Reconciliation is a painful journey. While holding a city consultation in Belfast in Northern Ireland in September of 2007, I learned a great deal about how we experience division and very little about reconciliation. When we started developing the consultation we were hopeful. We were hearing about peace and an end to the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland from people in Ireland and a watching world. From the outside it looked as though economic success in Ireland, Great Britain, and Northern Ireland was beginning to turn the tide. The old IRA was wanting peace and seeking to finally solve centuries of enmity through political means and the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland were beginning to think that making peace was the way forward. We were optimistic.
We also knew that many groups in Northern Ireland spent much of their time promoting reconciliation and that everywhere you turned it seemed that organizations were seeking to broker peace and undertanding. As we entered the Northern Ireland we found the common worker on the train or in the restaurants were hopeful. They felt like peace was finally coming. However, as we talked with the NGO's who spent much of their time working within conflicted spaces, we heard cynicism laced through every conversation.
As the consultation began and I heard both Protestants and Catholics telling their stories I was struck by the response from the counter part whether Protestant or Catholic. As a Catholic told their story, Protestants would whisper in my ear, "They aren't telling the whole story, they are simply telling you their side." This happened time and again, as each side would tell their story of past abuse, conflict, and historical narrative, the other would give a whispered and sometimes open rebuttal.
As we departed from Belfast I knew I would not be the same and I also knew that something happened deep within my soul that would bother me the rest of my life. Reconciliation was only going to be available to those who were willing to give up territory, life, power, and ego. Reconciliation was not available to those who want to keep something, holding on for justice.
How did we get here? We didn't get to a place of divisiveness over night and we will not get to a place of reconciliation over night. Division takes place inch by inch, mile by mile, generation by generation, and it brings intense pain to everyone involved. No one wins.
Division comes through a process and Reconciliation comes through a process:
Steps to Division
Steps to Reconciliation
The steps to reconciliation are not easy. If we choose to reconcile we choose to give up our lives, our justice, our hiding behind walls. We choose to risk. We choose to forgive. Reconciliatin is dangerous and it is full of traps and a possible loss of our ego and the justice (from our perspective) that we demand.
When I think of this kind of reconciliation I remember one who did this a long time ago. He pointed the way. It was Jesus Christ. Here is his story.
Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (that done in the body by the hands of men)— remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit (Ephesians 2:11-22). http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/