We have just spent two days in the far north of Sri Lanka. This is where the civil war saw its bloody conclusions in Jaffna in 1995 and Kilinochchi only five years ago.
Having met a range of civic and Christian leaders in Jaffna and heard their stories, the tragedy of that civil war is etched in the ruins of homes and the lives that were torn apart in them. The scars of war cannot be avoided – the destruction and all it represents is there to see. And, as the Bishop of Colombo said, the enormity is hinted at when you walk into random ruins and find the remains of a child's doll. A family died there. Probably someone else's war.
This isn't the time or place to go into the nature of the conflict itself. But, the Church of Ceylon (which we are visiting for the first time) exercises its ministry of reconciliation in the conflicted context of the war's aftermath. And its stress is not on working for justice for one side or one community or one language/ethnic group; rather, its concern is to establish justice for all and bring healing to the whole country.
Like the church in most places, this work is done mostly on the quiet – often under the radar. Not all good and effective work is done through a microphone, but in the hidden business of bringing people together, creating the space for a different sort of conversation with a different sort of vocabulary.
I am only a few days into this visit – and have an explosion of images, sounds and stories in my mind – and will continue to think around it all. Today's judgments might well be challenged by tomorrow's experience or the weekend's encounters. So, I continue to listen and look and learn.

Yet, at the heart of it all is that universal conundrum that struggles to hold together the beauty and the violence of human beings, the glory and the evil of human passion, the power and weakness of hope in the face of destructiveness.
Given my connections with Germany and the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, where Bell is seen as a hero, this is also the conundrum that emerges today from the announcement of Bishop George Bell's sexual abuse crime. Inexcusable and appalling – not only the abuse itself, but also the way it was ignored by the Church of England for so long – Bell's reputation is destroyed. But, what, then, do we do with the courage he showed during the Second World War in supporting Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the resistance movement in and outside Germany itself, and questioning the moral basis of the Allied bombing of civilians in cities like Dresden?
I am not sure how we deal with this. Is it possible to damn the abusing bishop while admiring the courageous defender of the oppressed and the builder of peace?
How we answer this question will say something not just about Bell, but also about us.
And, like the survivors of the civil war in Sri Lanka, the survivor(s) of Bell's abuse, the effects of the crime cannot be expunged by some later compensation. We can only trust that truth is the path to peace.
