Continuing to Ask “What?”

Have you ever had one of those experiences when you are engaging with something, either another person, a course, or a situation, and you you find that you are continuing to ask yourself the question ‘what?’ This is where I find myself at the end of the first week of studies here at school. There seems to be so many ‘what’ questions and at the moment not a lot of answers. Some of these questions include; what does this ides of reconciliation really mean? What am learning from this (because at the moment I am full of a lot of difficult emotions and need to take time to sift through them)? What am I going to share with the class in my project (we have been challenged to become vulnerable in our class project)? What will next week bring? Mixed in with these questions are a whole lot of personal interactions with other students, the instructor, the texts, and scriptures. We have been challenged to place ourselves within our sacred stories (not the comfortable ones but the ones where we could be the crowd calling for the stoning of another) and then to offer up our sense of what it felt like to be that person and who do we normally see ourselves as in these stories. I believe that the hope is that we come to recognize the vast diversity of understandings and how these differences play a role in conflict and reconciliation when they are dealing matters that are of utmost importance, where people are deeply invested in what they have experienced and what they believe. It is challenging  work and it can, and has been, emotionally exhausting work.

I felt the deep need this morning to share this part of my journey with you as well walk our own paths of reconciliation with those around us in our families and in the world.

Peace,

Patrick