As part of our focus on ‘Reconciliation as Responsibility - Come to the Feast’ for National Reconciliation Week 2025 we have invited friends from the Common Grace movement to share their reflections on how they are taking responsibility for reconciliation and what this journey towards friendship and healing means to them.
As a first-generation migrant from South Africa, where reconciliation is also an ongoing process, I have felt obliged to understand this continent, its people, and its history.
I reject the pattern of 'if you don't know, vote no' mentality as wilful and lazy.
It takes work to understand the 'other'. It takes work to nurture authentic relationships with people who we may think are different or have different lived experiences, rather than merely tolerate them.
I experience reconciliation as both a right and a responsibility that emerges from mutual care, and as with care, there can be heartache and setbacks.
Christians are called to intentionally and repeatedly choose to envision the sort of inclusive world embodied in the gospels, the world they want, and act as if they are part of it.
It requires imagining and a level of acceptance that allows for generous listening.
It’s not the job of people who have suffered intergenerational injustice to sit and listen to us. No, we non-Indigenous peoples of Australia are urged to position ourselves to sit and listen to them.
Over time relationships are developed and people are transformed by new levels of awareness, accountability, forgiveness and mutual healing. As we say in South Africa: Ubuntu which translates as ‘I am because you are.’ When we see that, reconciliation is strengthened.
The revolution to listen, learn, find common ground, integrate what you know and, love our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, needs the ingredients of being intentional, open and the gift of time.
Dread and despair can sometimes cloud the road towards reconciliation.
As an effort to not lose hope I attended an active hope workshop where we went through the spiral of the work that reconnects by Joanna Macey. There's one activity during "seeing with new eyes" where, were to imagine into the future a time when all we've worked for and protested for and boycotted for and campaigned for has been achieved. In pairs, your partner pretends to be a part of the future world that has flourished because of the work you did in your lifetime, for example, a worm, a shark, a bird, an oppressed group of people. They then ask you about what you did to help the world become better. For me, the perspective in that activity reminds me of my deepest responsibilities, which are to care for future generations and the natural world around us.
Whenever I feel close to despair, I think of my responsibility to the next generation, the future I hope for. I imagine the next generation revelling in the liberation and reconciliation that we work and fight for. When I do that, the path ahead for me becomes clearer.
The dread and despair sit down, the unhelpful thoughts and comments saying "you're one person, your actions are never enough" sit down. In their place the love between me and a future liberated generation and natural world stands up and grows stronger. Love activates active hope.
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Joanne wrote a song while on the active hope workshop. It speaks of elements of the natural world and First Nations children singing back to her in thanks for what she has done in her present day to contribute to the liberation and flourishing for the future generations of creation.
Lyrics
I am a worm. in the garden that you kept. I'm still here. I am flourishing and fed.
Won't you come over? See what you've done for me? Won't you come over? See what you've done for me? Still here. Still here. Still here.
I am a shark. in the oceans you protect. I'm still here. Got away from the net.
Won't you come over? See what you've done for me? Won't you come over? See what you've done for me? Still here. Still here. Still here.
I am a bird. in the air that you kept clean. I'm still here. Flying wild and free.
Won't you come over? See what you've done for me? Won't you come over? See what you've done for me? Still here. Still here. Still here.
The sun, the moon, the stars, they're still here.
The sun the moon the stars, they're still here.
Still here.
The people of this land, they're still here.
The people of this land, they're still here.
Still here.
In 2020, Steve shared his reflections with Common Grace of walking in the 2000 Walk for Reconciliation across the Harbour Bridge. In sharing his vision for reconciliation in the next 20 years, Steve reflected:
I hope that this journey of reconciliation will find new energy - and new faces with new commitment. That it will stretch from Sydney Harbour - my old hometown - to the lands of the Arrernte people on which I now live - and of whom Charlie Perkins was so great an ambassador - and beyond; right across this wide, beautiful, and ever-patient land.
I long for true connection - born of honesty - from which life, laughter, healing and friendship will grow between those who are the First Peoples of this land, and all of us who have since arrived.
I want justice for her sons and daughters - today, tomorrow, and for all the collective sins of the past.
I want to keep walking; believing the future lies with reconciliation, and hearts that care.
You can read Steve’s full reflection from 2020 here. In reflecting on this journey today, Steve adds:
The journey of reconciliation is long, indeed, longer than some of us might wish. But the good news is it is a journey where we are sustained by each other, the land itself, and by our Creator. Our responsibility is to keep walking, to sit and rest and yarn along the way, and to be grateful for how we are held together by this Spirit-led task. That’s why when my phone rings from the outback, I still answer. And where we cross-paths where I live, we stop and chat, and plan to catch up. It’s both a responsibility and a joy. I believe we must turn statements from the heart into actions. We talk, we walk, we love, we act together.
Yes, I’ll keep walking. See you along the path.
Go Deeper
How do you take responsibility for reconciliation in your space and context? Individually and as part of community?
What steps can you commit to taking to deeply listen to the voices of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander brothers and sisters?
As Safina Stewart, proud Wuthathi and Mabuiag Island woman and Common Grace’s Relationships and Storytelling Coordinator, asks in our 2025 National Reconciliation Week reflection:
How might we, as the body of Christ, engage in reciprocal relationships?
How might open hearts, and deep listening, inform and refresh our journey and ministry of reconciliation?
How will we raise our collective voice and stand for justice alongside our First Nation’s peoples in all our spheres of influence?