“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.” – 2 Corinthians 5: 18-20
In chapel this week, we are going to do something that we have never done before in chapel.
As many of us who can fit onto the stage of the auditorium and who feel comfortable with the activity, we are going to be led by Sara Anderson of Kairos in what’s called the “Blanket Exercise.”
“The KAIROS Blanket Exercise is an interactive learning experience that teaches the Indigenous rights history we’re rarely taught. Developed in response to the 1996 Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples—which recommended education on Canadian-Indigenous history as one of the key steps to reconciliation, the Blanket Exercise covers over 500 years of history in a one and a half hour participatory workshop [We’ll do a shorter version and finish by 11:45].” (http://kairosblanketexercise.org/about)
I’ve experienced this exercise and was profoundly moved – disturbed, saddened, and convicted with hope.
I believer that as humans we are wired to desire reconciliation; but justice-seekers like Desmond Tutu remind us that reconciliation cannot happen without truth. Truth and reconciliation belong together like confession and forgiveness. We must own our past in order to embrace our future.
And so we invite you to be at chapel this week as we learn the disturbing truth of our Canadian-Indigenous history, so that we may be inspired to work with God and each other for reconciliation.
See you there!