Open to the Spirit
Today’s word: Reconciliation
1) It’s wedding season. I performed my first ceremony last Saturday, and I have four more soon. I enjoy meeting with couples to plan their special day. I remember once being intrigued with one man’s family history and asked about a relative of his I had gone to grade school with. I was anxious to see if she would be at the ceremony. I was told that her section of the family had no contact with his for over 15 years, due to some falling out. Unfortunately, this type of situation happens far too often. Sadly, it can also happen at funerals. It occurred to me that what was needed was reconciliation. The first step in counselling would be to invite the disputing sides to take time to listen to each other. I do know that, however difficult this is, we can only move forward when we are open to the truth.
Our national church has embraced the values of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee as we continue our dialogue with First Nations people. This means listening to painful stories from our past, then agreeing to walk into a future together with mutual respect, support, hopes and dreams. Paul, in the first epistle to the Corinthians says that we have been given the ministry of reconciliation and tells us that we are ambassadors for the divine. Each of us is to become a living example of love. How truly important this work is for us.
Once a group of psychologists asked very young children to define love. Some were funny, but many were profound. One eight-year-old said this, “When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So, my grandfather always does it for her, even after his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.” One four-year-old child had a neighbour, an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his mother asked what he had said to the neighbour, the little boy said, “Nothing, I just helped him cry”.
Each week we hear more stories of unmarked graves, and incidents of other abuse. Perhaps his example of love can inspire us, as we journey to reconciliation.
2) “Irreconcilable differences” has often been used as a legitimate cause for divorce. It’s a pretty unambiguous, neutral, nonjudgmental way of saying two people can’t seem to get along. On the other hand, reconciliation can take on two quite distinct meanings depending on the attitude of the parties involved. “She reconciled herself to the fact he was always going to leave his dirty socks under the bed” simply means she resigned herself to a situation that was impossible to change. On the other hand, “she and her husband negotiated the division of household tasks to the mutual benefit of each party” indicates that reconciliation required harmonizing the needs of each party such that each one felt respected. This is the deeper meaning of reconciliation.
Here in Canada, we have gone through a period of truth telling and a stated aspiration of reconciliation between Canada’s First Nations and what is now being called the later settler populations. This Truth and Reconciliation Commission began in 2008 and ended in 2015. Yet still today there are many who are either surprised to hear of the abuse carried out in residential schools or have resigned themselves to this reality and think we should move on. But true reconciliation first requires each party to recognize the truth, face unpleasant realities and listen to the pain of those who are grieving without offering excuses, deflecting blame or rushing to ‘fixing’ a situation that has been generations in the making.
With the ongoing discoveries of unmarked graves of Canada’s indigenous children, the dark side of our history has come back to haunt us. Who were these children? What were their names? How did they die? Let us sit with these questions. Let us try to find answers. Let us not throw up our hands and resign ourselves to the past saying, as I heard one radio call in guest say, “All countries have done terrible things in the past. What’s the point of dwelling on it?” Therapists will tell you that true healing comes only after the truth of what we have done and been done to is exposed and accepted. From a faith perspective Jesus teaches us that true healing comes only through repentance for past behaviours. Instead of reconciling ourselves to those dirty socks under the bed, let us take courage in hand and seek true and deep reconciliation. It begins with deeply listening to those who are hurting right now.
3) There’s a powerful scene in the film adaptation of the Roald Dahl book, the BFG (for those who haven’t read the book, BFG stands for the Big Friendly Giant). In a moment that would only work in an animated film, the BFG and a girl named Sophie are relaxing, catching dreams together during the night when accidentally catches a nightmare. The BFG is horrified, and he tells Sophie how dangerous this nightmare is. Sophie asks what makes this nightmare so scary. The BFG quietly tells her that this nightmare means something unfathomable: “Look what you have done. And there will be no forgiveness.”
Our lives rely on forgiveness, the ability to move past the challenges and brokenness of our relationships and the mistakes we make. The ability to accept other’s faults and honour our own allows us to be able to move on in life. Of course, some hurts can and should not be forgiven, but so much can.
Yet, reconciliation is a few levels higher than simple forgiveness, and in so many ways is more challenging. It is often said that you only need one person to forgive, but you need at least two for reconciliation.
Reconciliation involves the challenge of reminding ourselves that other people, and the world changes. It means accepting the reality of hurt and pain, but also involves doing the hard work to continue the healing, through deep listening and acceptance.
As we celebrated Canada Day yesterday, we recognized that there is so much more work that we need to do as a country in this path of reconciliation with the First Nations communities and with so many others. Like much in our world, it means we need to hear the uncomfortable truths, and honor the pain and history that lay before us. It may seem at times that with so much brokenness, there is simply little to celebrate. But no matter what happens in our world, we can at least know, and we can celebrate, that unlike the nightmare, there will always be the possibility of forgiveness and there can always be reconciliation.
4) FINDING THE BONES
As the very soil gives up her secrets as the small fragile bones are found, dusted pulled up from the ground, unlike
Ezekiel’s these bones themselves will never reassemble never grow flesh and resurrect as living children to dance on their own burial ground
They have slept cradled in the lap of Mother Earth for decades, rising now
to tell their story, to warn us of the terrible capacity of our own kind for unspeakable acts of cruelty and we keen, we grieve, simply to know is to be assaulted, simply to imagine is to become afraid -- that even one child
could ever be born into such horror
To live with this knowing is to know and share the pain of families who now go
about their days in fresh mourning, unable to sleep safely or waken in the night without hearing
their cries, imagining small faces, arms reaching to be held, frightened cries echoing down the decades
So many unknowns buried with them how many here, there and where next, can we put names to the numbers, now in the thousands asking to whom do these lost ones belong
if not to us all, as all children are our own.
Whoever was blessed to birth these children only to suffer their unspeakable loss as we are all one human family these beautiful lost ones now found we look for gestures, line small shoes on the steps
of churches schools, public buildings, wear orange shirts
We know the road to reconciliation is paved not only with hard truths but the stones of helplessness we who lack the power to call these bones to stand up, resurrect, must call ourselves to reassemble, learn all we can of what happened
taking to heart the soul truth of their stories that we may hope one day to restore honour to the lost by holding close the living holding those who are bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh – all your relations -- as our very own and we shall be reconciled
One word “reconciliation” three voices and a poem. What does reconciliation mean to you?
Rev. Mead Baldwin pastors the Waterville & North Hatley pastoral charge; Rabbi Boris Dolin leads the Dorshei-emet community in Montreal; Rev. Lee Ann Hogle ministers to the Ayer’s Cliff, Magog & Georgeville United Churches; Rev. Carole Martignacco, Unitarian Universalist is retired from ministry with Uuestrie and now resides in St. Andrews by-the-sea NB, but keeps one foot in the Townships by continuing with this column.