Reconciliation is about creating a new path forward out of a toxic environment. It’s often not popular, especially with extremists on each side of an issue. It’s also something that follows a kairos – God’s timing – not chronos – our watch.
What does it mean to build a new social and moral imagination? Can we really get beyond a toxic environment?
Here are my favorite resources for people who wish to promote a hopeful vision of reconciliation.
Living Heroes:
- U.N. Human Rights Prize Winner Angelina Atyam and the CCYA of Lira, Uganda
- U.N. Human Rights Prize Winner retired Catholic church bishop Paride Taban’s Holy Kuron Peace Village
- Marguerite Barankitse’s Maison Shalom, Opus prize winner for the Top Faith-Based Social Entrepreneur
- John Finley IV and Epiphany School
- Dr. Jim Thomas, Africa Rising
- Ted Ryan, Ethics professor at Duke’s Business School (TEDx talk here)
- Dr. Pramilla Senanayake and the Educate a Child Trust
- Dr. Ray Barfield, a pediatric palliative care doctor (St. Judes & Duke)
- Margaret Gifford, Farmer Food Share
- Mrs. Jean Jackson who housed Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Selma movement
- Sr. Mathias and Sr. Peter-Paul of the Maria Goretti Girl’s Training Centre, Uganda
- Jean Vanier and the L’Arche Communities
- Thich Nhat Hahn who Martin Luther King, Jr. nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize
- Wojciech Szczerba, leader of an interfaith reconciliation initiative in Dietrich Bonhoffer’s birthplace
- The prison tennis program at San Quentin
- Jock Brandis of The Full Belly Project
Select reconciliation statues:
- The Yale Civil War Memorial
- Duke University Reconciliation statue
- Reconciliations statue by Josefina de Vasconcellos in Coventry, Japan, Belfast, and Germany
- South Africa’s reconciliation memorials
- Confederate-Union memorial in Kentucky
- Cities of peace proclamations
Reconciliation writings:
- The writings of Miroslav Volf
- The poetry of Malcolm Guite
- The writings of Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice
- The writings of Thich Nhat Han
- The writings of Jeremy Begbie
- The works of Seamus Heaney
- The writings of Julia Cameron
- The works of Deepak Chopra
- The affirmations of Belleruth Naperstak
- TEDx: Building Beloved Community
- A series of short books on reconciliation from Duke Divinity School, including Friendship at the Margins
- The Great Lakes Institute, a consortium of reconciliation leaders formed by the Duke Center for Reconciliation
Reconciliation poetry 