Sunday, April 29, 2012

Sunday Salute VI


From Wikipedia

Desmond Mpilo Tutu (born 7 October 1931) is a South African activist and retired Anglican bishop who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. He was the first black South African Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, and primate of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (now the Anglican Church of Southern Africa).
Tutu has been active in the defence of human rights and uses his high profile to campaign for the oppressed. He has campaigned to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. Tutu received theNobel Peace Prize in 1984; the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism in 1986; the Pacem in Terris Award in 1987; the Sydney Peace Prize in 1999; theGandhi Peace Prize in 2005;[1] and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.

A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.

Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.

Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.


We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

Without forgiveness, there's no future.

You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.

Desmond Tutu

Craig Ferguson had him on for the entire hour. Here is the first part of the interview.


2 comments:

Kurt said...

Bishop Tutu was the commencement speaker at my graduation from Simpson. I'm sure his speech was excellent, but given the horrible acoustics in the Field House, we could only discern every 5th word. At least I got to shake his hand.

jaycoles@gmail.com said...

I would give body parts (an arm and a leg) to see him.