 Good morning and welcome to all of you near and far. I am Sister Adi Lorraine Walker, school sister of Notre Dame, and I direct the Sankofa Institute for African American Pastoral Leadership here at Oblate School of Theology. The concept of Sankofa is derived from the Akan people, the Akan people, Aganayan people, which there's a proverb from that people that says literally, it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot. The concept teaches us that we must go back, go back, go back to our roots in order to move forward. So we reach back and gather the best of what our past has to teach us so that we can achieve the fullness, or approach it anyway, the fullness of our potential as we move forward. Whatever we have lost, forgotten, foregone, or have been stripped of can be claimed or reclaimed, revived, preserved, and perpetuated, Sankofa. The Sankofa Institute began officially, I know I read somewhere that it was two years old and somebody else told me it was 10 years old, and but I was here. And it only started one year ago this very day, one year ago, this very day. However, the possibility of the Institute here at Ablate School of Theology began 200 years ago, when the gift of the Holy Spirit called Eugene de Masonot, the founder of the Ablates of Mary Immaculate, the priest, the Order of Priests and Brothers who run this institution, and led him to respond to the need of the people who were abandoned by the structures of society, and even by the church itself. It was his charge to keep and his God to glorify that brought him to bring the good news of God's love and the possibility of meaningful change to the poor. In every concrete way he could, he extended the arms of Jesus Christ to the dispossessed and the marginalized, inviting all to healing and to transformation. This gift of the Holy Spirit continues today in and through the Ablate faculty and staff and students and our participants in lecture series like this. This gift of the Holy Spirit continues as St. Eugene's spirit is seen and felt throughout OST's outreach to form people for ministry and the local church, always with a special concern for those who have been pushed aside or left out or overlooked or marginalized. The San Cofer Institute here is an initiative of the Ablates School committed to developing and supporting pastoral leaders, men and women for the black community. Together, administrators, faculty and staff work with San Cofer personnel to establish an environment where the education and formation of Christian leaders of a variety of backgrounds can grow in their commitment to the mission of Jesus Christ as they grow in their understanding and appreciation of African Americans' contributions to the entirety of Christian faith, Christian life and Christian witness in North America and in fact, throughout the world. The San Cofer Institute implements its goals through formal classes and I think we have students here, at least I have students here. Would my students please stand up? We wanna see some San Cofer students and some students in intro to black church studies. Okay, amen, glory to God. So through formal classes and this monthly lecture series that we have which includes topics on black religion and the arts, on connections, our connections to the African continent and communities there. It includes a series on black Catholic leadership and ministry and spirituality and annually we have an award for education, excellence in education in the black community. We also host a women's conference and this year we're hosting a conference on the introduction to black church studies for those who don't have a concept of what that could mean or ought to mean or will mean and does mean here at our Blake School of Theology. So San Cofer Institute offers all students an opportunity to broaden their horizons and understand the contributions to Christianity from the African and African-American perspective. Today in participating in this lecture series, we look back, San Cofer, we look back or we ground ourselves or reclaim for ourselves or perhaps claim for the first time an understanding of the life and legacy of Medeba, Nelson Mandela, the first democratically elected president of South Africa. We explore today with our speaker lessons from the life and witness of Medeba, lessons that can inform and challenge those of us who profess to be Christians, lessons that inform and shape our living as global citizens, not just as US citizens, faithful, faithful, challenging our fidelity to the calling we have received lessons for our doing of theology, lessons that challenge our Christian witness and radical following of Jesus Christ, lessons for our acting justly, for our loving tenderly and compassionately and our walking humbly with our God, lessons that inform and challenge our doing of politics, lessons that challenge our Christian call for the building of a global human, humane community and for the practice of the just distribution of power and resources with the global community. As we struggle to confront contemporary issues of civil rights, civil rights violations of racism, of disparity in policing and voting rights disenfranchisement, this lecture challenges us to reassert our power to hope in the midst of woundedness, in the midst of struggle, peacemaking and radical reconciliation. And what better way to explore this topic than to hear from a native son of South Africa who has lived these lessons and challenges firsthand and continues to do so today? What better way to mark the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela's election than to do so with some serious reflection to assess where we are and to challenge ourselves to move forward, taking a stand for justice. Now, now, and into the future. And who better, who better to do this than Dr. Allen Bushack? Today we have the distinct and sacred privilege and pleasure to have a window into the life and legacy of Medeva. And what we in this country can continue to learn and be challenged by. Dr. Bushack, a native of South Africa, is a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa. In June 2013, Christian Theological Seminary and Butler University named Dr. Bushack the Desmond Tutu Chair of Peace, Global Justice and Reconciliation following his role as a theologian and visiting professor at both institutions during the 2012-13 academic year. Dr. Bushack brings decades of political and community service to his role at CTS and Butler and his receiving of honorary doctorate from Oblate School of Theology in May brings him great stature to us. So we are very happy to welcome this theologian, this warrior, victor for justice, this witness for Jesus Christ, Dr. Allen Bushack, my friend, my brother, my colleague. While he is coming, I do want to point out the fact that there are two of his many texts outside at the store. Dare We Speak of Hope and Radical Reconciliation. So please don't miss those at the table in the back. Thank you so much, Sister Addie. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. All right. Just waiting for those to take their seats. It's a great privilege to be back at Oblate School of Theology. It's become very much a second home to me over the last year or so. I can hardly believe that it was a year ago when we stood here and we had the first Sankofa lecture and I've been back in the meantime a couple of times at CTS there is a persistent rumor that there is this thing between Bushack and the Oblates. And as I said to the faculty yesterday, it's a rumor I do not intend to deny at all. Let it flourish because it is absolutely true. You have from the very beginning received me with so much love and so much warmth and so much hospitality that I will be forever grateful for the way in which you have allowed me to become part of this wonderful community with which we share theological thinking commitment to justice and they love for God's people in the world and they love for Jesus Christ our savior. So this morning we will speak of the legacy of Nelson Mandela but let me begin by saying that I think anyone can go and find maybe a hundred different versions of his life anywhere in books and on the internet and wherever you want to find it. So I'm not going to tell you where he came from and what he was doing and how he went to jail and all of that, you know that. He has also been recognized by the world but recognize is not the word iconized by the world for the man that it was and perhaps that's not even the world in some places he was defied and that is perhaps not so good. The more we defy Nelson Mandela the less we learn from him because when a person is almost God, our tendency is to say we are simply ordinary human beings so we can talk about his greatness, we can talk about the things that he said, we can talk about the things that he did but we can never aspire to do that because who are we after all in comparison to this enormously great man whose name we can say but whose life we cannot emulate because it's simply too high. Well, that's not what he would want and that's certainly not what God would want and Mandela, we did not know him when we got to know him as the celebrity. Sometimes I thought that there are some people in the United States who cannot relate to somebody that they hold in high honor except by making that person a celebrity but once that person is a celebrity he takes on a persona totally alien to himself and to herself, we're not gonna do that. What I would like to do today is to simply take a look at Medeba as we saw him and then draw one or two lessons for us as we think theologically. What does this mean for our discipleship of Jesus Christ in the world? What does it mean if we would take those things that we can learn from him and translate that into deeds of faith? How does it come out when we theologically reflect on that so that our thinking as well as our way of life be impacted by this? I am of the generation that never knew Mandela. We