Yesterday at lunch time, Desmond Tutu and the Dahli Lama were awarded humanitarian awards for their work in promoting love, compassion and forgiveness. The awards had taken place in Seattle a few months ago. Due to illness, Desmond Tutu was not able to go, his daughter went in his place. So the ceremony was repeated yesterday. Here is the picture of Desmond Tutu dancing with the host of the conference before receiving the award.
Stephen Smith gave the opening address of the conference. He gave a brilliant presentation on the phases of recovery from genocide:
• Aftermath with issues of return, loss of security and home, mourning and loss, trauma
• Reckoning: documentation of losses of life, possessions, symbolic figures of remembrance
• Rebuilding-restoration of identity, restorative justice, reconciliation, peace-building
• Future: Forgiveness, hope education,
He has been involved in uncovering hundreds of mass graves. In the process upon a question from the audience he revealed his own faith crisis at dealing with the horrors of what humanity does to humanity. He ended with despair as to what the hope is for the future.
It was a powerful contrast with Desmond Tutu who gave the next major address and interacted with scholars. He was so hopeful. He spoke of people who in the midst of horrors could laugh and live. He spoke of the humanitarian workers who could have chosen to stay at the homes in places of safety and yet are sacrificially giving of themselves. His worldview informed by the Old Testament—the God who cares and that goodness will prevail forever (with his side comment—“it might take a hell of a long time-but it is an article of faith to be hopeful”). He addressed that comment to a Jewish scholar. And then he smiles and said, “And in our part of the Bible, there is a story about a good Samaritan, an enemy who helps a Jew. To be human, to care for others is not achievement. My humanity is bound up in your humanity. We are interconnected. When you dehumanize another human being you are dehumanized in the process. . so to care for others is really the best form of self-interest.
He spoke of his kindness to perpetrators and was asked why should there be any mercy towards those who have done horrific deeds. “There but for the grace of God go I, I could have easily been the perpetrator, it was grace. Whether I like it or not my perpetrator is my brother.” Justice yes, no mercy, no.
He was asked about the most significant issues in reconciliation. He said, “We are a damaged, wounded, traumatized people. To the extent of our recognition of it, we might deal with it. We are sick; some more sick than others. We see things happened that cannot be explained in any rational way—the rape of a baby, gratuitous violence How do we explain an insensitivity that we don’t think we had? How do we explain buying an expensive car when people are starving. One of the great dangers is of not recognizing that we are damaged. Apartheid caused us to doubt our humanity. It is blasphemous to cause one child of God to doubt that they are a child of God.”
The final question was posed to him by a woman who has been publicly critical of Tutu and the truth commissions. She said that the truth commissions could have settled for more reasonable objectives: just civility and co-existence but the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was far more ambitious, nothing less than a process of healing internally and the healing of a nation. In retrospect she asked with no small hint of hostility, was TRC overly ambitious? Tutu, smiled and simply said, ‘No!” The audience laughed. Then he went on and said, “We finite creatures are made for the infinite—but you and I keep thinking we can find deep content in things less than the transcendent and we become croppers. The most important thing about us is that we were designed to be forgiving, magnanimous . . . we were made for God. We are made for goodness. The thing—that is the aberration is not goodness in God’s plan. The thing that is an aberration is evil. We are made for goodness, love and compassion.
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