FOUNDER OF CORRYMEELA COMMUNITY REMEMBERED

Presbyterian minister and founder of the Corrymeela Community, Dunmurry-born Reverend Dr Ray Davey OBE recently passed away on 16 April, 2012. The 97-year-old died peacefully at home.

Presbyterian minister and founder of the Corrymeela Community, Dunmurry-born Reverend Dr Ray Davey OBE recently passed away on 16 April, 2012.  The 97-year-old died peacefully at home.

 

Prior to founding the Corrymeela Community in 1965, Rev Davey played for the Ulster rugby team in the lead-up to World War II when he was made a prisoner of war in Italy and Germany after being captured in Tobruk, North Africa.  The seeds for the growing of such a community as Corrymeela were initially sown during this time when Ray’s experiences as a prisoner coupled with his witnessing of the Allied bombing of Dresden, and its consequent loss of life, made an indelible impression on him.   

 

Following on from the war, Rev Davey served as a Presbyterian chaplain at Queen’s University, Belfast, from 1946 to 1970.  He believed that there had to be an alternative to violent conflict.  The cultural and sometimes volatile changes of the 1960s were the final impetus and he decided to create a place where people from different backgrounds with often diametrically opposing views might meet and experience new ways of dealing with ‘difference’.  And so, Rev Davey established the Corrymeela Community, assisted by a group of students from Queen’s University.

 

Today there are approximately 160 Community members living throughout Ireland and beyond who have made a Christian commitment to a vision of working toward a shared future.  Communities, families and individuals from all walks of life, backgrounds, beliefs and faiths are welcomed.  Corrymeela brings people together to share stories and learn from one another’s experiences.  It is a place of fun, a place of challenge and a place of hope.

 

Past participants of one of Corrymeela's youth projects had this to say: “Corrymeela helped me to understand the other side of the conflict in Northern Ireland and to make friends with people from the other side.”  The centre has also become a haven for some – “Corrymeela is the first place that I could call home.  The staff and volunteers have been great and the seed group allowed me to meet people from different backgrounds; some of them are now my best friends and some are almost as close as family.”

 

Corrymeela’s Ballycastle Centre is located on the Causeway Coast, an area of outstanding natural beauty.  Every year it welcomes more than 7,000 visitors - some for a few hours and others for a residential experience.  The centre’s practice has shown that a residential component can accelerate learning in a safe (and sometimes stretching) environment.  Up to one hundred people can be accommodated at the centre and facilities include free Wi-Fi, disabled access and a children-friendly environment.

 

Programmes by the Corrymeela Community offer the opportunity to explore notions of community in an environment of mutual respect and trust through engaging mind, body, emotion and spirit.  Activities can be creative or nature-based and deal with topics such as peace and reconciliation; contemplation; social action; churches and conflict.  Specific and tailor made programmes are also available for families, youth, churches, interfaith schools and international study groups.  A range of local and international volunteers work to support and enhance all aspects of any planned programme.

 

What Rev Davey has achieved in the Corrymeela Community is a place of rest, learning, and community trust combined with the importance and sense of a global village.  The opportunity to meet those who have experienced the ‘Troubles’ first hand; refugees; the dispossessed; families of prisoners; church groups and young people as well as others on the margins of society engenders a deeper understanding of not only the changing political landscape but also the new social pressures and prejudices facing every community today.

 

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Issued by CMPR on behalf of the Corrymeela Community.  For further information, please contact Lara Salmon or Cathy Martin on +442890324437 or [email protected] and [email protected]  

 

Last updated 11 years 11 months ago