never saw his face, we never heard his voice. We had the story of him that was told by our elders but we ourselves had no conception of what he really was. We knew that he was a great fighter for justice. We knew that he was a leader in our struggle. We knew that his dedication to freedom had led him to take decisions that made him clash constantly with the apartheid regime. We knew that he was sent to Robin Island for the rest of his life because he had chosen to fight for justice in a way that he described was the only alternative left for us. We were the generation that embraced that struggle when he no longer could. We were the generation that had known and heard from the very beginning that it is now our responsibility to take forward what he and his generation no longer could. How to do that was for us the question. We knew about his leadership and his courage, his determination to be free, his willingness to suffer for the sake of that freedom for all his people. We were, however, the generation that had to ask ourselves what does that mean that Mandela is in prison, we are free but freedom has not come. How do we make that freedom real? For us will we be the generation as willing to make the sacrifices, to lay if necessary our lives on the line like he was and his colleagues for a freedom that we may not see but that the generation behind us will enjoy and embrace. But we were also the generation that just saw too much. We saw too many babies dying of hunger in the homelands and the Bantu stunts. We saw too many communities totally wiped out and destroyed through forced removal and the pernicious laws of apartheid and the greed of white people. We saw just too many battles in the streets of our townships, too many battles on our school grounds too many battles round about our churches. We were the generation that went to prison in our thousands by the middle of 1985, there were about 40,000 people in detention without trial in South Africa in prison all across the country, 40% of them children under 18 years old. We were the generation that saw torture and death that had to put our education on hold set our dreams aside hoping that when we return from the struggle those dreams will somewhere still be found can be reclaimed by us and if they're not by us by those who come after us. We were the generation that had to see our children die for nothing. I remember Tabo Ciberco who was six years old. We were the generation who had to see how he was shot by the police and we were the generation to hear their official excuse when they killed him. We did not know it was a boy. We thought he was a dog, they said. We were the generation who saw our mother sitting with the tattered t-shirt of a young son killed by the police in Lingali Shli towns in the Eastern Cape and what she showed me when she unfolded the t-shirt was the blood and the bullet holes. We were the generation that had to find comfort for those mothers. We were the generation that had to discover that it is possible to bury 27 people in one day. They did not die of some disease. They did not die because of some natural disaster. They did not die because of some act of God that excuse that insurance companies use when they don't want to pay you what they owe you. They died because they were killed in cold blood. We were the generation that had to sit there that day while we sang our songs of mourning and count the coffins as I did, one by one by one by one. We were the generation that understood early on that the expression, blood, sweat, and tears really did not belong to a rock band, but to real people in real life with real death facing them. By 1989, we were an angry generation, make no mistake. We were an angry generation. We were tired of seeing what happened to our mothers and fathers. We were tired of seeing what happened to our brothers and sisters. We were tired of fighting such uneven battles. We were tired of hearing the world find excuses for their support for apartheid as long as they grew fat and comfortable on the blood of our children while they exploited us with their money and their greed. We were tired of funerals. But by 1989, we knew that we were winning and we knew that we had this battle in our hands. We could see the end of the struggle. We thought we shall at last be that generation to go and knock on the prison's door not in hopes that Mandela will come out but knowing that it will because we had come to understand that all those who are in prison are in prison because somebody has the key. And you don't get people out of prison by talking about them in prison. You get people in prison by going to those who have the key, taking the key from them and unlocking the prison doors so that they can be free. That's how I understand Jesus. And you have to understand what that means that you have to know that those who hold the keys to the prison will not give it away for free. There is a price to be paid by taking those keys from the jailer so that the captors can be liberated. Shall we be that generation? In our anger we also thought shall we be the generation at last able to turn the tables now to teach these white people a lesson or two to let them feel the pain for a change. Many of us fought for Mandela's freedom because we thought he must come out to lead again the struggle that he had left behind and to do what he did in the early 1960s. To lead us in this ultimate campaign of freedom through retribution. We thought if we could get him to understand what had happened to us all those 27 years that he was in prison and that he would understand in the hearts of so many just the need, just the need to say we can claim our dignity back by showing white people what they had done to us because that is a concept that goes around here. You think that retribution and revenge is the way of reclaiming your dignity. You are not a human being, you're not a person and sometimes we narrow it even down even more. You're not a man if you can't stand up for yourself and meaning standing up for yourself, meaning as you are able to what we then call read justice on your enemy, wipe them out because they wiped out yours. That's how I understand people in this country to talk about justice. So our desire was a very natural desire as you will know. And so we asked the question, how would we make justice real for us, how would we claim justice for the victims? How would we claim recompense for our suffering? How would we regain our honor as a people? Now this man was in jail for 27 years because he fought for his people. And because he fought for his people, they called him a terrorist and they called him a communist and they locked him up, they separated him from his family, they separated him from his people, they put him in Robben Island, they isolated him from the rest of us in the hope that they would also in the process obliterate his ideals and his hopes and his dreams and his humanity and his sense of himself because that's what prison is intended to do. When you're locked away as a political prisoner, forget about what they call rehabilitation. It doesn't even happen in ordinary prisons, never mind a political prison. What they want is for you to turn upon yourself, to deny what you stood for. What they want is for you to turn your back on your life, your back on your hopes, your back on your aspirations. What they want is for you to turn away from the hopes of your people that you once articulated. What would he do, we thought, if he was released? Would he then come again and lead us in this final battle? Yes, he came and he did lead us in this battle but not in the way that we thought. And so he came out and he spoke not of revenge or of retribution but of forgiveness and reconciliation. He came out and he told us that he had battled with his fears and with his bitterness that he had overcome those and that he had left them behind. He came out and he told us as I walked out of the prison and I thought if I hold on to my bitterness I will walk into another kind of prison. He came out and he says I realized that for the 27 years that I had been in prison, those who put me in prison had also been in prison. They were not free of their fears. They were not free of their oppression and as long as they remain prisoners of their own fears and of the oppression of others and of that desire to always be superior and always to have it all, they will never be free. And if they are not free, we will not be free because I did not fight for a free black country I fought for a free South Africa. He came out of that prison and he called not for partisanship but for unity. He turned reconciliation and forgiveness into political reality. Those were the lessons that he taught us. But if you take this as a people of God and you reflect upon this, you have to ask but this reconciliation that Nelson Mandela was talking about was then taken up and it had become a national project of South Africa. It is written into the sacred pages of our constitution. What does that mean for us? We saw as in South Africa our reconciliation process taken from the pages of the Bible because that's where reconciliation comes from. No matter what they tell you now, it's not a bookkeeping term that they found out only yesterday. But the reconciliation we were talking about the reconciliation that can confront the world as it is challenge the world as it is, change the world as it is, transform the world as it is, subvert the world as it is until it conforms to the norms of the kingdom of God that reconciliation needs to be the reconciliation that guides a nation that says we choose reconciliation as the way forward but what if that reconciliation becomes the victim of political pietism? What if the reconciliation is taken as a concept not to stir the people to look up to God and then to say what do I do with this world in which we live that needs reconciliation so much it will die without it? What do we do with that