Reconciliaiton

Andrew Dunn-Bauman 11-05-2014

PARDEEP KALEKA and former white supremacist Arno Michaelis clasped hands during a radio interview on the first anniversary of a mass shooting that changed both of their lives. Their embrace was the ultimate symbol of brotherhood—two starkly different backgrounds united by a common goal of peace and understanding in an oftentimes cruel and unforgiving world.

Pardeep Kaleka is a member of the Sikh faith community. His father was one of the six worshippers killed on Aug. 5, 2012, at the Sikh temple, or gurdwara, in Oak Creek, Wis. Three more were injured that day before the man opening fire on the temple was wounded by the police. The gunman then prepared for one final pull of the trigger, taking his own life.

The shooter was Wade Michael Page, a white supremacist, acting on his own volition that Sunday morning. He had spent his life practicing violence and hatred toward all kinds of people he felt to be “different” from him. This hatred culminated in a final unthinkable act, killing six people in cold blood at their holy place of worship.

There was angst, confusion, and grief among the Wisconsin Sikh community after this terrible tragedy. But where many may have expected anger from those most deeply affected, the Sikhs responded with something thoroughly refreshing: peace.

Omar Sacirbey 9-11-2013
 Photo courtesy Talat Hamdani

Salman Hamdani, an NYPD cadet and EMT who was killed on 9/11. Photo courtesy Talat Hamdani

It’s been five years now that Talat Hamdani has been able to talk about her son without crying, but she still prefers mostly not to tell his story.

“It’s all over the Internet,” she said.

She’s stopped talking about how she initially didn’t worry when her son, Mohammad Salman Hamdani, who was a cadet with the New York City Police Department, didn’t answer his cellphone that night; about how police questioned her and her husband when authorities couldn’t find their son’s body, to see if he had any terrorist connections; about the New York Post headline a month after the attacks — “Missing – Or Hiding? – Mystery Of NYPD Cadet From Pakistan,” that cast him as a suspect in the 9/11 attacks.

Lynne Hybels 9-01-2012

(Preto Perola / Shutterstock.com)

SEVEN AMERICAN women sat at a long rectangular table with 10 pastors from rural communities in Eastern Congo to learn about the pastors’ work of healing and reconciliation. A brilliant World Relief translator moved seamlessly from Swahili to French to English as we jotted notes.

“When Marcel from World Relief first gathered local pastors together, we were suffering,” one pastor said. “But he reminded us that, even in circumstances like these, the church has a crucial role to play. All the victims in our communities are people given to us to care for.”

Local church pastors in the North Kivu region of Congo face personally all the sufferings common to members of their communities: murder of family members by armed militias; rape of mothers, wives, and daughters as a weapon of war; displacement from their homes because of local conflict; an economy based on subsistence farming destroyed when crops are burned or uprooted by marauding rebels.

But their personal suffering doesn’t invalidate their biblical call to “care for the least of these.” Marcel, formerly a local Congolese pastor, works with World Relief Congo to serve local pastors by providing training in leadership, community transformation, trauma healing, and conflict resolution.

The pastors’ first challenge was to create committees representing every denomination and tribe in the region. The committees meet monthly to determine who in the community is most in need—a family with nothing to eat, a widow without shelter, a victim of sexual assault who needs hospital care. Sometimes the most needy are church members; sometimes they aren’t. It doesn’t matter.

Robert Two Bulls 8-01-2012

IN MAY 2011, I found myself in France, sitting with brothers of the Taizé ecumenical monastic community, talking about the history of my people, the Lakota.

After evening prayer, the prior, Brother Alois, invited a few of us to join him for supper. This special gathering was held in the bedroom of Brother Roger, founder and first prior of the Taizé community. His room has been kept the way he left it when he died in 2005. The room held a small shelf filled with books, a few furnishings, and a table by the large window. The walls were painted a mango orange color that seemed to enhance the already spirit-filled space. The light in the room became warmer and softer as the sun set.

While eating we talked about many things related to the Lakota, in particular, and First Nations peoples in general. The brothers’ questions were heartfelt, and they listened intently to my every word. At some point during the conversation, I came to a new understanding. This time of breaking bread and conversation was a sacred time. It was Eucharist.

I was born and raised in South Dakota where my people, the Oglala Lakota, reside on the remnants of our original homeland that make up the Pine Ridge Reservation in southwestern South Dakota. One of my earliest memories is hearing the drum and singing late into the night and feeling the earth reverberate from the deep bass of the drum as both sound and feeling lulled my siblings and me to sleep.

Like most people, I knew very little about what the Taizé community actually does, other than their music. I owned a collection of chants on CD. I’d sung a couple of chants in English during worship services over the years. It wasn’t until Brother John from Taizé came to Pine Ridge in 2010, and I was asked to be his host, that their work for reconciliation became clearer to me.

Lynne Hybels 7-01-2012

Siham Abu Awwad grew up in a Palestinian family in a small West Bank village. When Siham was 14, her mother was imprisoned for six months for demonstrating against the military occupation of the West Bank. Siham became the woman of the house, caring for her four brothers—Khaled, Youssef, Ali, and Maha.

With their mother in jail, Siham and her brothers became very close. “We had a special place in each other’s heart,” she told me. Missing her mother, and with little time for friends, Siham became especially close to Youssef. “I told him everything. He was kind and sensitive. He was like a sister!”

When Siham’s mother returned from prison, she continued her political activism and was soon arrested again, but she maintained a sense of humor and challenged her children to be kind and good.

The establishment of a nearby Jewish settlement led to ongoing seizures of land from Siham’s village, and there were frequent protests. By the time Siham was 17, her mother and all her brothers had been in and out of jail for participating in the protests that are illegal under Israeli law. Knowing she would likely be imprisoned again and concerned for her daughter’s future, Siham’s mother encouraged her to marry. Siham did, and eventually gave birth to five children.

Youssef and Ali both married too, but happiness was short-lived. Two months after his wedding, Ali was shot in the leg by a settler. Doctors wanted to amputate his leg and feared he would not survive, but his mother arranged treatment in Saudi Arabia, where Ali’s life and his leg were saved. While preparing a celebration for Ali’s return, Youssef was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint. “Youssef was our angel,” said Siham, “always with a smile.”

Marian Linden 9-01-2010

It is sad to me that Jim Wallis’ editorial on the Arizona immigration law (“Is Christian Ministry Illegal in Arizona?” July 2010) said nothing about reconciliation.

Becky Garrison 7-01-2010
Made for Goodness: And Why This Makes all the Difference, by Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu. Harper One.
Kaitlin Barker 8-01-2009

Twenty years ago, on June 4, 1989, tanks rolled into Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to suppress an estimated 100,000 peaceful protesters.

Joanne O'Neill 7-01-2007

I had just returned from a mission trip organized by the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana's Office of Disaster Response when I read Jim Wallis' column for the April 2007 issue, "All Hands on Deck."

Laurel Mathewson 7-01-2007

Unsplash.

A reflection on healing our relationship with food.

Molly Marsh 1-01-2002

The term reconciliation carries such a chord of optimism; it conjures images of issues resolved and friendships re-established. But it’s usually wrenching work.

Rose Marie Berger 11-01-1999

Pristina, Kosovo—At the Macedonia-Kosovo border, kids on the roadside are selling Coke and fresh brown eggs.

Chris Rice 11-01-1998
Spencer Perkins showed us what reconciliation looks like.