The sun made an unaccustomed appearance this Saturday, and even though the clouds were in contest and the weather wasn’t particularly warm, people all around this island headed to the beach and into their gardens for one last attempt at pretending summer hadn’t ended two weeks into July. Nonetheless, it was a good day for bouncy castles, grilled sausages, and face painting. Renee and I spent most of the late afternoon and early evening playing with kids and helping at the back-to-school event being held behind Feed cafe on the Shankill Road in working-class West Belfast. The cafe is a joint venture of our Lebanese YWAM colleagues Ramy and Roula Taleb and a local Christian businessman, as an outreach, and a place where people can come for prayer and conversation, and more recently, a safe hangout for local kids to come and be helped with homework.

We had made our way to the cafe up the Shankill Road that afternoon on foot because of the parades of marching bands and partying onlookers crowding the street. We hopped over cases of beer, ducking the blinking tips of cigarettes, and parrying precariously strewn lawn chairs. Someone told us later that eighty bands were on the street that day, all of the protestant flute & drum variety. From the sky they might have looked like neatly sorted jelly beans in their uniforms, escalating through the neighborhood according to color, village, and slogan.

When we arrived, ice cream and popcorn were in full demand at the cafe, and there was a man asleep on the sofa – a well-known, neighborhood alcoholic and a sort of cafe refugee who feeds the fish in the cafe aquarium. The bands and the party, we were told, were for his brother, an alleged paramilitary who was gunned down by the SAS (British special forces) while sitting on his bicycle. And while the crowds drank themselves into double negatives, and the local strongmen divided their praise, our friend slept through the day, unnoticed and unbothered.

We set up our little village in the car park behind the cafe. Our establishments were those of inflated castle, inflated football goal, facepaint station, balloon sculpting station, and friendly guides, bearing encouragements, prayer, and hot-dogs for the kids. Somehow the merriment and binge drinking down the street faded into an inaudible blur, and we had our own good time.

Throughout our celebration with the kids that day, I was impressed by how little the general occupation of the neighborhood affected them. In one way, maybe they had simply grown accustomed to drunkenness and revelry; however, I largely think their ability to play, laugh, apologize, bounce, kick, run, trick, and cry are a testament to a child’s ability to be true to their own playfulness and curiosity no matter their situation or environment. I’ve seen this around the world: minus food, minus bouncy castles, minus face paint, minus shelter, they are children the same (I remember a slum in Thailand where the only open play space was amongst graves…). No wonder Our Lord challenges us to become like children. If somehow we manage, perhaps our imagination and sense of self will not be oppressed by our present occupations.

Please pray for Ramy and Roula in their work through the cafe. In the midst of the practicalities of serving, cooking, and cleaning, they are ambitious in their outreach. They’ve recently started a homework club at the cafe for kids after school, where they can come and be helped with their exercises. The government recognizes that there is a gigantic void in progressing past basic levels of education for kids on the Shankill versus kids in middle-class or wealthy areas (check out this Belfast Telegraph Article). The homework club aims to aid kids in learning, to encourage them, to pray for them, and give them a safe place to hang out. Please pray for this new venture and for general opportunities within the community for the cafe ministry.