Retrospective Reconciliation -- a Balanced Strategy for Coming to Terms with Past Wrongs

6. Civic Knowledge and Skills

We make a distinction between "retrospective reconciliation" and "prospective reconciliation." Retrospective reconciliation looks at how societies can make amends for past wrongs, while prospective reconciliation looks to the future to figure out how different (opposing) groups can live together successfully in the future. When considering how to go about pursuing retrospective reconciliation, we find John Paul Lederach's notion of "the meeting place" to be extremely valuable. He explained this idea in at least two of his books: Building Peace, and Journey Toward Reconciliation, in which he describes an exercise that he developed when he was working under the auspices of the Mennonite Central Committee in Nicaragua, working as an adviser to the conciliation team that mediated negotiations between the Sandinista government and the indigenous peoples of the Nicaraguan east coast, known as Yatama.

At the opening of each village meeting, the Nicaraguan conciliators would read Psalm 85, in which the Psalmist refers to the return of people to their land and the opportunity for peace. In two short lines at the heart of the text (85:10), the Spanish version reads (in translation), "Truth and mercy have met together; peace and justice have kissed." [Truth and Mercy, Justice and Peace]

These four concepts seemed to John Paul to be central to most of their discussions about the conflict between the government and the Yatama people. In an effort to learn more about how they understood those concepts, John Paul asked the meeting participants to discuss each concept as if it were a person, describing the images it brought to mind and what each would have to say about conflict. (This is an exercise he later ran in classes and conferences; Guy and I too have run our own version many times in our classes.)

Truth is often defined as honesty, clarity, accountability, reality, factualness, and vulnerability. Justice is described fairness, equality, as making things right, restitution. Mercy is often described as compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, even love. And Peace is described as absence of war or conflict, security, safety, and respect for all.

John Paul then asked which of these people were "allies," which were "opponents" or even "enemies." Participants often find that the things justice want make it harder for peace and mercy to obtain what they want — and vice versa. Peace and Mercy are often seen as allies. Truth is often (but not always) seen as an ally of Justice and sometimes an opponent of Mercy and Peace.

John Paul and we, when we did this exercise, mediated between the "people," until they were able to come up with an image of how they could all work together. As John Paul described the original meeting,

As a conclusion, we put the four concepts on paper on the wall. [He showed them as four circles, arranged at the corners of a square with a big circle in the center, and lines going from the outer circles to the inner circle.] When I asked the participants what we should call the place where Truth and Mercy, Justice and Peace met, one of them immediately said "That place is reconciliation."

We find the notion that reconciliation as being the meeting place between Truth, Justice, Peace, and Mercy to be extremely powerful. None of these works alone, but together they can achieve healing for past wrongs and a way to move into the future together -- a way to develop that shared image of the future that we call prospective reconciliation.