reconciliation if it is becoming a handy instrument in the hands of politicians who want to make it the outcome of harmless political negotiations and no more? What if we find that the reconciliation we have inherited as a central demand of our Christian life from Jesus of whom we are disciples being used as a way to placate people and to tell them not to expect too much but to look at the balance of powers and to walk away from justice because that makes it easier not for us and not for Jesus but for the politicians. Whatever makes it easier for the politicians but harder for Jesus you gotta fight against. You do not take the words of Jesus and mold them until they fit into our convenient political language. You take our political language and they challenge it until they understand the meaning of the words of Jesus and then you talk politics. You don't walk away from it because you say to the politicians you started it first this fight. If you had not taken the words of our Lord for your use we would have been able to tell you all right let's sit down and talk what do you mean politics as the art of the possible. The moment you use Jesus then you bring in the faith of people their trust in God their understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ and then we say to them no longer is your possibility the standard but Jesus's possibility becomes the new standard. That's how we look at this. People got upset with me a few years ago when I said in a discussion that the way things are going I think white people in South Africa love Mandela much more than they love Jesus. You will not believe the reaction. For two days I had to defend myself and explain myself in the newspapers and on the radio what do you mean how can you say that somebody said Alan I thought we were friends. Well and I said well you know let me try and explain it this way if you go to Mr. Mandela and you ask him are we doing all right with reconciliation Mr. Mandela will say yes. We're not fighting each other there's no blood in the streets we live with one another sometimes our kids go to the same schools if we can afford it. Sometimes we become neighbors if we can now afford it. So I think we're doing very well the world thinks we are a model they admire us all across the world I think we're doing fine I think we are a reconciled nation don't you. But if you go to Jesus Jesus will make speeches. Jesus won't talk of how you are seen in London or Washington or Berlin. Jesus will say did you read what I said in the Bible do you know Zacchaeus you know that little guy who wanted to see me and he had to go into the tree because the people well you see he didn't only go into the tree because he was short. He couldn't stand with the people they hated him so much if they had recognized him they would have smacked him. He was a tax collector he was an exploiter he had abused his power he made their life hell come to see Jesus and he has a claim what do you even have a right to come and see Jesus. So he says I'll avoid all of that I'll climb in the tree. So if you read he was in the tree don't think because he couldn't see over the heads of everybody else think he didn't want to be seen amongst everybody else he was the safest place for him to be. And if Jesus had not stopped under that tree and looked up he would have stayed there. Jesus would have simply have said to you well go see what Zacchaeus does. And if you bring me the white person he says I will at first admit with remorse and with repentance that I have stolen what I have stolen from you land and money and dignity and hope and future and life I want to give back four times what I have taken from you and whatever is left I will give half of it to the poor. If you bring me that person then I'll no longer say you love Mandela more than you love Jesus. But you see the inconvenient Jesus does not play politics the inconvenient Jesus just tells politics like he tells us take up your cross and follow me and our job is to say what does that mean in our political life? Well so learning from him what does it mean? We begin with reconciliation usually by going to St. Paul in Second Corinthians that wonderful, wonderful, wonderful word that said God has called us as ambassadors of reconciliation this is our calling God has reconciled the world to God self in Jesus Christ that's where we begin and so for us the first thing that we have to say is Christians who follow in the footsteps of Jesus actually have no choice there's no debate here we don't have options and don't talk as if we can come to some understanding with Jesus on this issue a little bit but not too much today but not tomorrow maybe if you give me some time Jesus I gotta grow into this reconciliation you can't you can't be a Christian without being taken up in the work of reconciliation already begun by Christ by reconciling the world what world this world in which we live this world created by God this world that God loves so much that God gave God's only begotten Son because God could not give it up despite all the efforts of the powers of evil to claim the world and act as if the world was theirs God says I made it I loved it from the beginning I gave my son for it I put my footprint in it I kept my hand on it I put my people in it I planted my trees in it I made my rivers flow in it I made my oceans in it I made life grow in it this world is my world and I will not give it up until it becomes a place where I with my people can feel at home that's what Revelation tells me that's world we are talking about but this is the world remember that when God created and God stood back and God said it was good and right through those days of creation this is the refrain and God saw it was good and it was good and it was good and it was good until it came to us and it was very good yes well maybe God slipped a bit there I imagine the devil sitting in the corner in his armchair watching God this is good this is good this is good this is very good and the devil saying to God that's all right just give them a little time and then we talk again well what is the distance between Genesis one and two and Genesis three? one little step and we have a conversation with a serpent and the conversation with a serpent was not to show how susceptible women are in all of these conversations got nothing to do with sex as so many of these male commentators wanted to tell us don't go to Genesis one and two for sex get your kick somewhere else there's a deeper meaning there it wasn't to do with whether the first human couple misunderstood God it had all to do with trust in God and obedience to God it was the serpent's question was basically is God trustworthy? God said this and this but I say to you is it really? did God say now there's a sermon in there did God really say? did God really say? that's all he wanted to know is God really trustworthy? can you really take God on God's word? can you really follow God in this? and so the woman wanted to know but give me knowledge that I know where the God is but you cannot find knowledge through the tongue of the serpent you get alienated from God in your search for knowledge the more your knowledge will become a weapon of mass destruction that will destroy you your knowledge will take you not to the gate of heaven but to the abyss of hell that's what happened because between Genesis three and Genesis four one small step and the brother kills the brother death was brought into the human story not through disaster not through anything else but through us through a willful decision that I cannot live with my brother my flesh and blood cannot have that appeal on me my flesh and blood cannot compel me to love I've got to destroy what I cannot love that's how death came into our human story not by God but by us and one small step away from Genesis four and we were Genesis six and all of a sudden there's talk of giants the Nephilim who stride across the world like Colossus okay and I have and what's the phrase men of great name and as soon as we know that we want to establish this great name on earth we're like giants over everybody else and we want to have power over everybody else and soon as that happens we understand that the core of that at the core of that is our lust for violence Genesis six does not say because we became too arrogant or we became too this or that that it says the earth was so full of violence that God said it has to go that's when the flood came and we still depend on violence to prove our greatness we still depend on violence to prove that we can survive we still depend on violence to secure ourselves we still depend on violence to carve out a future for ourselves we still depend on violence to make other people know they must bow to us violence is our God not God it's the first place we go to when we are in trouble it's the last resort that we go to when we cannot get out of the trouble we got ourselves into in the first place God doesn't feature let's not kid ourselves we bow down not before the God of Jesus Christ we bow down before the altars of violence unless we understand that we will not understand that particular hypocrisy so between Genesis six and Genesis eleven is another short step the story of the Tower of Babel it is about arrogance of course and it is about that power that human beings have we can build this tower and it reaches out into the heavens and we have this city and it has a wall around it and we can no longer be scattered as God says scattered them across the earth no no no no we decide no we don't want that and we have this tower and we can commute with our own God and we can talk with our own God and it's a tower into the heavens although Genesis says to us they think it's a tower into the heavens but you know it says God has to come down to look at this thing so all your illusions of how how your tires can go forget that and come let us do this come let us do that come let us do that but the key there