The likely subdued celebration this year would echo even better the stories that underlie Reconciliation Week.
The theme of Reconciliation Week (27 May-3 June) this year is In This Together. The celebration of the week is likely to be subdued, a victim of the restrictions imposed on us by the Coronavirus.
In fact, we are all more likely to be out of this together than in it. If so the subdued character of the celebration would echo even better the stories that underlie Reconciliation Week than would a more uninhibited one.
The 1967 Referendum and the 1992 Mabo case show how far Indigenous Australians have had to come to since the white settlers arrived, and how much more needs to be done. Indigenous Australians would argue that they were never in this together, but were excluded at every turn, receiving as privileges what everybody else enjoyed as rights.
For this reason, it is a tribute to the generosity of spirit of Indigenous communities that the Reconciliation Week slogan is so positive.
An invitation
It invites us to ask what it means to say to our friends or fellow Australians, ‘We are in this together’. Easy words, but not so easy to put into practice. In our time of isolation, however, we have vivid images of what it looks like to be in it together in the selfless commitment of doctors, nurses and other medical staff, through the simple ways in which people look after others in need by buying for them, ringing them and in many similar ways.
We have also seen hints of what it means what it looks like to be in it together in government actions. They made it clear that saving lives is more important than making wealth, and have appealed to the common good when putting the restrictions on our freedom that have caused much pain and loss.
This is the kind of thinking and action that Reconciliation Week calls for. It calls on us to acknowledge that indeed we are all in this together, that at many times and in many places we have not previously been so, and that in the future our hearts must change.
Coming to terms
Reconciliation cannot be a papering over of past actions and injuries but the recognition and coming to terms of them. It means acknowledging that the history of our past relationships has been marked by dispossession, violence and discrimination.
It led to inequality and separation, to a world in which Indigenous Australians had little agency. In such conditions people can be in the same room together, but not in any deeper sense be in this together.
If this Reconciliation Week brings us all closer to a shared understanding and empathy about our history and a determination similar to that shown in the response to the Coronavirus, it will have been worthwhile no matter how restricted our celebration of it might be.
Path to reconciliation
For Christians the celebration reminds us of the way that God came to share our life and so to be in this together. It reminds us also of how costly that path was for Jesus and that our path to reconciliation also involves self-sacrifice and going out with empty hands to people who are different from us. If we take this path we shall be with God and in this together.