Many of my assignments throughout the year are based upon conflict in one form or another and I thought today, Christmas day, might be as good a day as any to consider where this comes from.  All over the Christian world, people are driving to family re-unions. Some, however, will stay away, feeling either uncomfortable or unwelcome or possibly simply not willing to confront memories of the past.

The problem, as I see it is that our re-unions often awake memories that many of us would rather keep forgotten: perhaps a stolen childhood toy, or badly timed words, rejection when we wanted contact most. Even the tiniest of incidents can come back with magnified effect and precision.  

In 424 St. Augustine wrote that we should ‘love mankind but hate its sins’ or rather later, as Mohandas Gandhi wrote: ‘hate the sin but love the sinner’.  This last slogan has been sitting on my desk for the past few months, waiting for me to pick it up and use it.  If I understand it correctly, I should love my brother because he is my brother but I need not love, or like, or condone what he might do or say.

In many ways I find this saying extremely powerful, especially in today’s troubled world. News agencies are constantly bombarding us with atrocities. They focus almost entirely on the deed and not on the people that commit them. In fact, often we are not even allowed to consider the perpetrators, this is seen as siding with them, of being a traitor even.  And yet history shows us that by understanding our enemies we can begin to rationalize what they do and then, perhaps begin the painful journey towards forgiveness, if that is ever possible.  The death of Nelson Mandela this year was an extremely powerful reminder of the benefits of separating the deed from the doer.  In fact, to my knowledge, there have been no lasting peace settlements anywhere that have not come about without adhering to St. Augustine’s words in one way or another.

This Christmas, I would like to wish all my readers a very peaceful, happy and fun time wherever they are. I look forward to communicating with you in 2014. No doubt, as we make our way through the year, things will happen that will demand us to separate the perpetrator from the deed.  If we are able to do this, I believe, we will enjoy a very rich and fulfilled year, one where the wasted energy that we target towards frustration and anger can be re directed towards creative thinking and long-term problem solving.

Have a good week,

Harley