ADR work is about 'wholeness and brokenness'.

Dear editor,

I am writing in response to Bernice Logan, (Tell the world, December letters).

With a team that stretches across Canada, I am privileged to hear stories like that of Lawrence Flett (Church that once brought pain now soothes soul of lay student, September Journal). The Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) process is something that engages the church with those it hurt through residential school experiences.

During a typical ADR only the respondent and the adjudicator speak; family, support staff, church representatives and lawyers maintain silence. We are asked to offer respect by listening to a respondent who tries to share deep pain and fear. At the end of an ADR, representatives of the church and Government of Canada are permitted to offer closing remarks, which the adjudicator carefully records as important data for his or her judgment. Our ADR team is asked to show the support for the respondent and the remorse of the Anglican church for the hurt caused by residential school experience. For me this work is quite frightening and humbling at the same moment--it is about acknowledging hurt and love, life and death, wholeness and brokenness, all in a few short sentences that will, hopefully, have meaning for the respondent.

It is the respondent, however, whose task has been far more daunting and terror-filled.

The stories along the journey belong to the people who tell them, and in part to the people with whom they share. It is not the church's business to tell people how to tell their story--it is hard enough to tell it as it is!

I think that if Ms. Logan needs to hear of Canon Norman Pilcher's good works and that of other good folk she should be asking the people for whom that is their story. I think that it is inappropriate to ask Mr. Flett to retell his story so it matches what Ms. Logan wants to hear.

Geoff Woodcroft

Winnipeg