is that God says all these people you see they have only one language they all say the same thing they all think the same way they all act the same way where are the voices of descent who tells them they might be wrong who tells them no there's something else here who tells them there is an alternative who tells them you're taking the wrong decision nobody when all is the same and everybody thinks the same and when all people talk the same way and think the same way that is the greatest danger God says now that they have all the same language think the same way talk the same way act the same way nothing will be impossible for them God is scared and with good reason with good reason look what we have done when we have silenced the voices of descent once you kill the prophets who say God wants something different and you set them aside and you have no longer any way of listening to them or hearing them or responding to them there is nothing impossible for us to do and so before we knew it we killed each other off as if it didn't matter before we knew it we invented atomic bombs and nuclear bombs before we knew it we were into things like a holocaust in Germany and a holocaust in Rwanda and it's not just the horrific way in which we kill other human beings it is the horrifically creative ways in which we kill we have truly made a covenant with death and we have told death I will give you all my energy I will give you all my innovation I will give you all my strength I will give you all my mind I will give you all my heart and there will be no limit to the ways in which I can be inventive in killing the other that's where we are this world this world Christ came to save and reconcile with God but at white price God didn't snap God's fingers Jesus didn't come into the world waving one magic wand and everything was alright no he came into the world and he had to endure everything that they threw at him and they despised him and they would not look at him and didn't want to hear him and they accused him and they lashed him and they beat him up and they spat in his face and they crucified him because reconciliation is costly so the first lesson we learn it's not just that reconciliation is unavoidable for us who believe in Jesus Christ but that reconciliation is costly it's not cheap and so it is not possible without confrontation of the evil that is real in this world the evil of the past in which we participated the evil of the present from which we benefit and the evil within us that enjoy the evil because we benefit from it still it's not possible without remorse and with repentance and without forgiveness it's not possible without a profound shift in human relationships and in power relationships reconciliation it's not possible without forgiveness we learned that from Mandela because he not only talked to the nation about forgiveness he made it real and he made it personal as he made it even political I mean what do you say of a man who was in jail for 27 years you know they kept him there for 20 years he was not allowed to touch his wife's hand why would I feel well he goes to the man who was his prosecutor in 1963 Percy Utah and he tells him before you die and before I die I just want you to know I don't hold you accountable on this one I want you to know I forgive you I knew you had a job to do so don't die with this feeling of guilt it's okay he goes to his jailer he says to me I know you had to lock me up at night he looked at this guy when he was locked in in his cell and this guy walked away he was going to his family he was going to sit down with his wife and children he was going to have a normal life and yet when he came out he said to him why don't you come and have lunch with me I want you to know I don't hold this against you that's reconciliation translated into real action but what do we do with it that's forgiveness as a church we know that we have to go even further than that we have to say to everybody who wants to emulate Nelson Mandela remember that forgiveness forgiveness forgiveness is at the heart of reconciliation remember that forgiveness is profoundly spiritual but it is never sentimental don't play around with it the word forgiveness strips off our tongues as if it is nothing don't do that don't do that especially in church we can't resist the temptation especially if we want to be forgiven don't talk about when we have to forgive somebody else that's a different matter Jesus not today maybe tomorrow but I want forgiveness now before I leave this church I won't I'm on my knees Lord I need to know forgive me when I walk out well okay we can talk about that tomorrow it's spiritual it's not sentimental remember that forgiveness is never the right of the perpetrator it is always always always the gift of the victim it's nothing to be demanded here it cannot be earned it can only be accepted when offered and it can only be responded to by the reciprocity of justice not by words not by speeches by justice remember also we should say to those who want to emulate Mandela that there are things that are forgivable but not excusable there are things that are forgivable but not excusable but only through the grace of God can the inexcusable be made forgivable that is what we should tell them I've got to come to an end the question however that hands all of it Mandela's dead reconciliation process has formally come to an end was it worth it? was it worth it to say to people we forgive you even those atrocities that are unspeakable was it worth it when we forgave people even when they said I don't want your forgiveness I did what I did for my country and for my God I don't need you um was it worthwhile now that we realize that South Africa has delinked reconciliation from justice so that we are now one of the most unequal societies on earth that the vast majority of our people are still choking to death in their poverty an economist the other day called the circumstances in which 56% of South Africa's people have to live in poverty he calls that a war zone was it worth it now 20 years into our democracy when we find that the values of our constitution are under such sustained attack that racism is still very much alive mainly because we always try to deny it we did not ever confront it properly my wife says that we have buried racism and our narrow ethnicities into graves so shallow and so close to where we live that they get provoked by the slightest thing that happened and they rise up to haunt us um now that we understand how few white people have understanding for the enormity of the forgiveness that was offered them by black people after apartheid when Archbishop Tutu makes a suggestion and says I think we made a mistake at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission we should have insisted on reparations not restitution reparations and I'm asking white people to make a small contribution to a fund that we can help children in the black communities to go to school that you can do this, that you can that, that we can build homes somebody writes he dare to ask this of me after all we have done for him and he's kind through all these years I wish the old man would just die is it worth it? Desmond Tutu himself said in 2003 when I look at how little has changed and how much things remain the same and how our people still battle with the same battles and how our poverty grows every day and how we grow apart from each other every day I must say he says I wonder whether the people not simply say to hell with reconciliation to hell with peace and to hell with Desmond Tutu is it worth it? well yes it is worth it if the choice that South Africa has made is for reconciliation and not revenge it is worth it if the choice that we had made is for peace and not for bloodshed yes it is worth it if the choice that we had made is for living together and not for retribution yes it is worth it if the choice that we had made is for inclusive justice instead of for victims justice or victors justice but for survivors justice that we say to each other to white people and to black people we have together survived this disaster called apartheid we have together come out on the other side this was a disaster of your making and we knew that as you dehumanize us because that is the deepest heart of this disaster our dehumanization you have dehumanized yourself but Ubuntu tells us that my humanity is locked up in your humanity that I cannot take one step further unless you hold my hand that when I dehumanize you I diminish myself that when I see you I see myself in you and two of us together as children God that is Ubuntu we can't give that up even for Ubuntu's sake yes it is worth it because if the world will only learn it do you think we would be in the mess that we are now we could be such a different place if not for ourselves then at least for our children and yes for the sake of Jesus there is this wonderful hero of mine from Denmark Lutheran pastor by the name of Kaimunk who lived in the times of the Second World War and he was persecuted by the Nazis because of his sermons he preached against the Nazi occupation he preached against the Nazi ideology he preached against racial supremacism he preached against war and they finally they he's church by the way complied with the Nazi demand to strip him of his license to preach and so he said I won't stand on the pulpit I will go to my church but I will stand in front of the pulpit I have no need of a license to do that and so one night they found him or at least two boys found him in the felt shot like a dog he said he said the moment if you are busy with the work of justice and peace the moment you ask is it worth it it is always the devil who wins in this work of justice and reconciliation and peace, forming another world, a different world a better world, God's world reclaiming the world for God don't ever ask is it worth it go through the difficulties, face the challenges take the risk