I like stories about encountering people who challenge and change lives. I encountered on such story recently when I read Marybeth Christie Redmond’s story of her encounter with Desmond Tutu. This was timely, since Tutu’s death. His story is now finished, but his legacy lives on. I am sure it will continue to challenge and change lives. I never met Tutu and I don’t know Redmond. But after reading her story, I felt like I was right there in the middle of the story.
Redmond describes herself as a writer and former member of the Vermont Assembly---the governing body of that state. She begins telling her story of her encounter with Tutu in the mid 80s with this simple line. “On an unremarkable day, a most remarkable interview would reroute the trajectory of my life.” She had just graduated from Notre Dame and was working as a tv journalist for a local station. Her boss asked her to “do a quick interview” of someone important who was to speak that night at the university.
She was floored when she was greeted by Tutu, famous already for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. She describes him as “a beaming man who enveloped my hands in his.” Tutu was on a speaking tour to challenge American colleges to help work to eliminate apartheid, the pernicious South African system of racism. Decades later, this is what Redmon still remembers. “But what has stayed with me through 36 years was his laser-like truth telling delivered through the mesmerizing intensity of his loving spirit. Despite years of resistance, intimidation and death threats, here was a man speaking truth to power with no anger or bitterness.” She says she “was riveted by this nonviolent activist on fire.”
It challenged and changed her. In her own words she confesses, “I was wrestling with questions about my life's purpose and how to serve. This moment in Tutu's presence cast an indelible imprint on my heart and mind; all I could think of was that I wanted to be like this man, living from the deep well spring of divine soul in everything I did.” She managed to continue doing tv journalism for a short period, “but couldn't shake the DNA-level change that had occurred.” What a powerful way to describe change!
Her story challenges me. She boldly states, “I knew that I wanted to live a different kind of existence, one that prioritized social justice and service, mutual relationship with the marginalized, interiority and spiritual growth and a simple lifestyle.” When I read her words, it makes me wonder if I settled for a more comfortable way of being spiritual. But her point is not to make us guilty. It is to challenge and change us. Any of us can work against the pernicious racism of our own country if we put our souls into it. We don’t need to meet Tutu to do that.
Later she pens a sentence that outlines our own possibilities. Redmond writes, “Tutu's life and mission would recalibrate for me what a soul-centered Christian life could look like.” I want a soul-centered Christian life, too. Obviously, “soul-centered Christian life” is a general term. But it is a much better way to identify ourselves than simply saying, “I’m Christian.” I remember Gerald May’s wonderful way of defining soul. He says our soul is the “essence of the person.”
If I am honest, I acknowledge too much of my life is centered in superficial things that I know are not really me and don’t matter deeply to me. Our culture is geared to sell us stuff and portray possible identities that as what the monk Thomas Merton called a “false self.” Many us know the amount of time we have spent trying to be someone we really are not and never will be. To be a soul-centered Christian is to allow our souls---the essence of who we are---to be rooted and grounded in the same Spirit that was incarnated in Jesus.
Tutu was a wonderful model and encourager for Redmond and can be for us. From him she “learned that any action I take must spring from soul seeing and deep love.” The good news is we don’t have to meet Tutu to learn this. There are plenty of role models. Of course, Jesus is the great model and DNA-level changer. But there are quiet saints in the midst of all of us.
It is never too late to go deep. We can go deep where the soul is found. We can abandon our ill-fated chasing of our false self. We can take a little time to let the Spirit guide our reconnecting with our soul. It will take a little time to become soul-centered. Too often, we have living eccentric lives---away from our center. It is easier if we can find a friend or two who is on this journey, too. If we are fortunate, we can be part of a community of folks living in a soul-centered manner.
I am confident one of the outcomes of living a soul-centered Christian life is we take on the work of the Spirit. In Tutu’s case it was the struggle against apartheid. In our own cases there are countless ways to be spiritually at work in the world. Granted mine ways have been more comfortable than Tutu’s ways were. I have not done jail time. But my goal is the same. I want to be obedient to how the Spirit guides my soul.
But I need to stop, look and listen. Otherwise I will be off chasing other things, often for the wrong reasons.
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