Memory and Reconciliation
Posted on | March 6, 2010 | No Comments
I have been thinking a lot about memory and reconciliation lately. It’s nothing new, since Red Clay, Blood River is an exercise in memory that leads to new forms of reconciliation. Many other people have labored hard to show the many ways that reconciliation cannot occur without lively memory. We need to remember the past events that traumatized us “rightly” and we must seek a common memory if we are to covenant ourselves to live together differently in the future. I am reminded here especially of the work of Fr. Michael Lapsley and the Institute for the Healing of Memories (South Africa), where active re-surfacing of painful memories leads people into a new self-acceptance that can empower them to seek wider circles of reconciliation.
Some memory is driven by pain, fear, and anger. We have memories that we seek to flee, avenge, or obliterate. Memories of slavery, holocaust, genocide, and earthquake come to mind. Other memories are driven by love – memories of joyous events in our personal and collective past, Edens of new beginnings, of children, spouse, and friend. Here we seek to make them permanent states of our present being, living memories that energize us to love, compassion, embrace, and hope.
In both cases, we are led to reconstruct the past so that we can reconcile ourselves with it, integrate it into our lives, even create fantasies of might-have-beens that are more dominant truths than the actual happenings of the past. We create myths more powerful that history. Myths can be very destructive, especially if they are driven by pain and fear. They can also be very positive when they are driven by love that can expand our lives and open them up to compassion for others. I think this is the more hopeful path to memories that lead to reconciliation rather than mere survival – in the words of an old hymn, a “stony road” indeed, but one worth traveling.
Between
Posted on | March 1, 2010 | 1 Comment
This is a poem about transitions in life. It may speak to you if you are facing transition, whether due to age, loss, or radical change in circumstance.
There is a space between chapters, a crack in the spine, an empty space where two pages meet and disappear into a hidden abyss where things are sewn invisibly together.
A Single Thread
Posted on | February 23, 2010 | 1 Comment
This Blog is meant for occasional professional writings and events, but sometimes the boundaries between personal and public slip away and I feel compelled to write to you about the death of Steve DeGruchy, son of my dear friends John and Isobel DeGruchy. Steve was swept away in a river accident in South Africa and his body has not been found, but he is presumed dead and our grieving has begun. Steve was widely known and admired for his theological leadership in church, community, and at the University of KwaZulu Natal. He leaves behind three children and his wife Marian. As I tried to find words against the cruel silence of our limits, these words made their way out. I share them here.
A single thread in the cloth bag holding our treasures breaks. Our glistening marbles, photographs of younger smiles, the address book, the journal of our inward thoughts, slip through the widening tear. We fall with them, wondering if loving hands will catch us.
Body from Body
Posted on | February 22, 2010 | 2 Comments
These words showed up as I went through long-forgotten pictures from our younger years. A fine Ash Wednesday homily brought them to rest. I thought I’d share them with you.
This body from body
erupting
in water and blood,
pleasure and hope,
knows hunger and sucking, excretion and sleep.
This body of energy,
leaping and jumping,
dancing and running,
lifting and swimming,
knows motion and balance, upside and down.
These bodies with eyes
seeing beauty and wonder,
with ears hearing music and voices,
know love and delight beyond words.
These bodies now coupling,
growing new bodies,
their bodies one snake in one body eternal,
know self beyond body, love beyond skin.
These bodies now sitting and thinking,
tenderly stroking the skins of their pasts,
know time beyond space, sight beyond sense.
This body of memory,
breath of a breath,
at one with a body no longer its own,
gives back to the earth,
a life beyond bodies.
About William J. Everett
In my teaching career I authored eight books and numerous articles in social ethics and religion. After over thirty years of academic work — in Germany, India, and South Africa as well as in the United States — I wanted to turn my hand to a poetically written novel to probe the issues of ecological and human reconciliation.
When I am not writing, I create furniture for worship settings. For more about my work, go to www.WisdomsTable.net, where you will also find galleries of artwork by my wife Sylvia, whose ancestors were the original inspiration for Red Clay, Blood River. Click to read my complete bio...
About Red Clay Blood River
Red Clay, Blood River
is a story told by Earth about two brothers from Germany and an enslaved
South African woman whose lives bind together America’s “Trail of
Tears” and South Africa’s simultaneous “Great Trek” of 1838.
Memories of their journeys through oppression, estrangement and reconciliation
reverberate in the lives of three contemporary students brought together
by their interests in ecology. Through their often difficult friendship
and a surprising discovery they begin to unravel the mystery of their
estrangements, struggles, and deep connections to each other and to
the earth.
Click to read more...