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The Journey to Belonging

Chapman, Sam
June 4, 2015

Source: (2006) In, Report on the 2006 COnference — ‘Beyond Retribution.’ Aukland, NZ: Prison Fellowship New Zealand. pp. 152-156.

As he looks back over his 30 years of working in the
community, years of “falling over and getting up and
knocking our heads and trying all sorts of dumb and
crazy things,” Sam sums it all up: “we need to focus
on what is working and do more of that, we need a
bit of restoration of memory, and we need a bit of
transformation, just a little hongi and holding hands
for a while. It’s all a process. We just need to believe it’s
possible that a person – whether it’s me or someone that we’ve locked away for a number of years – can actually
go through that process of transformation, restoration
and reconciliation, that they can rediscover something
of what God’s intentions for them are.”(excerpt)

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