God's Dream: The Children's Book

I find Archbishop Tutu's message inspiring and was wondering how to share it with my young son. I was delighted to find books for children of all ages by the Archbishop. Even the youngest children can engage with the idea of ubuntu through the picture book God's Dream.

This sweet book speaks simply and lyrically straight to them. For example, one page reads, “God dreams that we reach out and hold one another's hands and play one another’s games and laugh with one another's hearts.” There the children are playing outside, and all of the social dynamics of a group of children at play are evident. Some are playing happily together, others are arguing over possession of a ball. The vibrant illustrations by LeUyen Pham feature a multi-ethnic group of children and adults. The children (and animals!) have expressive faces, and it is easy for preschoolers to identify the emotions on each page. My preschooler pointed to the child being left out and the antagonism between a cat and a dog.

Older children may find Archbishop Tutu's Children of God Storybook Bible more compelling. Selected Old and New Testament stories are illustrated by twenty different artists in a variety of styles. The multiplicity of styles throughout the book is echoed by the variety of skin colors in the illustrations, showing that the Bible speaks to all humanity. Jesus and the other figures look like all of the peoples of the world.

Each selected Bible story is re-told in simple, clear language and balanced by an illustration that takes up about half of a two-page spread. At the end is a wonderful bonus, a simple prayer written by Archbishop Tutu. The prayers relate to the story yet capture an aspect of Archbishop Tutu's message. The story of Jesus being anointed ends with "Dear God, let me be generous with my love."

Together these three aspects of the book make for a very compelling whole.  Familiar stories are re-told and re-imagined, and the freshness is engaging.  The prayers inspire both contemplation and action.

“Dear God, please help me to share in your plan for the world.”

-Trisha Thorme

Chapter 8: In the Fullness of Time

"YET GOODNESS does not always prevail in the time frame of our lives." p. 122

In 1986 a Calypsonian Kelvin Pope ( The Mighty Duke ) born in the small village of Point Fortin, Trinidad asked the question in song "How Many More Must Die ?"

A wonderful calypso challenging the leaders of the world at that time, about how many persons needed to die in South Africa before they would be prepared to act courageously.

Unfortunately, this question once asked about death in South Africa could be construed as pertinent to so many U.S. cities today.

It is easy to  be saddened about the genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia and the atrocities of  the Sudan,  but what about the happenings in our own backyard?

All across the U.S., in cities the lives of young black men are seemingly taken for granted.  In Camden, Trenton, New York and Philadelphia the voices cry out,  "How many more must die?" Yes, even in gated communities like Sanford, Florida a young man visiting his father is not safe from harm.

Edmund Burke once reminded us " All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is that good persons do nothing." So all across our country people made their voices heard that this is unacceptable. My son who is contemplating going to college in Florida wonders how close is Sanford to his possible college choice.

All across this country and throughout the world people seemingly have had enough. No longer are we prepared to allow institutions, corporations or governments to go unchecked. Desmond reminds us "Bureaucracies are groups of people like you and me making choices that impact all of us. Our Business choices, for example, do not just have financial consequences, they have moral consequences."  I am convinced  that it is not revisionist history to believe that sanctions helped to encourage the South Africa government to do right by its people.

Galatians 4 vs. 4 " In the fullness of time " has always been one of my favorite scriptural verses.  One can ponder on it all the day long. How do we know when the time is fully come?  When is the time right?
Elders have a saying, "God may not come on our time, but God always comes on time." In an age in which according to Desmond,  "sometimes our technological expertise has seemed to top our moral capacity to use such expertise for the good of humanity." How do we get back on the right track?
Desmond suggests we need to get back to being our sister's and brother's keeper.

We make God's heart glad when we realize "what we are is God's gift to us, what we become is our gift to God." According to Desmond, God says, "I have no one except you, Thank you for vindicating Me."

I recently attended a conference  in Massachusetts. One of the presenters, Marcus Borg, spoke about God's dream "as something not vaporous and weak but as a desire, yearning, passion. God's passion is for justice in the world in which we live."

May we all in this fullness of time, be committed to God's passion and dream.

Live the dream,
The Very Rev'd Rene R. John
Dean of Trinity Cathedral

Chapter 7: Stillness. . .Hearing God's Voice

Have you ever noticed how noisy our world is today?  Television, radios, ipods, and a host of other things that fill every moment of our lives with chatter constantly bombard us.   It’s no wonder we don’t hear God … there’s no quiet or room for God to squeeze into the busyness and noise of the modern world.  Archbishop Desmond Tutu talks about the importance of stillness in his book “God Has A Dream.”  He challenges us to stop all the “doing” so that we might live into “being” what God desires.

