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Pendle Hill Publications
Re-Conciliation: The Hidden Hyphen
Re-Conciliation: The Hidden Hyphen
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Reconciliation is an easy word to say, smooth and flowing, speaking itself almost as gracefully as a dance. Why, then, when we try to live out the word, do we often – perhaps usually – find it moving in quite a different way, more like a karate match than a dance?
The word is a much sharper one than it seems, for there is a hyphen hidden away in it. Re-conciliation. The “conciliation” part of the word is a cousin to the word “council” and carries the sense of “together.” The “re-” part, however, implies a break. Gathering together has to be done again in the face of some kind of break, some kind of relationship-disaster. A wound has already been given and taken somewhere, somehow, even though we may not know exactly where or what it is – the first karate-chop, perhaps.
Re-conciliation: with the emergence of that hidden hyphen the word no longer flows smoothly. It is a razor’s edge, painful, dangerous, cutting; a narrow ridge along which we walk, dizzied by the headlong fall-away of the land to both sides of us; a tightrope on which we desperately balance – all uncomfortable images and all true.
The word is a much sharper one than it seems, for there is a hyphen hidden away in it. Re-conciliation. The “conciliation” part of the word is a cousin to the word “council” and carries the sense of “together.” The “re-” part, however, implies a break. Gathering together has to be done again in the face of some kind of break, some kind of relationship-disaster. A wound has already been given and taken somewhere, somehow, even though we may not know exactly where or what it is – the first karate-chop, perhaps.
Re-conciliation: with the emergence of that hidden hyphen the word no longer flows smoothly. It is a razor’s edge, painful, dangerous, cutting; a narrow ridge along which we walk, dizzied by the headlong fall-away of the land to both sides of us; a tightrope on which we desperately balance – all uncomfortable images and all true.
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