let them call your names let them put you wherever they want to let them sideline you let them marginalize you don't give up don't ever ask is it worth it because then it is always the devil who wins and we must for once refuse to give the devil this victory, thank you thank you Dr. Bosak, we certainly have a prophet among us, yes? yes alright we are going to take a fifteen minute break and then we will come back and we will also be entertaining questions and those of you that are watching around the country and around the world if you look at your laptop there is a little spot on there where you can ask questions so if you want to text a chat, okay if you want to text us and let us know what your questions are we will want to include you also so let us take about a fifteen minute break please well welcome back at this time we are going to have an opportunity for questions of Dr. Bosak so I will invite him to come back here and we have a couple of microphones that we can walk around and we can capture your questions so that everyone can hear it and we also if we have through the chat process if someone in Rome or Zambia or wherever else in the world that you happen to be watching and listening please just type in your question and we will be notified and I'll come back and read that question so we make sure that we include everyone so let us invite back to the stage Dr. Alan Bosak are there any questions I think somebody said maybe you got your questions answered okay thank you you spoke about the anger that rose up uh... in South Africa uh... recently here we saw in Ferguson we saw the anger rise up how does the church today integrate with the community of unchurched who they have no relationship with to calm the anger thank you uh... for that question well of course there is such a thing uh... as plain destructive anger because i get angry at what has been done to me and I lash out regardless of the consequences because I need my need for whatever to be satisfied that's one kind of anger but there is a there's a righteous anger that rises up in response to injustice and sometimes difficult for Christians to to deal with the concept of the outrage of God against injustice but what else is it that we see when Jesus enters the temple and shows his anger because they had made what should have been the house of God and the house of prayer for all nations into a den of thieves sometimes well now first of all when there is injustice and when there is oppression and when there is exploitation and discrimination if there is no anger there is something wrong with our humanity I cannot understand how people and it's not as if in our society today's not that these people don't get angry we get angry we get real angry but we are selective in our anger there is a a great anger that sweeps across America because ISIS kills little Christian children but when we kill children here there is hardly any sign of outrage and anger I think God is probably more outraged at that and we have to understand that it's not the job of the church to rush in and say to people oh don't be angry don't be angry don't be angry we if we don't even understand why people are angry then it's no wonder that people say we have no connection with the community but if the church lives with the people if the church understands the situation in which people live the church will be as angry at what happens as the people are the question is can we channel that anger into something that is sustainable in terms of the transformation of the situation that caused the anger in the first place can we just be angry for anger's sake in other words we are so angry we run through town tonight and we burn everything down so tomorrow we feel better because we showed our anger that's not anything that's really can we say this anger is legitimate this anger is real and this anger is energy that needs to be challenged that needs to be channeled into something that can bring change it can be a force for good and that is the challenge ahead of us but a church that does not even begin to understand that there is something wrong to be angry about and a church that preaches on Sunday morning as if what happened during the week did not matter or does not touch the lives of people will have no integrity and will have no credibility to speak and that is mostly the danger in which we found ourselves so I'm not against people getting angry at injustice I'm against allowing that anger to be destructive and in the end self-destructive but it's only and so I mean we have to begin with ourselves even before we begin with the community there is reason why even though people will listen to our speeches because it's tradition they won't do what we say because what we say don't come it's so disconnected from what and you cannot not be with people until a disaster happens and then you want to come and step in and say I think that is what we need to do of course they won't listen in Soweto in 1976 one of the shocking experiences for the church was when the kids said to us the children said we don't have a fight with you but since you haven't done what you are supposed to do we are doing what we are supposed to do now if you want to be with us it's fine but don't be in our way don't stand in our way we have all of the respect for the office that you hold but if the office that you hold does not serve the justice that people are seeking why should we even bother talking with you it was difficult for us to understand but when we did understand that is when the church in South Africa became such a powerful force for change and that is why Mandela could call on people to say reconciliation is the answer he wasn't speaking into the air he wasn't just grabbing something he was falling back on something in the struggle that the churches have helped kept alive and nurtured to say to people remember at the end of this we've got to conduct the struggle in such a way that at the end of this we must create space for reconciliation because a revolution without reconciliation is an incomplete revolution it's perhaps no revolution at all that's when you create the monster that eats up its own children and so we have to begin with a very self-critical analysis the churches and we have to learn that if we do not have something to say that comes out of our own commitment to justice and our own willingness to sacrifice for the justice is much better than we just shut up and also you can't fall back on the Bible saying to ourselves well God has called us for a time like this as with Esther just remember that God says to Esther it's alright you call for a time like this you don't step up he says to Esther God will find somebody else that's the next verse I am I'm saying that the church has perhaps come to the point where we have to consider whether God has not already looked at us and said oh I think I'll find somebody else because the Holy Spirit moves where she wills and she will not be put in chains by us because we think we can claim God for ourselves if we are not God's instruments God will say it's okay I will come back for you but in the meantime lives have to be saved my children are dying somebody sits there hungry somebody sits there being shot at somebody sits there in a war somebody's got to stop it and so if you don't come to me so that we can do this I will find somebody else and then God does work outside of the church but it's to our eternal shame and we always grab Paul's words in Romans I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ and it's almost a triumphant kind of thing well maybe the time has come for us to ask isn't there reason for the gospel to be ashamed of us and these are the questions I think we should raise honestly and battle with God I mean the church has we have been so dishonest with ourselves because we have so been dishonest with God we go to God with all these assumptions about ourselves God does not respond then we get upset but I mean but God is saying hang on, hang on long before you come to me with what you assume is your position ask me where I'm still standing where you're talking I moved on and I have found servants who are doing my will I'm waiting for you to catch up and if you keep on standing there addressing me you're talking to empty space find me, find me, find me and where will you find me you will find me in the midst of those who suffer in the midst of those who hunger in the midst of those who have no place in the midst of those who die you will find me in that child who has been shot to death from a gunboat you will find me in that young man who has been burned to death and if you're not there you will not find me and so that's the challenge we always claim God from our spaces of safety and privilege and security God is not there because Jesus never looked for spaces of security and safety He lived a life that was exposed in love because it was exposed to those who called in their suffering upon His name and if only we could be that church then we should not worry about whether we are relevant or whether people will listen to us when we speak when the time comes but it's a call it does not come automatically I talk too much there must be another question that's alright, another question thank you Dr. Bozek this morning very informational and gives us a plan of action we're 46 years from the death of our Mandela Martin Luther King in this country you are approaching a year since Mandela's passing would you kind of cast and possibly forecast what you take from post Martin Luther King America post South Africa Mandela and hopefully how we can maybe rekindle the fire that was experienced through apartheid and brought you to this point kind of in a comparative way thank you so much I'll try we just spoke in the break to two friends about this thing how iconizing somebody in a very real sense boils down to domesticating somebody molding somebody either into something so high and so unreachable