From a class journal essay on the history of genocide and reconciliation:
Without in any way diminishing the importance of the truth or the policies that support it, the challenge is often in finding ways to seek this goal of healing not just as a result of the first two but in the process of pursuing them. This third goal can, thankfully, exist even in the midst of disagreement and unjust laws. This is, I think, because this goal has a life of its own. The truth is not (merely) something we seek for the sake of community, nor is community (merely) something we seek for the sake of truth—community is itself a form of truth. Truth and justice matter, but sometimes our efforts to define the truth, just as our efforts to find justice, can do as much to get in the way of community and healing as they can to champion it. This reality, probably more than any other, points at the difficulty—but also the profound possibility—of reconciliation.
“Sitting Around Your Table”
Sitting around your table
as we did, able
to laugh, argue, share
bread and wine and companionship, care
about what someone else was saying, even
if we disagreed passionately: Heaven,
we’re told, is not unlike this, the banquet celestial,
eternal convivium. So the praegustum terrestrium
partakes—for me, at least—of sacrament.
(Whereas the devil, ever intent
on competition, invented the cocktail party where
one becomes un-named, un-manned, de-personned.) Dare
we come together, then, vulnerable, open, free?
Yes! Around your table we
knew the Holy Spirit, come to bless
the food, the host, the hour, the willing guest.
~ Madeleine L’Engle ~