What is Reconciliation?
A concept or an experience?

The word “reconciliation” has come to the forefront in the last decade, especially following the Truth and Reconciliation Commission work. The word is on the lips of many a person, group, and organization. The danger is that it becomes a “buzz” word, losing its meaning. What is reconciliation?

There may be as many definitions as there are persons or groups. In this brief article, I will share some insights about reconciliation that in Returning to Spirit (RTS), through the workshops process, we are perceiving.

For RTS, reconciliation is briefly defined as a “coming together.” It is an experience rather than a concept. We believe that it all starts with you, one person at a time. It is you reconciling you with you, you with others and you with life. Reconciliation becomes a way of being in life rather than something to attain once and for all. It is always in creation, responding in new ways of being in relationship with each other as persons or as groups. Responsibility and choice are the foundation of this way of life.

In endeavouring to empower participants to reconcile with self, others and life, RTS workshops reveal the barriers to reconciliation. Reconciliation will truly happen once we are aware of and acknowledge what blocks reconciliation in any given relationship.

Something hurtful happens to us, and immediately we start interpreting it: we have to make sense of it. It is a mode of protection. It is made up of thoughts, feelings, judgements, beliefs, justifications, blaming and victim.  We make ourself right about the interpretation. In RTS, we call this interpretation a story. In early life, a hurtful event and more have occurred, and we created our basic life story. Out of this story, we have developed a way of survival, a core belief and practices that disempower us, even as we believe that it protects us. As things happen to us continuously, we refer back to our basic life story for our interpretations of them.

Without awareness and a letting go of the story/stories we have created about the other (persons, groups, organizations), the possibility of reconciliation disappears, or reconciliation becomes a pretense. Out of our basic story and the stories we have created, other mechanisms and positions emerge that disconnect us in conversations where we attempt to bring about reconciliation. Here is a quick list of them: already listening, doing and being, body wiring (flight, fight, freeze), truth as a position and point of view. Without an awareness, an acknowledgement and a letting go or putting aside of these barriers to communication, reconciliation is impossible. This reality applies to all situation calling for reconciliation: between two persons, two groups or within families or communities.

All that I spoke about have no power if they remain at the level of concepts. It is through experiential awareness of these realities that as an individual, one will be empowered to reconcile and to continue reconciling as life continues. Reconciliation becomes a reality and has its life-giving meaning for the ones experiencing it.

By François Paradis, OMI