“Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore, be imitators of God…” (Ephesians 4:31 – 5:1a)
On the scale of “most difficult things to do” in this life, surely the ability to forgive must be somewhere near the head of the line, don’t you think? I’m not speaking of the driver who refused to let me merge into his lane this morning, or the woman who stepped in front of me in the bank line over the lunch hour (although I did just think of them…). No, I’m speaking of the remnant of hurtful words or destructive deeds that have cut us to the core, and have left a lasting scar behind. That kind of forgiveness.
For three days in October, I was privileged to attend the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in Halifax as an official representative of our Presbyterian Church in Canada. I was listening to the voices of Indian Residential School survivors, and frankly, what I heard is still echoing loudly in my ears and in my heart. To be honest, I’m not really sure what I was expecting before I headed east, but I know what I experienced, and it was full – on anguish and remorse. Not to mention much personal weeping. And I was only a listener! (Or so I thought.)
The complicity of the churches in the Government of Canada’s “assimilation policy” toward First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples is something from which we must never hide. It is ugly, regrettable, and far from the gospel of Jesus Christ. There were, it must be stressed, many teachers across those schools who embodied the most noble values of acceptance and love toward these children. Yet most of these children were six years of age or less when they were simply taken (read stolen) from their parents. To help children learn and grow is a most laudable endeavour; the ulterior motive of “killing the Indian in the child” is a stain upon our work and witness that can never be excused by saying “it was a different time.” Nevertheless, and by God’s renewing Spirit, we have been journeying daily down the road of apology and reconciliation as a genuine expression of our profound sadness for past sins and our desire for a more hopeful future for indigenous Canadians. And, we will also pray that our indigenous neighbours can hear the genuineness of our continuing apology and accept it.
One personal moment demands sharing. As I sat listening to one survivor’s horrific tale of physical and emotional abuse (at age seven), a First Nations woman, herself a survivor, was sitting to my left. As she heard the inhuman details being shared, she (and I) began to cry. As the speaker’s story concluded, my neighbour was simply unable to contain all her emotions. Feeling badly for “disturbing” my listening, she suddenly turned to me and weepingly apologized for her behaviour. “I’m sorry!” she said, so genuinely, so emphatically. And in my tears, thinking now of the pain that she, too, was personally recalling, I answered her, “No … I’m sorry!” Her face instantly lit up, she immediately reached out her arm to mine, and we embraced. And the word “reconciliation” was no longer just a word.
Grace and Peace,
