Truth & Reconciliation 2025

RJC Autumn

Jack Spratt could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean,

and so between the two of them, they licked the platter clean.

Had the Spratts lived in our world, our time, they might find their mealtimes much less amiable. Jack might well have insisted that the butcher cut away all the fat from the roast while his wife seethed and choked down the bloody, half-cooked roast that he insisted was the way intelligent people know to eat animals.

The logic may seem overly simple, but the kind of peaceful mealtime the Spratts enjoyed is very simply achieved ... if the parties value and practice the moral imperative to “seek your neighbour’s welfare before your own.” Easy to say, not so easily achieved. Every successful couple has had to reconcile their differences and form a third, a new way of life which both find agreeable. I think we all know a couple who both preferred sleeping on the left side of the bed, and one pulled rank and the other gave in. We probably all know a couple who chucked out their queen-sized and bought twin beds, who proverbially found thereby a way to “lick the platter clean.”

Tuesday, September 30^th is Truth and Reconciliation Day in Canada. Examples of how a formal Truth and Reconciliation process brought new measures of justice and peace to South Africa and Rwanda should be common knowledge to every contributing citizen in a democracy like ours. (Just type “Truth and Reconciliation South Africa,” or “Truth and Reconciliation Rwanda” into your search engine.)

So much of our news reinforces the “stand your ground” and “my way is the only way” rhetoric. There has to be a third way, and for Christians—as is my case—not to have embraced the new path to a third way is tragic. We’re not cavemen with clubs anymore; we have, for instance, built into our constitution equal rights for all, a nod to the welfare of every neighbour being considered, but the fight to cancel such rights in practice always threatens.

The first word is truth, it must be there because the finding of a third way that leads to peace and harmony can’t be built on anything but the factual history by which we became what we are now. Good houses are built on the rocks, not on sand.

 The word reconciliation isn’t as clear as it could be. I’m told its origin is middle English from French and on its face, it means to conciliate again. “He became reconciled to living without his left leg” makes sense to us, but what should be happening when we engage in a Truth and Reconciliation process is more like a mutual adaptation to negotiated third way. Canada’s improvement of the conditions of those categorized as indigenous is not a case of them being reconciled to the ways of the national politic. It’s more like the visualizing of a new, third way, and the need to agree on what that would be, and then for both parties to adapt to (a) new condition(s).

I have frequently suggested a third condition, but of course, I have very few readers. Suppose we were to change the consistency and role of the senate to be 50% elected in federal elections and 50% elected by First Nations people, and that this body would have complete charge of Treaty interpretation. Negotiating the details would be reconciliation in action. The determination of both nations to adapt to it would be a small step toward peace.

I believe the Spratts lived to be nonagenarians, although not happy ever after ... but nearly.

NAICA

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