This too will pass

I join the rally on a grey Saturday morning, reminding myself that in my comfortable shoes and warm clothes I'm much better off than the people I'm here to bear witness for. I hand out bright yellow vests as I greet some friends who are regulars to this event and I take the end of a banner which calls for peace, while the speakers take the stage.

Our MP is speaking, sensibly, moderately, when a scuffle breaks out. An opposing group has marched their flags into the fringes of our rally. We are assured from the stage – and the scufflers warned – that the police have been called. A car with a few officers arrives quietly, names are taken and the intruders take their defiant flags back across the road.

It seems fairly harmless but a few weeks ago one of my friends was knocked to the ground and injured in a similar scuffle. I check where she is – well away from the edges, standing calm and safe but still wearing a splint on her wrist.

The second speaker offers words of peace for all, including those who oppose the kaupapa. Then the third speaker arrives on the stage flushed and rattled. In his homeland, which he is exiled from, conflict can turn deadly and police are not so benign. He gathers himself and makes his address to us as well as to those of different views and finishes with some chants for freedom which the crowd echoes and applauds.

Meantime, a tall man holding a stack of bibles approaches and informs us without rancour that we're failed Christians, demonic even. I point out that the banner I'm propping up calls for peace, meaning on all sides, but he has biblical points to make, further insulting us by assuming we wouldn't understand. For half an hour, while ignoring the young boy who is with him, he lectures our friend at the other end of the banner. I smile. He may have met his match: he's talking to a man who can absorb arguments as if they are water, return a few pithy statements, and keep up a gentle monotone for as long as it takes. Another woman and I engage the boy in conversation, learning that he is seven years old, is home-schooled, enjoys hockey and social studies, and can run fast. He demonstrates with a sprint along the footpath, startling an older woman.

Eventually the rally comes to an end. Man and boy walk off together, the boy chatting animatedly and the man ruffling his hair. Perhaps they have both learned that we are not so demonic after all.

I accept an invitation to have lunch at a food truck and while I'm waiting for my order to be filled I reflect on the experience. I turned up, adding my support to the group which bears witness week in, week out. It cost me nothing but a little time. Even when the police arrived I felt no threat, only a little curiosity. The police will do no harm to me, far from it.

But did we make a difference? Will our drip, drip, drip wear away a stone on the other side of the world? It's a stone with a long history, a biblical history in fact, and the recent version of the conflict is older than me.

Change won't come about because I and a few friends wish it, but adding my drop, my witness feels necessary sometimes.

In the end, changes do occur. Soldiers are given their last orders and retreat, leaders sit around the table and negotiation begins. In the end people rebuild – witness Rome, Berlin, Belfast.

The outrage is that it takes so much destruction to come to that point, so many lives lost, generations on both sides traumatised, before proud men can begin to talk to each other.

But it will happen.