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Good Morning, Some people want things to change; some want things to go back to how they once were; others want things to stay exactly the same. The push and pull of these differing desires can now be felt right around the world; often they lead to terrible consequences, but sometimes they strike us with flashes of hope. I thought this as Sinn Fein became the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly for the first time in history. I grew up with a step-father in the British Army, who did several tours of duty at the height of The Troubles. For me Sinn Fein was a name to be feared, like the IRA. I associated it with Armalite rifles and Semtex and imagined it to be an existential threat to me and my family. To see Michelle O’Neill rise to become the nominee for Northern Ireland’s First Minister shows how much things have changed since I was boy. A situation that once seemed, to my mind, forever stuck in endless intransigence has - to quote W.B. Yeats – ‘All changed; changed utterly.’ ‘Don’t be scared,’ O’Neill said in her winning speech. Acknowledging a fear of change and what this electoral victory might mean to people bitterly opposed to what she stands for. When she said the result presented the Irish people with an opportunity to ‘reimagine relationships in this society’ it was a good choice of words. Imagination – or the mind – is where the struggle to make things better between people happens. In his poem, ‘From The Republic Of Conscience’, Seamus Heaney describes this territory as that universal place where a person finds it hard to avoid self-examination. What do you do when your enemies make the journey from violence to peace and demonstrate a transformation? Do you have to change, too? And is that just? We might say we prefer reconciliation to strife, but sometimes holding a grievance is easier than letting it go. Especially when you have personally suffered loss and injustice. When Solomon wrote the proverb: ‘It is to a person’s credit to pass by an offence’, he was recognising that reconciliation is impossible if it is conditional on our offences forever being held against us. As hard as it is, forgiving digs us out of entrenched positions. A mind is perhaps the toughest thing in the world to change. But it is where change has to take place if wider societal transformation is to happen. It often requires going against our instincts. As St. Paul wrote, ‘Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed in the renewing of your mind.’ Sometimes it takes the next generation to bring about a renewal. One that can acknowledge the past, re-think the present and better imagine a future.