that as a normal human being I can't even hope to get there or molding him to such an extent that he fits in very neatly with wherever I am today and I get the feeling that this has happened to both Martin Luther King and to Nelson Mandela there's another thing as well generations sometimes fall prey to the temptation that they think the freedom that has come in our generation is for our generation and so they take the freedom and they think this is our freedom I can do with it what I will they don't take the freedom they think oh this is a precious gift that other generations haven't had have fought for have bled for have died for now we've got it so the question is not only what do I make with it but how do I preserve it how do I grow it how do I nurture it how do I keep it so much alive that I can hand it over to my children and their children it is not my generation's gifts it is widely even it's a gift that was not given to us it's a gift that was given to the world and so I've got to be much more careful with such a precious thing and so I've got freedom in South Africa the freedom has translated into untrammeled greed by the top aristocracy in our country I've got freedom I've got freedom to be rich now no matter how I get there I've got freedom to make as much money as I can no matter how I do that there's a somebody a famous, famous quote from somebody who had gotten rich through some scheme that was bordering on illegality but in a sense that had not given the workers that were part of that scheme anything close as what the top guys got and so they asked him are you happy with this how can you take all this money and he said, you know what he said well, we did not struggle to be poor now if that is your attitude which is another way of saying I have struggled to become as rich as possible in the shortest possible time no matter how I get there if that is what we do with freedom it will last only for this generation's small elite but we squander it I say to people in South Africa I'm not cynical about our miracle lots of people are now cynical about it they look back and they say miracle, forget it Mandela's dead all these people, they take and I say no, no, no, no, no I remember too well where we were in the 1980s there were very few political analysts who gave South Africa a chance of ending apartheid without a full scale civil war people were talking wildly about blood in the streets you remember the phrase of France-Fernand the cleansing power of the blood and he wasn't talking about the blood of Christ so when we got out of there without that bloodshed I think that's a miracle so what do you do with such a gift that you get from God I mean what is it that the prophet says that we have made into a song in black rudels of Africa I have been plucked out of the fire like a burning log from the fire that thing you remember that plucked like a burning log from the fire and saved yeah that's how I see us and so my question is what is the most worshipful and politically responsible which is the same thing for a Christian responds to such a gift what is your best response to what do I do with that gift if I mess it up how grave is my sin against this God who had given me this gift and against the people for whom God has given us this gift and we have messed up black people here have taken this gift for granted we have taken our gift for granted this society has taken Martin Luther King's gift for granted and our society is taking this gift for granted I mean what we see now there's a rollback against civil rights if every single level the unashamed struggle fight just to get rid of the gains that had been made well that's partly the fault of welfare the reality that we got to deal with the forces of evil never give up man they stop back for a moment but they don't give up they don't ever concede we think we concede once we can sing I have gone to the enemies camp and I have taken back what he stole from where you can sing that all day long but if you don't engage in systemic hard political work coupled with genuine, genuine worshipful prayer to God say we have this gift help me find ways to keep it safe for my children then we're not doing anything so I sometimes think I want to stand up and say just stop singing for a moment about your victory and listen to what God is trying to say to you I mean I don't want the church to stop singing really I don't because I don't think I can do without it but sometimes sometimes we just got to stop it's like Amos saying to the people you know all of this worship all of this singing all of this shouting hallelujah and amen that's okay but just shut up for a moment because you talk so much and you sing so much you're listening to God so we got to make some time just to listen to God and how we take this forward and also because we think that the victories that we have gained are permanent victories and when we do that we do not take account of how for instance racism has been structuralized and systematized and how it permeates every single area of life we're finding that out in South Africa you are finding it out here in the United States and so you got to be awake and we also think that if a few people at the top can rightly claim and say we can now do things that we haven't done 10 years or 15 years ago that that's okay well Henry Highland Garnet was a black Presbyterian minister in the 19th century and he said to the slaves of his day he said you got to remember there are pharaohs on both sides of the bloody waters we forgot that we forgot that you must also remember and this is not Henry Highland Garnet but it's me I say we may be in the promised land with our bodies but our minds are still in Egypt that's another problem that we have to deal with and so you cannot live liberation with your mind still in chains and so we think that when we change the laws that was okay we don't have to be vigilant enough to continue that change within ourselves one of the big things why the people of Israel kept on complaining kept on complaining on the side of the Red Sea on that side of the Red Sea why don't you take us back why did you bring us here we'd rather go back to pharaoh where are the flesh pots well you know sometimes it's much easier to live in slavery than in freedom and we get scared of the freedom God has given us because now that puts it in our hands and so Mandela when he spoke to our young people when he was still capable of making all these speeches one of his last he kept on saying at the end of his speech to the young people it's in your hands now and we've got to understand what that means it's in your hands now and he spoke with deep respect to the youth with great expectation of the youth how many of us have sat down with our children to explain to them the world in which they live in now where did the freedom they live in come from where did the opportunities come from how vigilant must we be to keep it this way and so it dissipates and it disappears so quickly and so this vivid alertness of keeping the dream alive keeping your eye on the prize all those old things that we used to say they remain key they really do remain key and for us understanding across the oceans how important that is in global struggles today what is true here is true for us and finding ways to hold hands and to think together and to struggle together and to look at strategies together and there are so many more and finding and finding allies in the most unlikely places that's what we have to do right now so we might find to our discovery it's not just a black struggle it's a struggle for all those who love justice it's a struggle for all those who love peace it's a struggle for all those who take the childhood of God seriously no matter where we come from and so in the end maybe it's not it doesn't even matter where we come from it's where are we all going together that matters first, thank you Dr. Bowsick for sharing your insights that are unique to your own experience one of the things you said that really struck me was your comment about Dr. Tutu's despair really that he mentioned about how much has changed but how much has not changed he said that in 2003 I believe what kind of differences have occurred since then such that real change has occurred well, thank you for that question I remember so we have this truly progressive and wonderful constitution I am so proud of South Africa's constitution and the way in which it secures the rights of all our citizens irrespective of anything and how it makes reconciliation a goal and a framework for securing those rights and so we do this not just because we want to be on the right side of the law we do this because it serves the ongoing reconciliation in our nation that's how I understand the constitution and the constitution that is embedded in the principle of Ubuntu and so that means that everything we do politically in the courts of law in education in our life together in our socioeconomic life in the growing of the country's economy in all of that that makes a society not just a democratic society but a humane society all of that is driven by these very very high values I'm deeply grateful for that the question is and this is what I think the Archbishop was looking at the question is how do you prevent those promises from merely being paper promises how do you take all of those realities of those promises in the constitution and you translate them into political reality and so what has gone wrong is that I think we have ourselves not taken our constitution seriously as we should have Robert Bella is an American sociologist for which I have great great admiration, Robert Bella has written a book with the title Habits of the Heart and if I take that title of that book I ask what can we do to make the values of the constitution habits of the heart so that it comes almost naturally it's not something extraordinary when I show respect for somebody it comes naturally it's