I remember one of the times I had the chance to hear Tutu speak.  It was a Diocesan Convention and I came early to the hall, well before anyone else (a habit of mine).  There he was sitting quietly, alone in the auditorium.  When Tutu moved, I approached him.  We talked about the importance of being quiet in the course of the day.  Tutu said he liked to enter the church, chapel or hall wherever he was before he was to speak.  He liked to be in the place, quiet, still and listening.  I was dumbfounded to hear him say this, as this has often been my practice.  It is as important for us to be still and as it is for us to be moving!

Tutu shares that being still is not just a practice for the monks and nuns and occasionally a priest … it’s for all of Jesus’ disciples.  “Be still and know that I am God …” what clearer invitation do we need to retreat from our manic busyness and spend time with God?  There are several passages in the Gospels when Jesus retreated to be alone … to pray, to be in God’s presence.  Why is it that we think we need to constantly be doing to be faithful Christians?  It’s just as important to take time, to pause for prayer or reflection, for Bible reading or just being quiet so that God can get through all the noise and speak to us.
I like what Tutu has to say that it’s like sitting by a warm fire on a cold day (a favorite thing of mine to do!).  Just being there begins to transform us.  The longer we sit by the fire and look into its brightness, the warmer we become, the softer life becomes and the transformation takes place so that we can become one with the fire!  The moments of stillness and quiet can brings us closer to Jesus, closer to God and renew the fire inside of us.  The reality is that our internal flame in our souls grows dim and nearly extinguished without rekindling it in the presence of God.

My son, Sean, is an actor.  He got his mother’s good looks and my love for times of quiet.  I watch him perform different people in different plays on stage.  Sometimes he will be performing two entirely different plays at the same time.  It takes concentration and energy to become the characters he performs.  But he shares with me the need to be quiet, to let go of the last character he has performed in order return to being himself.  He needs the renewal of space and stillness before he can focus on the next character, the next production, and the next set of demands on the next stage.  Like me, he cherishes those times when he go for a quiet walk, sit in a park and read a book, daydream by the shore and renew his soul.  
This is what God desires … those opportunities to be with us away from all the hustle and bustle.  These are the places where God meets us, and renews us.  Maybe it’s the time in the morning when we awake in house before all others.  This may be the time we have for prayers, a cup of coffee or tea.  Maybe it’s the time in the afternoon when we leave the office to come back to a quiet house to read, rest and be alone ... just God and us.  Maybe it’s at the end of the day, when everyone is in bed, and we turn off the television or computer and meet God in the quiet of the night.  Maybe it’s on the retreat we take, away from the usual busyness and in a place dedicated to prayer, reflection, quiet and the opportunity just to be with God.

Archbishop Tutu shares wonderful insight into what has helped him to face a life pursuit of seeking peace and justice.  The invitation to him is the one God gives to us … come away for a while and be with me … and I will refresh and renew you.  May we find the way to be quiet, to share in the stillness and find the deep personal relationship with Jesus Christ that Tutu shows in his life.  May we become part of God’s dream and find the renewal and love that awaits us in just being on of God’s children.

By Rev. Dr. Patrick R. Close, Grace Church, Haddonfield, NJ

Chapter 6: Seeing with the Eyes of the Heart

Coming from anyone else other than Desmond Tutu, I might have rolled my eyes in both skepticism and more than a bit of irritation at the message of this chapter.  I find myself encountering the message more as a kind of “prosperity Gospel,” power of positive thinking, “just look on the bright side of life” approach--to Christianity and life.

The key issue in the chapter is the thorny problem of suffering in the Christian life and Tutu works with a host of themes around the spiritual and theological question of suffering—from social moral aspects such as injustice and oppression, negative psychological and “soul” states like hate/anger, guilt and fear, moral behaviors like arrogance, and perhaps that most grievous aspect of suffering—death.  Archbishop Tutu is nothing but ambitious at the least!

However, we often get some of the following which reminds one of Joel Osteen rather than a wise elder like Tutu-- one schooled in the fires of war, withering injustice, senseless cruelty, confronting choices which are anything but simplistic and naïve. For example, let us take this phrase on page 72:  “In our Universe, suffering is often how we grow (!!), especially how we grow emotionally, spiritually and morally.”

