Remembering Rightly the Reality of Conflict?
About a year ago, I walked into my office after my family fell asleep. In the midst of the stillness, I felt prompted to pull a book off my shelf, one that I had not intended to read in the near future. The book is entitled The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World by Miroslav Volf. I opened it up and dove in, not knowing how would apply to my situation so clearly. This book is about how we remember our experiences of wrongs done. Volf challenges us that we must remember them "rightly", that is we must actually understand them truthfully and honestly, not making them more nor less than what they are. Rightly also means that we see the wrongs done in the context of the whole community, not just from the perspective of the victim. The victim does not exist in seclusion. At the very least, our memories of our experiences of conflict connect us. What stood out to me is the fact that we must remember rightly the nature of the pain we experience in the confli...