We need words used for reconciliation rather than words as weapons for war

The city side riverfront buildings stood on their own reflections, white cumulus clouds were dancing wraithlike in the waters of the Foyle where on the surface “little breezes dusk and shiver” in Tennyson’s phrase.

The raucous racket of traffic on the Foyle expressway was muffled and muted across the water.

I thought of the celebratory reunion of the key participants in the Good Friday Agreement a few weeks ago where they again basked in the ambient atmosphere of semantic ambiguity.

Misused words have long shadows and in our benighted province the Lorelei lure of a ‘shared future’ becomes unattainable.

Increasingly our politicians use words as weapons of war and conquest. Until the vocabulary of reconciliation is shared and understood there can be no lasting political agreement.

Outside facilitators will always fail until local politicians use words as part of innermost belief.

In 1 Peter 3:10 one reads:

‘Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongues from evil and their lips from deceitful speech.’

George McNally, Limavady Road, Londonderry