Paper Flowers

Paper Flowers
"How do we transcend the patterns that create such great pain and still attend to the difficult bogs where our feet seem mired?"

The last major bomb that destroyed buildings and lives in the “Troubles” came several years after the cease-fires had been declared. On 15 August 1998, in the town of Omagh, the warnings about the bomb were misleading. As a result, instead of people being directed away from the threat they were evacuated into the path of the bomb. The hidden device exploded. Twenty-nine people and two unborn children died. Over four hundred were injured. The events in the community of Omagh sent waves of shock across the world. Many feared the Northern Irish peace process would collapse. Return to the cycles of violence seemed imminent…

This story is excerpted from ‘Using Imagination and Creativity’ and The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace.

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