some four decades ago, i injoyed the extreme pleasure of spending time with today’s representation of all of us as a being of astonishing light in the vestibule of the National Cathedral… such twinkling eyes and such merry energy that radiated off of him and then he danced down the aisle of this august and solemn sanctuary, i smile just re-membering…

Nobel Peace Laureate, Desmond Tutu re-members his boyhood in one of South Africa’s black townships where he describes himself as an urchin with a penchant for fun and joy in recalling a song he sang as a child: “If God be for us, who can be against us?” which came to serve him well later in life in the era of apartheid, when then Archbishop Desmond Tutu railed against the injustice and inhumanity of South Africa’s government with his passionate advocacy helping make the change that came to his country in the 1990s.

Tutu’s first intentions about a career revolved around his first love – medicine – possibly because a bout with tuberculosis as a teenager made a vivid impression as came face to face with the prospect of his own death. “I still can’t believe that that happened to me, but I sat there, and I said to God, ‘Well, if it means I’m going to die, that’s OK.’ I don’t think I’ve ever felt that same kind of peace, the kind of serenity that I felt after acknowledging that maybe I was going to die of this TB.”

years later, as chair of his country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Tutu listened to accounts of political hatred and physical brutality that might shake anyone’s faith in humanity but Tutu says, “we were constantly being bowled over by the extent to which people were ready and willing to forgive. But we had, obviously, the spectacular example of Nelson Mandela, who could come out of 27 years’ incarceration, so eager to be able to forgive.”

decades after that faith-building experience, Tutu says his sense of his relationship to the divine is still evolving, “I am learning to shut up more in the presence of God.” more and more for him, communion with God is about “trying to grow, in just being there.”

i’ll close this peace with a reminder from the dancing Tutu, ” We are indeed made for something more. We are made for goodness.” and so it is… blessed be…