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Crossing the borders within: Corrymeela looks to the future

I LEARNED that I was to become the Leader of the Corrymeela Community as I was driving along the border between the north and the south. My route started in Fermanagh, cut seamlessly into Donegal, returned unceremoniously to Fermanagh, entered Donegal once more, and then continued on (briefly through Leitrim) into Sligo.

The international border I crossed never called attention to itself but was present in my mind. Brexit loomed. Centenaries approached. New conversations at Corrymeela about our work in peace and reconciliation lay ahead. What would this road look like in the coming years? Would some form of hard border return? What sort of future were we entering: one of further separation and greater division, reminiscent of the partition made a hundred years back; or one smoothed out by overlapping plural identities: Irish, British, Northern Irish, European? I became very aware of just how accustomed we had become to an open border, to the normality of both/and, to the freedom of travel and the sensation of an unencumbered, all-island sense of place and belonging.

* Full article available in printed copies.


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Alex Wimberley

An American Presbyterian minister, has served as the Leader of the Corrymeela Community since 2019.