Forgiveness and love seem to be critical to any engagement in “clean pain” and any search for Tillian’s grace. Such was the case in South Africa and India. Hopefully, this will soon be case in the USA regarding race relations and economic inequality. Can harmony of interests ever be found in the United States or elsewhere in the world without coming to terms with the history of abuse in this society? Is forgiveness possible and can love be found in a world of polarization and lingering trauma?
Conclusions
I believe that an ongoing process should be engaged within and should help to build or restore Robert Bellah’s community of coherence and ultimately ensure a harmony of interest. In alignment with Robert Bellah and his colleagues, I propose that two ingredients are essential to building and sustaining this community of coherence. The first is a shared sense of spiritual unity and a transcendent set of sacred values and purposes. This ingredient is one that Bellah and his colleagues repeatedly turn to: the abiding belief to be found in the community regarding human progress and a sense of greater purpose in life.
The second ingredient returns us to the wisdom offered by Paul Tillich. It brings together the insights of Bellah and Menakem. New learning and reform must be founded in a grace-filled community of memory. As Menakem observes, without the metabolizing of pain (to make it “clean”), all members of a community, whether they be those who are abused, those who do the abusing, or those who allow for the abuse, will be stuck in “dirty” pain. It is the enduring, unmetabolized and unforgiven pain that leads inevitably to polarization, isolation and creation of further collective trauma in the community. It seems that we must be vigilant in bringing grace, history and clear pain to our search for a harmony of interests. Thank you, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr and Resmaa Menakem for helping to identify the requirement and conditions of love, forgiveness, grace and clean pain.
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References
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