The recent Legacy Framework launched by Tanaiste, Simon Harris, and Secretary of State Hillary Benn has reignited the debate on how we remember the Troubles. The Independent Commission for Information Recovery and Reconciliation, the ICRIR will be replaced by two new bodies, one dealing with investigations and another with information recovery. Conditional immunity for soldiers or agents of the state, and the ban on civil proceedings taken by victims will be lifted. It is difficult to respond to the new proposals until we see the legislation. The cliche “The devil is in the detail” is not only true of legislation, but also of our personal memories of the Troubles.

A schoolfriend of mine Maurice Hobson was severely injured in an IRA Bomb on his way to school in Dungannon in 1975. Maurice was a skilled artist and photographer. He decided to show what it was like to be a victim by making self-portraits of himself with his body horribly contorted to show what it was like to be a victim from the inside out. His eyesight had been affected by the bomb. His self-portraits reveal some of that devilish detail. Sadly, Maurice died in 1987 from an epileptic fit caused by brain damage from the bomb. I have heard many stories like this from across the Northern Ireland community.

Sometimes art helps in the search for truth as well as information. I recently re-read David Park’s novel, “The Truth Commissioner” which was  published back in 2008. Using his imagination Park drops a Truth Commissioner into a Post Troubles Northern Ireland, and then tells stories about a Republican Politician, an IRA foot soldier, a former RUC Officer, and the Truth Commissioner himself. The novel was made into a movie of the same name in 2016. At the beginning of the novel Park, drawing upon his  childhood Baptist background, quotes John 5v2-4; “Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda having five porches, In these lay a multitude of impotent folk of blind, halt, withered , waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.”

Park in a 2016 interview with Malachi O’Doherty referring to this story wonders aloud if “the stirring of the waters” in 21st century Northern Ireland actually will lead to any healing. The fictional truth Commissioner, Henry Stanfield, observes how he has presided over “truth, but little reconciliation.” Park’s novel draws out the collusions, complexities, and circumventions of the Troubles. In his interview he talks about how all the characters try to hide their unpleasant truths, while emphasising the other’s unpleasant truths. He describes how his characters are experiencing aging and how post Troubles, there are births, marriages, and deaths, so that we increasingly live among a generation who… no longer remember the devilish details of the Troubles.

Yet even the cynical Stanfield admits some of these victim’s stories have power. “Some stories (and he can never predict them or see them coming) take on the mysterious power to reach beyond the external world and to touch the quick of everyone who hears them.”

It was my experience through my involvement with Gladys Ganiel and Jamie Yohanis book… “Considering Grace: Presbyterians, and the Troubles” … to hear stories “that reached beyond the external world.”

Since the 2009 Consultative Group on the Past, known as the Eames Bradley Report, there has been a proposal to establish an oral history. It could be a role for the church, with its rich history of pastoral care through times of crisis, to help in the process of producing this oral history. Many church members may be reluctant to tell their story to a stranger or a machine but would recall their story to their Pastor, who could show how she/he listened attentively by writing out the story.

In this stirring of the waters by the power of the Holy Spirit perhaps some healing may emerge.