Oh really?  Suffering is often utterly meaningless, destructive, with no redeeming outcome.
Sometimes, in the words of friends who just lost their ten year old little boy to a senseless death-and are committed Christians:  Sometimes, they told me:  “Life just stinks!”  Or let us this statement on page 75:  “What is it that allows us to transform our suffering to transmute it?  The answer is love!”

Well—sometimes this is patently false!  Job never “transmuted” his suffering and gave God “hell” for it to the end; and, sometimes, many times, love is not enough to transform suffering into anything positive.

I have a parishioner who can’t forgive God, life, or anything else for a destructive event of a loved one but she hangs in there with God and battles and struggles.  I like that.  I like it that she does not get the Almighty off the hook and fights with Her or Him for truth.  And, in my experience, some of the best theology and pastoral response is simply to leave suffering, particularly innocent suffering, a mystery and stand with others in the midst of it rather than offer rather simplistic and banal “answers” which skirt the fringes of truth like the above.

Reading the chapter reminds me of how personal and social context is so important to religious discourse—and, gulp (!),how the personal context of the preacher or write is so important to the credibility of the message. Generally, I am much more sympathetic to writers on the question of suffering who honor the negativity of existence and the lament tradition of the bible—and actually go so far as to hold God accountable for the bad stuff.

I prefer Eli Wisel’s Night, Abraham Heschel’s “pathos” and Dorothy Day’s anger and raw bitterness (and her compassion no doubt linked to the darkness) than to the mega-church “Every Day is a Friday” approach to life—even if it grows churches, brings in big money--and comforts the afflicted (with false hope in my opinion).

BUT—and this is a huge caveat with everything I have shared so far—Desmond Tutu “walks the talk” in attempting to find some meaning in even the worst of suffering—even if this whole approach to suffering does not work often, theologically or pastorally—in my experience.

I can take some of the approach of this chapter because I know it is true to Desmond Tutu’s heroism, leadership, courage and sustaining vision. If his optimistic and ever hopeful world-view is responsible for grounding the man who provided a key hammer tearing down the walls of apartheid and lead the reconciling, humane work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission—so be it.

The one area where I found myself riveted in chapter six with this “find joyful meaning” and “all you need is love” approach to suffering is in Tutu’s belief, so true to his life (Any of us who have heard Tutu speak know his joy and optimism is for real, is infectious and is moving enough to leave you breathless!)—that humor can help get you through just about anything!  I also love the way that humor is tied to humility and the ability to laugh at oneself.

Wow!  This is an area I need to learn from Tutu.  Like many clergy, I need to laugh more, and take myself less seriously so much more often, get over myself more, and simply approach life with a much more playful tone. And, yes, those who have taught me much from their courage in the midst of suffering—often do approach it with humor and grace.

Here is one beautiful example of the playful side of Desmond Tutu;  and this story, alone, for me, is worth the price of admission of the Chapter!

In the bad old days, I was helped to laugh at myself by those in South Africa who amused themselves with many jokes about yours truly, the one they most loved to hate.  In those Tutu stories, I always came to a sticky end.  At this time, according to the joke, President Reagan decided to come to South Africa to see how his constructive engagement policy was working.  As he flew over Orange River in Air Force One, he saw a sight that warmed the cockles of his heart, for down there were South Africa’s foreign minister, Pik Botha and President P.W. Botha in a speedboat, pulling me on water skis!  “Wonderful,” thought the U.S. President.  Later he landed and greeted the Bothas effusively.  President Reagan said, “What a tremendous thing—you and Bishop Tutu together like this.”  Then, he flew off.  Pik turned to P.W. said, “Nice man but he doesn’t know anything about crocodile hunting!” (pp. 83-84)

Like so many of you—I just love this guy—admire this guy--would love to inherit “a double share” of his spirit in his courage, commitment, and leadership in the struggle for justice and peace.  And, yes, sometimes even humor and joy fails in the course of suffering;  but, man, is it worth the try!

Thank you, Archbishop Tutu—for provoking me and challenging me with your approach top suffering—but, above all, for giving me the smile and chuckle we often all need to make it out there……

The Rev. Hugh E. Brown, III, D. Min.

Rector, All Saint’s Church, Princeton, New Jersey

Chapter 5: God Only Has Us

The BIG work of building God’s world depends on us!  I don’t know about you, but sometimes I just don’t feel like I’m up for the job.  It seems so daunting.  Certainly, God can do better than work through the likes of me!

