The challenge of reconciliation is how to open the social space that permits and encourages individuals and societies to acknowledge the past, mourn the losses, validate the pain experienced, confess the wrongs, and reach toward the next steps of restoring the broken relationship. This is not forgive and forget. This is not remember, justify, and repeat. True reconciliation is to remember and change. Spiritual is the best term to describe this search that goes beyond the political, economic, and psychological. From a personal faith viewpoint, the journey toward reconciliation is necessarily a journey toward self, enemy, and God. We must extend our focus on peace building to include the possibility of such transformation and the restoration of relationship.
John Paul Lederach
“Remember and Change” in Transforming Violence
