This week: pages 40 to 50 Next Week: Pages 50 to 60
As promised, I read pages 40 to 50 this week of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Volume One: Summary: Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future.
Living with Rebecca for the last few weeks puts a new light on doing Truth and Reconciliation work. Her life is so invested in this work that she moves from her work life and into her home life after work, seamlessly. She is doing the same work in the evening as she does during the day, or maybe in the evening, planning what she will do the next day. She thinks about how presentations could have gone better, how to publicize work that has already been done, how to help some people look at the work of others, and she is always available during the day when someone has a short question.
And on writing the previous sentence, a big smile broke out on my face. There may be a short question. There are no short answers.
Not to get pulled away from where I am going with this blog post, Rebecca has her "94 Calls to Action" heavily annotated.
In her lecture last week she showed her personal set of calls to the students, about six pages that are stapled together. Rebecca has gone through the copies and colour coded words. Words like nouns which tell her who this call is to. And she underlines verbs in another colour – the verbs are challenges to change, modify, … well anyone who has gone through the call will know the verbs.
She also hugged the document. She held it close to her body and said, “I love this document. I read it over and over. It is mine and I treasure each page. I go back to it again and again.”
Rebecca didn’t think much about that. The next day a student came up to her and said that she had listened carefully to that statement about loving the document and decided she was going to look at the document in the same way. As a treasure to love. So she went home and told her partner. They spent that evening making it part of their lives. Who would have known.
I am going to print her annotated copy and then go through the calls and see how many verbs there are. I hope someone asks me the question in the Online Sunday School, “So, Arta, how many different verbs are there in the 94 Calls to Action.
Now to the pages I was to read this week. I started back a few pages, at the beginning of the history chapter. I read the first 2 pages and felt that the text was like a testimony meeting, each witness speaking to the trauma of being taken from their homes and put in residential schools. I read silently until I came to their names and I read those outloud. Then I picked up my pen and put a number by each name, to see how long the testimonials would take in the chapter and how many names would be there: 41 names in 7 pages. I defy any parent to read those pages and not have a lump in their throat.
Well, I am pretty sure there are more lumps in my throat in the weeks to come.
Arta
As promised, I read pages 40 to 50 this week of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Volume One: Summary: Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future.
Living with Rebecca for the last few weeks puts a new light on doing Truth and Reconciliation work. Her life is so invested in this work that she moves from her work life and into her home life after work, seamlessly. She is doing the same work in the evening as she does during the day, or maybe in the evening, planning what she will do the next day. She thinks about how presentations could have gone better, how to publicize work that has already been done, how to help some people look at the work of others, and she is always available during the day when someone has a short question.
And on writing the previous sentence, a big smile broke out on my face. There may be a short question. There are no short answers.
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| "it begins with coloured pens" |
In her lecture last week she showed her personal set of calls to the students, about six pages that are stapled together. Rebecca has gone through the copies and colour coded words. Words like nouns which tell her who this call is to. And she underlines verbs in another colour – the verbs are challenges to change, modify, … well anyone who has gone through the call will know the verbs.
She also hugged the document. She held it close to her body and said, “I love this document. I read it over and over. It is mine and I treasure each page. I go back to it again and again.”
Rebecca didn’t think much about that. The next day a student came up to her and said that she had listened carefully to that statement about loving the document and decided she was going to look at the document in the same way. As a treasure to love. So she went home and told her partner. They spent that evening making it part of their lives. Who would have known.
I am going to print her annotated copy and then go through the calls and see how many verbs there are. I hope someone asks me the question in the Online Sunday School, “So, Arta, how many different verbs are there in the 94 Calls to Action.
Now to the pages I was to read this week. I started back a few pages, at the beginning of the history chapter. I read the first 2 pages and felt that the text was like a testimony meeting, each witness speaking to the trauma of being taken from their homes and put in residential schools. I read silently until I came to their names and I read those outloud. Then I picked up my pen and put a number by each name, to see how long the testimonials would take in the chapter and how many names would be there: 41 names in 7 pages. I defy any parent to read those pages and not have a lump in their throat.
Well, I am pretty sure there are more lumps in my throat in the weeks to come.
Arta
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