A soul like an atom’s nucleus
LETTER BY BRIAN MORYKON
In the mid-1990s, Desmond Tutu was taking his annual eight-day silent retreat when the retreat center received a phone call for him. It was Nelson Mandela, then president of South Africa. Tutu declined the call. He had a previously scheduled appointment with Someone more important.
Fifteen years earlier, Tutu was in jail for marching in protest against an injustice. One of his cellmates was South African pastor and author Trevor Hudson, who was privileged to work with Tutu in the early 1980s in Johannesburg. Trevor joined Nathan Foster on the podcast this week to talk about the impact the Nobel Peace Prize winner had on his life.
Trevor Hudson and Desmond Tutu both exude an infectious joy — a joy that’s difficult to deny because it has been baptized by suffering.
That picture of baptism reminds me of something Trevor says: everyone sits beside their own pool of tears. Archbishop Tutu’s pool was Olympic-sized. He wept over the atrocities of apartheid in South Africa, but his hurt and anger at injustice never calcified into bitterness or hate. Through prayer, nonviolent protest, and his contagious laugh, he was instrumental in ending apartheid.
Here is a soul that — like an atom’s nucleus — cohesively held together things that normally repel one another: compassion and justice, conviction and openness, contemplation and action. And, like an atom, the power of those things held together is immense.
When I hear Trevor talk about him, something wells up inside me — a hope, a longing, a desire to imitate even on some miniature scale. Let’s call it inspiration, in the deepest and earliest sense of that word: inspirare, divine breath that animates the body.
That’s exactly what each of us needs — the breath of God to motivate and sustain our action.
“I’m far too busy to pray for less than two hours a day,” Tutu once said. He liked to joke, but I don’t think he was kidding about that. He didn’t burn out or dry up because he drank often from the Fountain of Living Water. He prioritized time with Jesus, even when it meant saying no to a phone call from the president. He was a man of sustained action on the earth because he was a man of consistent contemplation on the things of heaven.
Lord, we have no delusions of grandeur. We don’t aspire to the vocational heights of Desmond Tutu. But we do aspire to be fully yours and fully who you’ve made each of us to be. In-spire us, fill us with your animating and sustaining breath — which we know is only possible if we come close enough to your face to receive that breath. Help us then to be intentional about being with you so that we may be effective in loving others.
Brian Morykon
Director of Communications
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LET’S DIVE IN...
CURATED BY GRACE POUCH
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1.
On Renovaré’s podcast, Life with God, Trevor Hudson shares reflections on the influence that Desmond Tutu had on his life — as a friend, colleague, cellmate, and “contemplative in action.”
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2.
From our friends at Plough, this collection of writings on repair and reconciliation includes Desmond Tutu’s reassurance that “we are made for togetherness.”
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3.
“Still” from Trevor Hudson’s Pauses for Lent is a simple invitation into intimacy with God. In this space, God’s great warmth softens our hearts and his wisdom renews our perspectives so that we can act in accordance with God’s kingdom. “Taking a Stand” is another devotion from Pauses that exhorts us to look at Christ’s triumphal entry as a courageous confrontation of evil, an example we can follow.
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4.
Desmond Tutu’s refusal to demonize other humans was nurtured by his incarnational theology. Read the essay “Becoming like Jesus: the Sacramental Life” for an overview of Christ’s wisdom stewarded to us by a rich lineage of Christians in the Incarnational Stream.
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5.
The Kairos Document is a letter written in 1985 by Christian theologians — primarily Black voices from the Soweto townships — to churches in South Africa, admonishing them for failing to uphold God’s justice in the matter of apartheid. Chapter Two’s “Critique of State Theology” is not only a powerful rebuke within the context of South African politics, but an important reminder to Christians everywhere that twisting theology to justify oppressive laws and power grabbing is idolatry.
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6.
In the podcast conversation “Walking the Contemplative Activist Path” Rich Villodas talks about the symbiotic relationship between slowing down to be with God and stepping into Christlike action for justice and reconciliation.
Grace Pouch
Content Manager