Reconciled being - love in chains.

Reconciled being--love in chaos Mary McAleese Medio Media/Arthur James, 1997, [pounds sterling] 5.99

A book by a newly-elected head-of-state is unusual; one of spiritual insight a rarity. The author, who succeeded Mary Robinson as President of Ireland last year, looks at division as a consequence of separation from God, and reconciliation as primarily a spiritual quest.

Don't be put off by the title! The author is a skilled communicator (as befits a former news presenter for Irish national television) with her finger on the pulse of the Millennium. On one level her book is a plea for understanding and reconciliation with special reference to her own divided homeland; on another it is a radical appraisal of the roots of violence and cost of cure, with universal application.

Mary McAleese writes with wit and humour drawing on her deep but not unquestioning faith, practice of meditation, and experience as a lawyer, academic and mother of three. After reading her book I feel I know her quite well. In her introduction, she tells how her daughter Emma, then aged four, asked why she disappeared regularly into her study. To `talk to God', McAleese explained, and let Emma join her. After five minutes a litle voice interrupted, `Excuse me, Mammy, but is God talking to you?' `Ignoring everything ... said about meditation, I rashly answered, "Yes". "Right," she said. "Will you plese tell him that when he is finished with you I am still waiting?"'

Born in 1951, Mary McAleese grew up with the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and was forced to leave her home in Belfast by sectarian violence. She taught law in Belfast and Dublin and prior to her election as President of the Republic of Ireland was Pro Vice Chancellor of Queen's University, Belfast. In 1991 Roman Catholic and Protestant church leaders asked her to co-chair a working party on sectarianism.

Her book is based on talks given in 1997 to the John Main Seminar held in Dublin by the World Community for Christian Meditation. Main was a Roman Catholic priest who learnt about meditation from the Hindu Swami Satyananda. McAleese quotes Main as saying: `We need Christian people who realize that we have nothing to fear from the Buddhist tradition or the Hindu tradition or any tradition that is truly spiritual.'

McAleese is also at the heart of her church's debate over the role of women. On one occasion she was asked to preach in a cathedral--the first of her sex to do so. Seeking inspiration, she opened her Bible at random, and fell on St Paul's words: `Women are to be silent in church....' `Needless to remark, I was inclined to feel the Lord's intervention less than helpful in the circumstances,' she writes.

Reflecting on the incident she concluded that God has a mischievous sense of humour, that if she met St Paul on the Day of Judgement she would march him down to the Equal Opportunities office to explain himself, and that he remains, after 2,000 years, the man who most dramatically changed his mind--from being a persecutor of Christians to become their most effective advocate.

She writes persuasively and passionately of the reconciling power of silence, of the need to listen `till it hurts' to those on the other side of a conflict and to be `voices of contradiction' within one's own culture. `Can we say that we are honouring the commandment to love one another if we refuse even to listen to the other?' she asks. `The only way to be sure we are ... actually hearing the true word of God is to place ourselves in an environment where our version of God's word is exposed to other versions and where we are challenged and can challenge in turn.'

At her inauguration last November Mary McAleese said that she wanted bridge-building to be the theme of her presidency. Readers of this book will not be surprised at her choice.