It has been about a week since I returned from South Africa, and yet even one day in it felt like the trip was ages ago. Home is so familiar it took just one day of being at work to fall right back into my typical activities. I was worried that would happen, and on the flight back I had spend some time talking about how I would deal with this, and how to keep the experiences and knowledge of those three weeks with me into the US.
As comfortable as it is to be home, as much as it seems to be falling back into habit, I am noticing content from our course in various places. Just yesterday while riding the bus I saw a sign outside a church about reconciling our lives with God’s wishes and spend the rest of the ride considering if this was the same nature of reconciliation that we discussed in our course.
Just one month ago I had no concept of what reconciliation was. It was a word that clearly sounded like a good thing, involved moving past conflict, but that was pretty much all I understood of it. Because of the positive connotations of the word, I thought it would be so simple to apply to any sort of disturbance. Now thinking about the framework from which we are speaking, dealing with intractable conflicts and changes in attitudes in beliefs, engaging in a process of change and working towards lasting peace, I actually have more trouble seeing how to apply these concepts in situations here.
I am trying to stay open to what I learned and how it can apply to situations I witness. I read the news and think first of if reconciliation could be applied in that particular situation. Often the answer is no. And after all our jokes, I am actually noticing and naming pretty regularly. Hopefully by continuing this, I will start to get a feel for possibilities of applying the concept of reconciliation here at home.
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