Truth begets trust, trust begets peace and peace begets reconciliation.
This is yet another phrase that I shamelessly stole.
The phrase was used in an articulate homily referring to that situation in that far away land. The place where a little man walked the dusty streets muttering how a new kingdom might be ushered in if only we just stop looking to our weapons as the solution and started to look instead at each other as people just like our own selves. Cut any one of any skin colour, of any belief and they bleed, just like you and I.
But to my heartache, hard work and joy, I know that the line also works in ‘mini conversations’. You know the sort. I’m sure we’ve all had ‘those’ sorts of chats before. At least once.
A dialogue where the truth is told, hopefully calmly, rationally and with dignity. It may not be pleasant or pretty, in fact it usually isn’t, particularly if this angst has been fermenting like an old fashioned ginger beer brew.
But when the truth is told, when it is listened to with patience and in a calm way, when it is responded to with carefully chosen words, then the tiniest seedling of trust can poke its head up out of the soil and have the opportunity to flourish and grow. And if that can happen, then the budding flower of reconciliation can open and bring bright colour where there has only been darkening blackness.
Now it might be that the two parties / people might have to agree to disagree, but would that be such a wicked, awful thing?
All this is hard work and we will feel bruised at the end of it. However the alternative is to allow cancerous enmity to fester in the darkness of ignorance and misunderstanding.