(Kind of a) Book Review: Reconciling All Things

i recently finished a book called Reconciling All Things.  it's written by Emmanuel Katangole and Chris Rice of the Duke Center for Reconciliation.  i'm not sure i have the energy or even the full comprehension to adequately summarize and explain the book right now, but i'll give you a few highlights.

First, reconciliation is not necessarily the work of vast sweeping movements and intensely organized efforts.  it is not merely celebrating diversity (or ignoring it), and it is not a way to put a band-aid on problems that require more intensive work.

I was struck particularly by a chapter on lament, and the necessity of it as a discipline in the hopes of reconciliation down the road.  We must recognize problems and lament their existence, finding a true desire for improvement.  In order to pursue these solutions, according to Katangole and Rice, we must keep in mind certain things: we must move slowly, we must be close to the problem, and we must recognize that we are seldom (or perhaps never) truly innocent or removed from the situation.  We might not be complicit, exactly, but we are not innocent.

Finally, reconciliation is the work of smaller things than we sometimes think.  It is a lifestyle, not an event.  i'm not sure exactly how to say it better than that.  Reconciliation is in the many things we do continuously, not the one thing we all get together to do at once (though of course, these things can be good, too!).

If any of these thoughts or ideas seem interesting, i recommend getting the book to pursue it further (the authors do a better job than me) - it's a pretty short read, but it's something i know i'll be returning to eventually so that i can continue to find the implications of its message.

After reading it, i thought back to the movie Invictus.  When i first saw it, i thought, "okay, that was pretty good."  i also remember a lot of remarks on the subject matter - not criticism, exactly, but a certain underwhelmed reaction.  A lot of people seemed to think that if there was a movie about Nelson Mandela, it would be be about his imprisonment, or his release, or his campaign for president, or his presidency.

Instead, we got a movie about rugby.  But after reading this book, i look back on the movie and see it differently - yes, of course there could have been a more Mandela-based movie about Mandela, but this movie was, at its core, about reconciliation - about bringing hostile peoples together with a common cause.  And really, isn't that movie much more in the spirit of Nelson Mandela than just another hollywood biopic?  Surely, that is the greater testament to the man's life.