Reconciliation

Fr. Davids musings

2020 was not the most attractive year. What made it so unattractive was not just the ventilators, the tired and frazzled health workers and the refrigerated morgue trucks. No, far more uglier and painful than any of those things was the relationships that became fraught and frayed. Some I imagine were able to stitched back together again. Always with a line or scar to show that ‘something’ had happened. Some perhaps were left as irreconcilable, irreparable, gaping wounds.

Here we are with one month completed of 2021 and while there is a psychological edge to starting a new year, COVID has not mysteriously vanished into thin air never to return again. There are still restrictions at least in some parts of the world and understandable precautions are still being exercised. The business of reconciliation is still just as urgent and vital as ever.

Now this business of reconciliation is a tough gig because it must start with the individual. In other words it has to begin with you and it has to start with me. We need to get our own stuff together before we pick up the newspaper or turn on the TV. Before we phone old so and so, or type that email and text. We need to be reconciled with ourselves and with our God, whatever your version may or not be. If you are not as placid as Lake Hamilton on a gorgeous Autumn morning, then your encounters will be choppy and rambunctious. For the rest of this year  our news people we will continuously remind us just how enormous and urgent this business of reconciliation is.

Every decision and every word should be guided by this question. Will my actions and words lead to reconciliation or will they lead to disaster? The choice is ours.