Tutu, Desmond, and Douglas Abrams. God Has a Dream : A Vision of Hope for Our Time. 1st ed. New York: Doubleday, 2004.
Chapter: God loves you as you are.
"The West has paid a high price for its disdain for human frailty. I have seen a great deal of poverty and squalor in my time, having traveled to a few places on the globe. I have seen people, rags of humanity, scavenging on rubbish dumps in Calcutta. And yet I was never more shocked by poverty as when I saw someone searching for food in an overflowing dustbin in New York. Perhaps I was naive. But the spectacle staggered me more than anything I had seen elsewhere. The United States has the largest economy. It is the superpower par excellence, and somehow one did not expect this sort of thing in quite this way. Western capitalism has produced a great deal of wealth and prosperity but have we computed the cost?" (p. 37).
So today is Sunday and I didn't make it to church today but I'm finishing this book by Desmond Tutu that is due to the library this coming week. I was shocked by his above statement. In a country like his that holds such immensity of diversity of color and rags to riches, why wouldn't he have even considered that it wouldn't be the same in a country like the United States? The fact that I was able to always know that poverty of all types exists in different places all the over the world and in different contexts as well, makes me feel good. I don't think many people ever really learn this lesson EVER.
One thing we can all learn about from the South African's this what Desmond Tutu talks about in the beginning of his book, it is called UBUNTU. This concept of sharing with others and the ability to step away from thinking about yourself and validate someone else self worth and humanity.
Chapter: God's Dream
"A person with ubuntu is welcoming, hospitable, warm and generous, willing to share. Such people are open and available to others, willing to be vulnerable, affirming of others, do not feel threatened that others are able and good, for they have a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that they belong in a greater whole. They know that they are diminished when others are humiliated, diminished when others are oppressed, diminished when others are treated as if they were less than they are. The quality of ubuntu gives people resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanize them" (p. 26).
Nelson Mandela once said:
"A traveller through a country would stop at a village and he didn't have to ask for food or for water. Once he stops, the people give him food, entertain him. That is one aspect of Ubuntu, but it will have various aspects. Ubuntu does not mean that people should not enrich themselves. The question therefore is: Are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you to be able to improve?"
Ubuntu is that my host family has offered to put me in their house and presented to my village like their own child. Why if there is no meat to serve with dinner we will have just BONES and pap, but serve the food with a smile and I thank them. Why they worry about me when I run alone - that is Ubuntu. Ubuntu has something slightly mystical and extremely African about it. It's a fabulous philosophy that we all part of one and owe it to each other to be kind to one another.
I will close out of this Sunday's post with my images from last Sunday's services. This little one was fascinated like I by this unique drum. Unfortunately he was the one, not I, who got the front row seat at investigating it's rhythms and sounds that it added to our morning songs. I'm starting to really enjoy going to church, if to only sing and meditate in my own thoughts of the moment.
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