I have been inspired by many people along the way who have truly been God’s servants, who have given so much to the building of God’s world.  One person who continues to inspire me is a woman named Lana.  She started a non-profit in the late ‘90’s called People in Crisis.  Lana is disabled due to a work accident years ago.  Her life was saved at that time because a friend of hers gave everything he had to help make her well in the aftermath of her work accident.  He not only stayed by her side, but drained his bank account to get her the medical intervention necessary to restore her to health.  She remained deeply indebted to him.

Well, her friend has since become chronically ill.  He suffers from a variety of diseases and syndromes, requires very specialized treatment for which he has no resources and without any decent health insurance is not able to get the level of intervention required.  His life is further complicated by the abuse he endured in his childhood and the associated trauma.  So, Lana started People In Crisis as a way to help her friend, to pay him back for saving her life.  Since 1999, Lana, lacking a board of directors to work for her organization, has been going door to door in various parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania collecting money so she can, in her words, “sustain her friend.”  Her work is tireless.  She does everything legally, acquiring the local permits necessary to go door to door.  She perseveres in the face of outright rejection, she solicits funds day in and day out, she tells her story over and over, and she has collected thousands of dollars over the years to help “save her friend who once saved her.”  In the course of her work, she has encountered so many people who “fall through the cracks” of the health insurance system, who can’t afford their prescribed medications, and who have specialized needs.  Lana, herself, has become a great resource to the people she has met door to door as she has become quite knowledgeable of the healthcare delivery system and the pharmaceutical industry and has assisted countless people with referrals and advocacy services she provides.  Her list of people who need her help has grown.  She is startled by the complexity of the problems she encounters.  Her dream would be to grow People In Crisis into a big organization to raise big money to assist all these people she has met along the way.  In the meantime, she continues to walk door to door, every day, to save her friend and help whomever she can.

Lana reminds me every day about what selfless love looks like.  Her walking the streets, being a beggar really, stretches the boundaries of my love.  She is imago dei, an image of God, a God-carrier for me.  Her life, her rejection, and her battle to secure proper care for her friend, are a clarion call to address the injustices that exist in our society.  Her passion challenges me to be passionate in the root sense of that word – to suffer with – a brother or sister in need.

The BIG work of building God’s world depends on us!  I don’t know about you, but sometimes I just don’t feel like I’m up for the job.  Thank God for Lana and people like her whose example is a reminder that “God only has us.”  We are partners with God called to “work for a new kind of society where people count; where people matter more than things, more than possessions; where human life is not just respected but positively revered…”  May we learn to see with the eyes of our hearts the wonderful work of God among us.

Happy Easter!

John W. Sosnowski+

Canon to the Ordinary

Diocese of New Jersey

jsosnowski@newjersey.anglican.org

Chapter 4: God Loves Your Enemies

Chapter Four begins with a startling claim by Desmond Tutu about the breadth and reach of God’s love: “if we are truly to understand God loves all of us, we must recognize that He loves our enemies, too. God does not share our hatred, no matter what the offense we have endured.”

God loves our enemies: God loves those who hate us or who seek to harm us, and God loves those whom we hate because they have injured us, by word, deed or omission, or because of who they are or what they represent.

Now the author has my full attention!

I’m married, and I have two children, who love each other and their parents ... most of the time.  I have neighbors: some who drive through the neighborhood too fast, others who are too slow to shovel snow from their sidewalks or who fail to clean up after their dogs.  We all get along in my neighborhood ... except for the people who don’t talk to each other.  I’m a priest, and I minister on the campus of a large university, where grudges, resentments, jealousies, passive-aggressive behaviors, slights, prejudices, dislikes, vindictiveness and animosity are a speciality of every academic department and program.  In the diocese and wider church I serve on a bunch of committees and boards.  “See how those Christians love one another” - I wish that were true.  Sigh.

In this chapter, the Archbishop leads us into the depths of his experience as a leader of the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa, who was hated by those whose policies he opposed, and as a father, who was humiliated by the need to explain to his children why they could not visit a beautiful beach reserved only for whites.  These personal stories give credibility to his proclamation of a God of love who commands us to love our enemies, and who has entrusted to us the ministry of reconciliation.

His stories from the anti-Apartheid struggle are inspiring, both for the courage and patience of those who led the opposition and resistance - and for their astonishing capacities for empathy and deep theological discernment:

Malusi Mpumlwana was a young enthusiastic activist and close associate of Steve Biko in the crucial Black Consciousness Movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He was involved with others in vital community development and health projects with impoverished and often demoralized rural communities. As a result, he and his wife were under strict surveillance and constantly harassed by the ubiquitous security police. They were frequently being held in detention without trial and at the time of my story involving him he was serving a five-year banning order in his Eastern Cape township. When a person was banned, not only were they literally under house arrest, they could not speak publicly or meet with any more than one other person at a time. He had somehow given the security police the slip and had come to Johannesburg and was with me in my office, where I was serving as general secretary of the South African Council of Churches. He said that during his frequent stints in detention, when the security police routinely tortured him, he used to think, "These are God's children and yet they are behaving like animals. They need us to help them recover the humanity they have lost."