not something extraordinary when I pay my people who work for me a decent wage I don't wait for a pat on the shoulder this is what I do because Ubuntu places us not over against each other not even close to each other in the last few years if I diminish you in any way I diminish myself and so if those principles can be a habit of the heart and we haven't done that seriously I mean the Archbishop was looking at socio-economic decisions that we had made because the gap was already very very clear then between the rich and the poor is now greater than ever before in the United States at the moment the gap between the rich and the poor is worse than the gap between the rich and the poor was in South Africa under apartheid so that's I mean we've always known the gap is wide here but not wider than under apartheid so that gives you some kind of scale and for us of course it's a totally shameful thing that has happened in our country especially if you compare that to the to the vast wealth that just a few individuals have accumulated in such a short time so that's a mistake what has happened that South Africa has now become what somebody called us the rape capital of the world now so gender based violence is a pandemic the United Nations tell us not only here worldwide I mean your debates now on what is happening on college campuses and what is happening in the NFL and all of that is all part of this whole understanding but behind that is what is it then what are the ideologies what are the messages that drift around here what are we saying to young men as they grow up what is it that they hear as they read the newspaper as they watch television as they hear radio what is it that they do not hear when they come to church because we won't say to somebody oh go out there and smack your wife we won't ever say that but when somebody does smack his wife and she comes to us often we say well it must have been your fault were you not obedient to your husband don't you know what the bible says and so because we don't say anything we do create a climate where anything can happen and we find all sorts of excuses but you got to ask the question and so what is it that we have not done in South Africa what is it that we have not done to prevent men from raping babies of three years old because that happened what is it that we have not done to make it clear to our young men that raping a 15 year old girl when you yourself are just 15 years old and then in your warped mind if I now poke out her eyes and blind her literally she won't see who it is I mean so what is it that we have not done that allows this to happen what is it that we do when we help create a religious atmosphere in which Christian young men go out and they hunt lesbian women and they gang rape them but they don't call it rape they call it corrective rape we are responsible for that term the world now knows that term because it comes from us now what is that and so how do you build a society in which reconciliation is alive at its heart how do you talk about reconciliation if you ignore that and if that case goes to court which it did and after four years the judge can't even begin to get to the issues four years now she's dead this young woman there's only one example and they can't seem to find evidence they just drag their feet what is it what is it that we have done or not done so when you think of those questions and I'm not saying that the good we have I mean we have things we have sort of there are more people now living with electricity than before and that's great and wonderful and there are more people living in houses instead of houses and that's great and wonderful and one must give praise and honour that that is done but I mean it's not just about that it's about other things as well and so I think for us and that's the difficulty with a country that sets such a high standard for itself that's what I'm saying the moment you say reconciliation is a standard that you would better be able to meet otherwise it'll become far too difficult for you but that's a standard that we cannot let go of because it is the only standard worth living by so that conversation is what I think needs to continue honestly and very frankly amongst our people back home could you please explain Ubuntu Ubuntu is an African it's not a proverb it's a way of life it's a philosophy more than that it's a way of life Ubuntu says I am a human being created by God and so are you I don't exist by myself or for myself I can only exist when I exist in community with you and with others and so our humanity binds us together more than the color of our skin, more than the language we speak or share more than the customs we share that really in the end doesn't matter that much what matters is that your humanity is so precious that I cannot exist as a human being unless I claim and affirm your humanity so so whatever I do that diminishes your humanity your dignity, your worth diminishes me I bring myself down if I don't lift you up because if I lift you up we all rise together on this reality of respect and embrace and it's not just with human beings it's with nature as well because nature feeds us nature nurtures us we respond to nature as a source of life not just for us but for our children's children so it is a what Martin Luther King called this this network of mutuality so when we greet each other in South Africa well let me just say Ubuntu is something that you find in the words are different but the concept is the same across the continent it's across the continent some way or another it's always present in African thinking so in South Africa in the Sichuan language when we greet each other we say Dumelang or Zulu which means I see you so I walk down the street and you come down and I say Dumelang and you respond Dumelang I see you it's not just oh I see you so I know who you are I better get to the other side of the road it is I see you and I cannot pass you by without saying to you I have seen you I know who you are you are a child of God you are my sister you are my brother the two of us belong together each other come they begin to greet and they begin to talk South Africans know that and then we pass each other and you are already there and I'm already on my way we still shout to each other you know I mean because you're so reluctant to let go of that momentary connection and you think the longer I can keep this connection maybe the echo of my voice will go with me until I see the next person so you try to prolong the connectivity of human beingness and being together and affirming one another all day long as much as you can when I was young I used to work in a big grocery store and there were African friends who worked with us and the one week he says to the boss I gotta go and I won't be here tomorrow because my mother has died and then he comes back three weeks later he says oh you gotta excuse me because I gotta go back my mother has died how many mothers have you got what do you mean don't be lazy and try to run away he says you don't understand and he did not understand because in the community my mother is your mother when my mother dies it's not a hardship for your mother to make me her child I shall never be an orphan as long as I am in community I will always have a mother I will always have a father I will never be abandoned that's the idea and so how hard is it to understand that and to know what that means so the whole idea of an orphan child as an individual walking around not knowing where to go that is so alien I mean Africans ourselves we have to go back to the roots of that meaning and ask ourselves what happens and what has happened to us if we allow all of this other stuff to happen I mean when we become known for our tendency to let the children fight our wars what is that that's when Ubuntu flees she runs away and she hides herself from our humanity because our humanity is so inhuman and she cannot stand to be in our company because she cannot recognize herself in us so those are the questions that we have to live with and those are worthwhile questions asking it's not meant to scare you it's meant to keep you on the path so Ubuntu except people say to me I mean it's true that Ubuntu has been horribly sentimentalized and they do with Ubuntu what they try to do with all such things they they make it such an innocuous kind of concept so it has no power anymore some people do that but I keep on saying what if we take Ubuntu as seriously as it is intended and make that turn that into a political principle what consequences can we draw from that and how would that impact the way in which we live and do our politics well thank you so much Dr. Bosak you mentioned that sometimes it is not good to ask the question was it worthwhile after the reconciliation process probably even during the process but as human beings we are taught that at the end of a hard working day you have to sit down and take stock of your successes and your failures now if you say we can't ask that question because you said that the devil will always win how do we know that we have achieved something in the process of reconciliation I wanted to ask you the question did South Africa achieve anything in the reconciliation process but I'm afraid because you said the devil will win so can you explain that how do we stay away from that question how do we avoid asking such a question as human beings thank you that's a good question there is a difference I think between taking stock honestly and without fear of what we had achieved and not achieved the mistakes that we had made and why we had made those mistakes you will see that in my analysis I was not trying to spare my country I was not trying to paint a rosy picture was it worth it question is the give up question maybe I should be more clear about that is the question that says we talked reconciliation but look where we are we talked reconciliation but still racism is not gone we talked