So if the best way to practice ubuntu is any way that works, then why aren’t we practicing ubuntu better? Violence and conflict—and the memory of violence and conflict—stand in the way. The only way around them to ubuntu is reconciliation.
Reconciliation is damn hard. Last night I took some time to thumb through an old book by Catholic theologian Robert Schreiter, Reconciliation: Mission & Ministry in a Changing Social Order. It’s a whopping 82 pages, and doesn’t really start until page 18, so if you can find a copy, be sure to pick it up. It’s a quick read.
Schreiter starts off the meat of Reconciliation by telling us three things reconciliation ain’t. The first thing reconciliation ain’t is a hasty peace.
A hasty peace is “forgive and forget.” It says, “Nothing to see here anymore. Move along, move along.” It tries to cover up a multitude of sins, often out of a fear of retribution.
Not surprisingly, this kind of reconciliation is often called for by the very perpetrators of violence, who either having seen what they have done or having realized the potential consequences of their actions, want to get on to a new and different situation.
The second thing reconciliation ain’t is an alternative to justice and liberation. When we seek reconciliation after conflict, there must be an accounting. It does no one any good to pretend that, because folks wants to reconcile, that folks don’t need to figure out together exactly what happened. Retribution, doesn’t do anyone any good either. Between the extremes of smoothing everything over and getting everyone back is the middle way of, yes, painful reconciliation.
Liberation is the necessary precondition for reconciliation. Consequently, calls for reconciliation can provide a goal for liberation, but they cannot replace it.
The third thing reconciliation ain’t is a managed process. Professional conflict mediation can help, but it ain’t reconciliation. Likewise on lawyering. Reconciliation ain’t a technology you can take MSW classes to learn. Reconciliation ain’t a skill, it’s a discovery. It ain’t a strategery, it’s a spirituality.
More from Schreiter in cue: seven attitude that keep us from reconciliation, and the three components of the spirituality of reconciliation. And here’s a quick overview of Schreiter on reconciliation by Ubolwan Mejudhon if you don’t have time for the book. The image below is taken from that paper.
[…] So what practices and habits get us across the river to upaya? I’ll make one suggestion: reconciliation . […]
I feel such a sense of frustration in reading that.
There are certain people who are so set in their own ways that they will make reconciliation damn near impossible.
Most people don’t want to confront much of anything, so they launch these frustratingly passive-aggressive sideways blows. Or they obscure the truth the way it was by the rose-tinted glasses of romance and nostalgia.
I wonder if reconciliation is only possible through a new generation not versed in the same prejudices. Sometimes you can’t teach old dogs new tricks.
Some people at the Birmingham church are still fighting the Civil Rights Movement by a method that was outdated twenty-five years ago. Some people are still stuck in 1968.
And all I am left with is more questions.
I don’t think you’ll ever get that generation, unfortunately. I think the most realistic thing we can hope for—not that hope goes well with realism—is to tip the scale a little further toward reconciliation. At some point, perhaps there’ll be a cascade reaction.