Time after time Tutu brings us back to the simple but powerful insight that love and forgiveness begin with our recognition of another’s humanity and with our acknowledgment of the ways in which our hatred has twisted our humanity and blinded us from recognizing and responding to our neighbors as children of God.

Tutu is practical.  He writes directly about the questions for which we want answers: “How then do we embrace our enemies? How do we get rid of the hatchet forever instead of just burying it for a time and digging it up later? True enduring peace, between countries, within a country, within a community, within a family, requires real reconciliation between former enemies and even between loved ones who have struggled with one another.”

Notice how he brings the discussion home to where we live:

True reconciliation is based on forgiveness, and forgiveness is based on true confession, and confession is based on penitence, on contrition, on sorrow for what you have done. We know that when a husband and wife have quarreled, one of them must be ready to say the most difficult words in any language, "I'm sorry" and other must be ready to forgive for there to be a future for their relationship. This is true between parents and children, between siblings, between neighbors and between friends. Equally, confession, forgiveness and reconciliation in the lives of nations are not just airy-fairy religious and spiritual things, nebulous and unrealistic. They are the stuff of practical politics.

Whether in the context of systems that dehumanize and oppress those who are different from those who are privileged or powerful, or in the intimate sphere of our homes and families, forgiveness and reconciliation begin from the same clear-eyed and persistent ethic to love as God loves - completely and indiscriminately.

Ultimately, Desmond Tutu gives me the courage to face my own culpability and to take responsibility for seeking reconciliation and forgiveness in my life and among the people closest to me: family, neighbors and my fellow Christians.

God Has a Dream gives me hope - a hope shaped by the gospel.  “In the act of forgiveness we are declaring our faith in the future of a relationship and in the capacity of the wrongdoer to change. We are saying here is a chance to make a new beginning.”

What truth has touched you in these pages?  What has been your experience of reconciliation and forgiveness?  What is stopping you from loving your enemies?  Who needs to hear a word of hope and encouragement from you?

Yours in Christ,
Greg+The Reverend Gregory Bezilla
Episcopal Chaplain to Rutgers University
bezilla@rci.rutgers.edu

Chapter 3: God Loves You as You Are

That God loves us all equally is perhaps the most difficult Christian conviction to grasp existentially, yet the most obvious to grasp logically. For the myriad factors that have made us “who we are”, also shape our responses to how our own lives unfold. My parishioner Rachel and her husband had no children; by the time I met her twenty years ago, both of them had severe health problems, from diabetes that required amputations for Bob, to Rachel’s own Parkinson’s disease. They struggled to remain in their own home, but with Bob’s death Rachel had to enter a nursing facility, where after losing virtually all her faculties, she died. Like so many others, she wrestled obsessively with the question of "Why Me?" But unlike many, she had a ready answer: God was punishing her for the sins and failures of her life. She was never able to articulate just what these were, but nothing could shake her Calvinist conviction that her misery reflected God’s justice. Existentially, she was unable to believe that God loved her.

Julia de Beausobre, imprisoned and tortured under Stalin, knew suffering of a different order, at the hands of licensed sadists. Later, she was asked how she survived.

It was simple really,” she said, “I tried to love my torturers; because if I loved them I would not be adding to the evil in the world by hating them. And if I loved them, it could just be that it might have some effect on them, reducing the evil they did and reducing the amount of evil in the world.

Hers was a logical calculus that grew directly from the Orthodox faith that had trained her to view suffering as “a thing of which something can be made.” And that something derived from the certainty that God loves both “the just and the unjust” equally. Tutu claims that we belittle God’s love for us when we allow ourselves to be seduced by the culture of achievement and “success.” Rachel was tragically caught in this very trap, while de Beausobre’s confrontation with evil and her determination to transform it, refusing to succumb to despair or hatred, matches Archbishop Tutu’s breath-taking claim that “the most unlikely person, the most improbable situation” is “transfigurable.” Both de Beausobre and Desmond Tutu invite us into the deep mystery of how it can be that “as much as God loves you, God equally loves your enemies”—the topic of our next chapter. [p. 41]

The Reverend Joan E. Fleming