umbuntu

Sorry friends, but we "wise" know-it-all Westerners are just babes in the woods. We who think we know right and wrong, justice and injustice, the ones who stupidly clumsily claimed to teach the Africans, the people of the birth place of man for 3 million years before we left home; we are just dangerous children who think we are the smart ones - as children do. We are the ones falling apart that still have some terrible lessons to learn. We are clumsily bumbling our way to disaster and the left is at least as guilty as the right. Dear brothers and sisters, it is not about our version of justice, our self-righteous cause. It is about our common humanity, about "Ubuntu", they call it in Africa; the fact that our humanity is defined by other humans; “ I am a person because of people.” The deepest step is as Christ said “love one another as I have loved you”. This ubuntu is like a deeper golden rule; “see others as you would have them see you.” We think the world is about things and justice and development and even medicine and science when it is really about caring for and loving people.
Do we need to remember what our great, loving leaders said and wished and worked and died for? “With malice towards known and charity for all..let us bind up the nation’s wounds… and care for…” Abe so much wanted us to move on and leave the past behind us. He wanted us to look forward not back. He wanted us to love our brothers of the South not judge them and reinsert the pain. Why are we then fighting the battles of a century ago? Would he really want to take down the statues of the noble man who he asked to lead the Union army? The man who most gained the respect of both sides that they let him keep his sword at the surrender? I think not. I do not think those who want to take down the statues walk in Abe’s footsteps. How would Martin, who taught us so much about non-violent action want us to proceed? Can you talk to a man about justice if you have not walked in his shoes, if you do not love him or feel his pain but really just care about what you think is justice?
Justice is meaningless without love. Back a man in a corner, take away what is dear, threaten his identity and you hate him or what he does, which is close to the same thing, and you are surprised that he acts with hate?
The modern history of Africa is full of lessons we need to learn. Last week I listened to the panel at the Dalai Lama’s meeting on Truth and Reconciliation led by a woman who was on Desmond Tutu’s committee post-apartheid. She described the incredible acts of forgiveness that had to take place to bring her nation into re-birth again. One was a mother who had to forgive the assassinator of her son through the eyes of the assassinator’s parents. When she could see the assassinator as a son of another mother; parent to parent, she could forgive. The other story was of a daughter who had to forgive the killer of her mother 10 years later. She visited him in jail because she wanted to know what her mother’s last moments were like and why she was killed by this official assassinator of the South African government. He held those keys. When he first saw her he fainted because as a grown woman she looked like her mother; the ghost of her mother. He begged her forgiveness and told her everything he could remember but she could not forgive until in the intenseness of the last moments of the one-hour interview when she kept asking questions, everything, she came physically close to him; knee to knee at the prison table and face to face and suddenly in a strange epiphany had the intense realization of breathing the same air as this man who killed her mother. Then she realized the Ubuntu; the common humanity; that her identity was intimately entwined with his.
When the speaker was queit there was not a dry eye in the room and then suddenly everyone was on their feet. I am rambling and I do not know if this hangs together, friends. I am sure there are many of you who feel that we can not sit by; we have to act. I am just cautioning that we be careful what we think life is about, careful what we think is justice, careful not to let our ego, our self-righteous determinations quickly rule. And when I say “careful” I mean with real care. By “care” I mean love. I am asking us not to temper our sense of justice with love, but rather let love for our fellow man, especially our “enemies” as Christ would have us, dominate our sense of justice. For, as one can easily see in this beloved, much more experienced continent of Africa, pursuit of justice without love is an endless spiral of violence. We are but babes in the woods and God help us that we may listen and care enough for Ubuntu that we can move to Truth and Reconciliation before the crimes begin instead of after. “love one another as I have loved you”.