Remembering that reconciliation is a spirituality, not a strategery, we can see three ways to put reconciliation into action. (Courtesy of Schreiter.)
1. Relearn to listen patiently, to ourselves and to others. Between work and email and errands, we forgot how to listen to stories of pain. Maybe we never learned. Maybe no one taught us.
But stories of exile and exodus need telling. A demon will not leave until it is named. As story-telling animals, we must name our demons through narrative, however tempting the categories and labels of ideology and factism. We long for stories, and our lives feel out of whack without them.
Telling stories takes time–and not just the telling of them. Reflection, framing, revising—all these things go into telling our stories. It’s never a one shot deal. Some stories, perhaps most, cause pain to tell and pain to hear. Those stories especially need to be told over and over again. Through them, we learn to see our neighbors with new eyes.
2. Cultivate mindfulness, compassion and empathy. Fearing its return, we run from our pain. If we can just keep busy enough, activist-y enough, stressed enough, successful enough, unhealthy enough, maybe the pain won’t find us. And so we knock on wood and hope that Trickster will be distracted.
But we won’t find healing until we’ve relearned to attend to ourselves and our neighbors. We need each other, perhaps more than we need anything else. We need to see ourselves in another’s eyes, despite the pain, and not run. The many disciplines of mindfulness and compassion give us the tools to sit with our pain and others’.
3. Make new people with new stories. A new people need new stories. Our original stories were bent toward pain. They gave power to the violent and cast us in the role of victims. Without new stories, we will live our lives just barely beyond the moment of pain. To find release, we need not only to acknowledge our pain but also to find new purpose.
When we’ve spun our painful yarns for a while, we’ll together find stories that are both true to our pain and renewing in their outlook, stories we’ll want to tell and to hear, stories that give us a vision we’ll want to live into. At that point, the spirituality of reconciliation will be realized, and we will find ourselves face to face with ubuntu.
Number 2 is so very true… I was trying to keep busy enough, stressed enough, that I wouldn’t have to think about certain pains. A week with my mom with very little to do made me confront those pains, and fears. I don’t know that anything’s been solved, but I feel like I’ve spread them out on a table to look at under the light.
Life is not all roses and sunshine. We cannot hide from our hard truths. We must confront the wolf at the door and acknowledge the elephant in the room.
We have become so avoidant, culturally, and that is much to our detriment. Life is not all pain, but then again, there is such a thing as DELAYED gratification and that age old maxim that “into every life, a little rain must fall”.
I think Boomer parents have neglected often to let their children learn hard lessons and fail. Only with trial and error can there be growth.
I have been saying such things as this for a long time and most people nod their heads up and down sagely but continue about their way. It’s kind of like losing weight–everyone knows HOW to do it, but few are willing to put the time and effort into accomplishing their goals.