March is a miserable time of year to be in Ireland: wet, cold, and dark, with sudden storms that render the green hills an indistinct shade of gray. But if it was beauty that we were after, we got more than we bargained for. I have never seen hope more dramatically enacted than in the small town in Northern Ireland where we marched through the rain with Catholics and Protestants in the first joint St Patrick’s Day celebration in decades . . . [read more]

But grace appears yet again in that expression, ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I.’ It could be me, in a moment of distraction, that hit a pedestrian. Or my son who is facing a gaol sentence . . . or who throws rocks at Gaza checkpoints, or who ordered a pizza in Belfast.

Surely peace requires a measure of empathy. Meeting, listening, sharing in dialogue, humanising the other, is one way to achieve (by grace) empathy.