raise his hand in greeting. We found somewhere to sit while the sun dropped hard on the stone floor and lit the surrounding streetscape from above and below. The preliminary catch-ups complete we took our time to talk about life, and books, and music and all the things that fill the in-betweens of these oh so infrequent meetings.

I twisted my head slightly, looking backwards and to my left to watch two young free-runners stretch and contort their bodies in preparation for scaling the pillars and walls. Disappearing behind a huge stone column they reappeared sitting on it’s top without the aid of steps or ladder. How do they do that? I asked, fully aware of my body’s many limitations.

Beside us, two young women nimbly exploited chopsticks to consume sushi from a  plastic tray.

We watched a tall man fiddle with the controls of his camera before laying it on a chair then shuffling comicly away to throw his arm round a statue until the camera recorded the memory.

All around us young, stylish and tanned men and women sat with their faces to the sun, or lay pressed to the ground as though weighed down by its heat.

We sat silent for a short time then my friend said, ‘Hard to believe this is Belfast, isn’t it?’ And we laughed.

But it was. Not cosmopolitan Milan, where the rain and the goals poured down this week. Not even historic Edinburgh, where my friend lives. But Belfast.

As I drove across the bridge from the East to our rendezvous, I couldn’t help but notice the shiny new spire atop the Cathedral. Sharp, contemporary, sophisticated looking for all the world the way cigarettes used to be viewed in a bygone age before we found it necessary to ban them from our public spaces.

Then came yesterday’s announcement from the UVF, signalling its transformation. And next week, well next week is perhaps the biggest change of all. Locally accountable, devolved government.

Hard to believe it’s Belfast.

What we will become  as a society is not yet clear but the trajectory is emerging. I’m reminded of what the prophet Isaiah said who judged the success of a community not on it’s material wealth and prosperity, nor its outer peace and security, but on its care for the vulnerable.

‘If you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry, and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noonday. Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and raise up the age-old foundations. You will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.’

[BBC Radio Ulster Thought for the Day, broadcast Friday, 4th May 2007]