reconciliation but our people are getting more and more impoverished we talked reconciliation but the violence continues and so is it worth it of course you will have to then say no if you say is it worth it and you not look at the failures but you look at what we have been able to do despite and if you look at the fact that the fact that we have failed reconciliation does not mean that the choice for reconciliation was wrong that's my argument South Africa is not the model that we wanted ourselves to be and that the world sometimes imposes on us we made lots of mistakes when I talk to people I always say if you talk about reconciliation and you ask me shall we follow South Africa's model I say follow the fundamental decision not the model we have built on it you must do better than us and that's why I keep on saying you heard me say reconciliation is not possible without confrontation of the past don't run away from that past don't put wallpaper on the cracks you will find that if you deny the truth that the wall is cracked and that is going to fall because those confrontations and the cracks in the wall means that you will come to the conclusion I've got to break down this wall and build a new one and instead of patching up with the old injustices or trying to hide the ongoing injustices I will knock it down that's why God said to Jeremiah you will knock down some stuff and you will build up some stuff and so we have to do that if you don't do that and you put paper paper and you don't see the cracks then the rain comes and the hurricane comes and the tornado comes and you want to hide behind the wall it's going to fall on you and so don't do that and make sure that people understand that reconciliation is not possible without talking about those I mean confront the racism confront the greed confront injustices and say reconciliation without justice is not possible so don't repeat that mistake reconciliation is not possible without restitution I'm not talking reparations here I'm talking restitution and so restitution means to restore what I have taken from you now sometimes it's going to be possible sometimes it's not going to be possible and I'm not talking material here it's always possible to give back land it may be hard and you don't want to do it but it's possible it's not possible to give back somebody's life and so when we talk about restitution and then get stuck on the question of most I now give back my land which my grandfather gave me well do I really have to ask the question where you think your grandfather got that land so sometimes that's one way but that land can still be given back but my mother always said my grandfather died of a broken heart when I was old enough to talk to her about it she told the story I mean they were a small community who lived in Ebenezer on the west coast next to the banks of the Elephant River and they were people of the land small farmers and his joy was always to take the stuff the harvest that comes in and to take it and everybody shares of it and he can feed his family and if your harvest didn't come out so alright don't worry about it there is something and if something happened to your land don't fret we can share because we've got something and so they built that community around that they called the place Ebenezer because they have wandered and wandered and finally found this place and they looked at the bible and they said to this place God has brought us Ebenezer and then the white government came and together with the white duchy form church they proclaimed that area a white area they threw out all our people and they took their land where they threw them was barren small little arable pieces and so they had little little little acre acre acre pieces for the families their whole life was changed was totally disrupted my grandfather couldn't take it when he couldn't work with the land anymore when he couldn't see the seeds grow when he couldn't see the fruit of his labor when he couldn't see the joy on your face when I have we can share when that was gone it broke his heart so there was this young man who came to me at one university where I talked and he was upset with me because I talked about restitution and we talked about land I happened to ask him where do you live by the way and lo and behold funny how God works with this stuff lo and behold in this place that they now called Lutzville that used to be old Ebenezer so chances are that his people got the land that my grandfather had to give up no compensation so I can get that land back in Ebenezer if I fight him in the courts but how will he give my grandfather's my grandfather's broken heart back how will he restore that pain to my family so when you ask the question is it worth it because my grandfather is dead nothing will bring him back to life I grew up without him I don't know what it means to have a granddad must I now what will he restore to me is it worth it if I raise the question because somebody else has a grandfather who is still alive somebody else has somebody who still has land that they can go back to somebody else can maybe not me maybe not my family but somebody else so I don't do it because of me anymore but I have to do it because of those who can still raise the question and that is always worth it if I give up if I move then I give the devil the victory he should not get that's what I mean so it's not is it worth it I walk away but is it worth it not just for me but if I if I look back my grandfather will never see his land back in the hands of his family but if he sees restitution of other families will that not bring joy to where he is in heaven right now that's my question and that is perhaps also worth it first of all Dr. Busek, gracias for sharing your wisdom it was very powerful when you talked about how we have made violence a god or it's god and I work daily with children who constantly see that violence when daddy is not there mom is not there grandparents are doing their best and so they live with great fear inconsistency consistently and so I'd like to ask you how do we speak hope to these children and adolescents ha well that's a thank you for that question although it's a much more difficult question that I can answer hope if you will read the book that I have written and try to grapple with it doesn't come to us in places of safety and security it comes to us always in situations of struggle and pain and woundedness so I can only speak to those children when I feel their woundedness and when I speak as somebody who knows that I can be wounded and maybe if I have been wounded I can speak to them better so we mustn't run away from situation that places us at risk for fear that we might be wounded it is through that woundedness that we might be able better to speak hope to people in situations how do we do that with children words don't always work well with children is my experience but example does so what gives hope to a child who sits in fear sometimes well certainly not taking them to church and letting them hear all that sermon all day long but just maybe sitting with them the child who lives in fear what does it mean to have somebody just sitting with them holding their hand perhaps touching them in ways that they miss because they will touch them in love stepping into the breach for them on their behalf letting them see without even talking to them that whenever violence happens you are there and you will step in and try to stop it as much as you can then they will say oh here is somebody it wasn't me who got beaten this time but if she does it for that person and for her and for her and for him oh then she will do it for me so when you next time do speak then your words take on a totally different character then it is not words that are waiting to be filled with meaning it is worth with meaning because they come waited with the deeds you have already done and I think that makes a difference and so but when we speak up in situation of when I was here the last time I spoke about the parable of the Good Samaritan and I asked the question what if the Good Samaritan came along the road while the robbers were still there beating up on this man so you don't wait until he is safe you don't hide behind the bushes until they wait that the robbers are now gone he is bleeding on his own okay I can go now and I can do something but you have to stop the fighting and you have to stop the bleeding and if you want to do that you have to put yourself at risk you can be beaten up right now because you are stepping in so what now for these situations do we have the courage not to do the binding of the wounds afterwards but do we have the courage to step in and stop the bleeding and the wounding right there so it's maybe lucky that the guy was still alive when the Samaritan came along but there are too many situations in which the innocent die long before we are even aware that there is a fight and there is a fight that concerns us because it is a fight that somehow profits us so what do we do then I mean no so yeah Dr. Boussak my dear brother thank you thank you thank you let us thank you and I thank each of you who has come and participated with us this day may you not go and leave the word in the room may it do something in your life may we not come here next year with something you could have done that you left undone so we praise God for that now Dr. Boussak will be in the four year signing books for those of you who bought them and we again thank you we do have in your folders if you got a folder a brochure that announces the next lecture for the San Copa Institute which is in November with it's the black Catholic liturgical reflection by Monsignor Edward Branch we would love to have you here I think it will be a nice follow up to what Dr. Boussak has invited us to consider we will now look at considering our worship what does our worship say that God challenges us to so God bless you and thank you for coming