Reconciliation???

The cool thing (for me, maybe not so much for those reading it) about a blog is i get to air stuff i'm thinking about and grappling with...

Seeing as this blog is about reconciliation i think thats a good place to start! Reconciliation as a term is a hard thing to reconcile (haha) because it means lots of different things and i am not sure all of them are completely what i am looking for. I guess i want a term that will tell me how to do this difficult thing! How are we reconciled? How do we do reconciliation? (Even) Should we be doing reconciliation?

Wikipedia (the source of all wisdom according to our students!) defines Reconciliation as " reestablishing normal relations between belligerents" or " restoring mutual respect between individuals from different cultural backgrounds" while dictionary.com defines it as "to win over to friendliness" or "to compose or settle".

I guess my issue with the Wikipedia definitions are they dont really tell me how to do it and to confine reconciliation to only belligerent parties is, i think, a little short sighted. I might personally have never been pro- apartheid or overtly racist but that shouldnt preclude me from reconciliation with other south africans... As a white south african i have benefitted from apartheid and as a south african i have been influenced by history (just as we all have) and therefore i suggest that all south africans need to be reconciled to each other! And i think reconciliation isnt purely along racial lines- it needs to be between different cultural groups. English and Afrikaans. Zulu and Sotho. Different socioeconomic classes. Even different schooling systems!!!And different language groups and of course different racial groups (sorry- went off on a tangent there!)

So back to the definition of reconciliation...
Does reconciliation mean we have to be best of friends?
Or as Wikipedia suggests just have mutual respect?

I dont like the idea that it is purely about respect. i can be very respectful of a famous person but it involves distance! I propose that true reconciliation is about getting to know people as people. Having genuine relationships with people and then deciding on a human level because you know the person if you like them. i think truly getting to know people who are different may break down our preconceived ideas so that we can be reconciled.
is this too simplistic a view?

But i also dont think reconciliation means you'll be best of friends with everyone. Rather you'll be able to be friends with people based on charactor, not differences.

I think i have more answers than questions?

I like Desmond Tutu's take on Equality which is similiar to what i think reconciliation should look like...

Equality is essential to human life and well-being, and people were willing to make enormous sacrifices to achieve it in South Africa and in other nations. But as King and Gandhi remind us, God’s dream envisions more than mere equality. An equal you can acknowledge once and then forever thereafter ignore. God’s dream wants us to be brothers and sisters, wants us to be family.                                 Desmond Tutu

So like i said in the disclaimer at the beginning... Things i am grappling with and thinking about...

What do you think?