why does reconciliation matter to me?

I sat on a musty couch, hiding from the rain with one of my campers in the art room at Camp Firwood in 2009. Enes asked me to show her how to make a lanyard using brightly colored plastic string. I didn't remember how.

The grief that I had been suppressing since Janet’s death when I was 11 came back to me, uninvited, in a flood of emotion. I felt ashamed, and my heart twisted like the threads of the two spools of orange and pink plastic string that I had once stuffed in the back of my white craft cupboard at home. Janet had given them to me with the promise of teaching me how to make lanyards during her next visit- that visit never came and I threw them out one day in distress after the realization that she wasn't around anymore to teach me.

Enes and I learned together that day how to weave the string together, each color overlapping and building on the next. Together, we took the tangled threads of Janet’s death and my grief and unraveled them to create new experiences, new stories. I began to realize that summer how Janet’s life had influenced the direction of my own desires to be a teacher, camp counselor, better friend and mentor to those around me.

The fractures in the dusty rocks remain open. His truth, crystallized: He will never leave, nor forsake us. Through Janet, He is entrusting things for me to discover, engage with and enter into—through a serendipitous meeting of a woman in Vancouver who spent her time with Mike and Janet in Northern BC on her days off of tree planting, the summer that Janet was dying; through an unexpected conversation with Janet's daughter at sunset on a beach in Victoria last June: “Did you know that your mom is the reason I want to be a teacher?” and a note found by my mom last summer, written for a family member during a difficult season of life:

“One of the girls made the comment that this was a pretty ‘serious’

card to send to you. It made me re-read the card! As much as you've always been someone we can goof off with, there’s more to you than that. And it’s one of those things that makes you such a good friend. We’re praying for you as April approaches. There’s a lot of garbage in the world and as we as Christians have to deal with it, we are reminded that God will continue to watch over us and bring about restoration.

Enjoy your day,

Love,

Janet.”

why does reconciliation matter to me?

by janessa grypma

excerpt from my memoir

"I have realized the incredible redemptive power of storytelling "

"it's in stories that we find our common humanity."

"This isn't just for you to know, this is for you to teach"

- Dr. Mary Thomas, Secwepemc Elder and Leader

Reconciliation as the 'passing down' and teaching of knowledge, stories, and wisdom to the next generation, and the hope that a new generation brings.

By bearing witness to survivor stories, we are being entrusted with a responsibility as Canadians, and for myself especially as an emerging teacher in Canada to reciprocate and share that knowledge- to teach someone else. It's not enough to simply be a consumer of a wealth of knowledge and experience. This history, these stories are not just for us to know, but for us to teach.

Through Janet, I have been entrusted with the responsibility to pass on the things that she has taught me in her life and through her death: that which she has left behind in her legacy of love and intentional relationships, and in a more tangible way through the note she left behind, a reminder that God is at work and will continue to bring about restoration.

I think it's often all too easy to hold on to the guilt for what has been,

but we are being invited to bear witness to the stories of the past as a part of an invitation to see what can be- moving towards Shalom. In doing so, we can start to deconstruct these walls of ‘the other’ and walk together in our journey of mutual understanding and respect.

I have been reflecting a lot lately about why I want to be a teacher.

I recently took a non-fiction Creative Writing class where I had to write a short memoir about a significant event in my life that happened about ten years ago. I kept going back to a relationship that I had with a family friend when I was growing up; Janet passed away ten years ago last November. My short memoir explores the impact that she has made on the direction of my life, and the power of relationships, reconciliation and listening which have informed my writing and my understanding of the depth of what her life has taught me. She's the reason why I want to be a teacher.

Over the past three years I've been wrestling with my role in Reconciliation as an emerging teacher in Canada and my identity within Canada’s past- that is, what can I as a young, white, idealistic Christian woman do? All of these identifiers set me apart as ‘the other’.

Through this wrestling, as obvious as it sounds, God has reminded me that Reconciliation takes both sides: it's a relationship, and I am a part of one half of that equation.

Therefore, I have a responsibility, I have been entrusted by the voices of the past, to enter into this chapter of Canada’s present with humility. We are being called to enter into this chapter with humility.

Through attending the TRC in Victoria and Vancouver, through my time in the First Nations community of Fort Babine over the past three years, and the writing of my memoir, I've come to realize that it’s in stories that we find our common humanity.

We all have our own moments or memories in the past that we need to reconcile. Stories bring us face to face with 'the other' and help us to truly see them and to see ourselves—and sometimes 'the other’ is ourselves.

Reconciliation:

living in right relationship with each other, with God and with nature

is a beautiful burden

that

we are entrusted

to

carry and pass on.

Generations, Janessa Grypma

Woodcut on Cotton Rag paper, 2012

photo:

Horseshoe Bay, 2012

Janessa Grypma