SO MUCH IN MY PLATE

This is what's keeping me tied up these days...graduate school. The pressure just keeps getting higher and higher, motherhood, my career, family, hubby, a lot of other things, and school on Saturdays and Sundays. But the course enriches me a lot, its been providing me with a lot of avenues for learning and growing and discovering. Sharing below my most recent reaction paper on Conflict Transformation.

Roads to Reconciliation

Robert J. Schreiter
Catholic Theological Union


SUMMARY:

Along the road to achieving real peace, a lot of uphill struggle have been taken. The message takes on the intricate details to the path of reconciliation. By explicitly dissecting the three roadmaps, Robert Scheiter is able to identify how each course of action is different from the other, its strengths and weaknesses, and how ultimately, it shall answer the question: Heal the past? Or build the future?


Surely it takes a lot of creativity on the part of the peace makers to bring about a change that is desirable for everybody. Reconciliation as a process and not merely as a goal proves to be such a daunting task, discouraging for others that more often than not, they settle for the quicker, easier solution. There is no doubt that world leaders, peace advocates, and church leaders continue to find ways around injustices, atrocities, senseless deaths, and all the ugliness possible. Conventions and synods alone are encouragement enough. But the question lies on how open are these people to try new possibilities?

The three roadmaps to reconciliation incalculably remind me of Conflict Management (First Roadmap: Reconciliation is about the Human Heart), Conflict Resolution (Roadmap Two: Reconciliation is about Overcoming Injustice), and Conflict Transformation (Roadmap Three: Reconciliation is about Alternative Social Formations). Stepping back a little and looking at these three, it shows how actually simple peacemaking should be, after all. Then again, there are no shortcuts to success. Simple things can be made complicated depending on how we use the tools. It seems to be a very doable formula, if followed thoroughly.

I am highly encouraged about these roadmaps. Each, I believe is as important as the others. The first roadmap personally appeals to me as it focuses on the Christian perspective to attaining peace. “It is reconciled individuals who will make a reconciled society.” It has always been one of my personal philosophies and I have seen it work in cases of interpersonal and intrapersonal conflicts. It is quite surprising though, how it is not enough if what we want is real peace, durable peace, for that matter. In this regard, the illustration of the words “horizontal” reconciliation rather than “vertical” understanding of it, that is, the relationship with God, has expanded my understanding of the said supposition.

To put it simply, if my husband has wronged me, it is not enough that I choose to stay a loving wife and forgive him, seventy seven times seven, as the Bible says. The “victim-centered” approach to reconciliation is same as managing conflict. That is not addressing the real issue. That is not legitimizing any goal of both parties involved in a conflict.

Indeed, that alone, a romantic viewpoint of a peaceful world is not enough. While there are boundless miracles of conversion available in heaven, the world is here and now and as much as it needs good men with good hearts, more of creativity and ingenuity is also direly needed.

The second roadmap resonates with the edict “Rule of law is the bedrock of democratic society”. I used to be fully convicted in my belief that genuine peace cannot be achieved by cleaning up the mountains, that there will always be rebels up there as long as there is not enough distribution of wealth. No peace without justice, as the popular slogan calls out. But true justice, for that matter, is not served by the effort alone of convicting the criminals. What do these people live for, anyway? What do they really want? The atrocities committed endlessly are just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath lies a massive obstruction.

Punitive justice is an attempt to provide temporary relief, like a first-aid treatment to a first degree burn. There is a gnawing social condition to be analyzed. There are needs to be legitimized. The cycle of violence has to stop, if we are to achieve anything, if not everything right away, on the road to reconciliation.

A new world. Who wouldn’t want that? For that to be possible, we need to heal the past so it will not torment us anymore, and so we can move on in building the future. There has to be a new reality where all can co-exist in harmony. If we can combine the seemingly gentle yet uncompromising religious dogmas with the pragmatic tenets of society, why not? All possibilities shouldn’t only be nibbled and spat out. They should be taken in and digested completely so they can nourish like they ought to.

The future is waiting to be conquered. Hope is paramount to apathy, at all times. With apathy comes along fear, all sorts of angst, and juvenile excuses. Reconciliation shouldn’t only be an argument won, or a point well taken. It has to be actualized. And lived.