{"id":20444,"date":"2023-10-17T16:54:11","date_gmt":"2023-10-17T22:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/resources2.soundstrue.com\/?post_type=transcript&p=20444"},"modified":"2023-10-17T16:54:11","modified_gmt":"2023-10-17T22:54:11","slug":"im-here-for-love","status":"publish","type":"transcript","link":"https:\/\/resources2.soundstrue.com\/transcript\/im-here-for-love\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m Here For Love"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"image_print\"Print Transcript<\/span><\/a><\/div>

Tami Simon:<\/b> Hello friends. My name\u2019s Tami Simon and I\u2019m the founder of Sounds True, and I want to welcome you to the Sounds True podcast: <\/span>Insights at the Edge<\/span><\/i>. I also want to take a moment to introduce you to Sounds True\u2019s new membership community and digital platform. It\u2019s called Sounds True One. Sounds True One features original premium transformational docuseries, community events, classes to start your day and relax in the evening, and special weekly live shows, including a video version of <\/span>Insights at the Edge<\/span><\/i> with an after-show community question-and-answer session with featured guests. I hope you\u2019ll come join us, explore, come have fun with us, and connect with others. You can learn more at join.soundstrue.com.<\/span><\/p>\n

I also want to take a moment and introduce you to the Sounds True Foundation, our nonprofit that creates equitable access to transformational tools and teachings. You can learn more at soundstruefoundation.org and in advance, thank you for your support.<\/span><\/p>\n

Welcome, friends, to <\/span>Insights at the Edge<\/span><\/i>. Today my guest is Mpho Tutu van Furth. Mpho is a preacher, an Episcopal priest, a teacher, writer, wife, mother, grandmother, and retreat facilitator. She\u2019s the daughter of anti-apartheid activists Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and Leah Tutu, and the founding director of the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, dedicated to supporting projects that promote peace and reconciliation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shortly after her marriage to Marceline van Furth, in 2016, she handed in her license to officiate in the South African Anglican Church, as it does not permit its priests to marry same-sex partners. And that\u2019s something we\u2019re going to talk about.<\/span><\/p>\n

With her father, Desmond Tutu, Mpho has cowritten the books <\/span>Made for Goodness<\/span><\/i> and also <\/span>The Book of Forgiving<\/span><\/i>. Mpho is also a featured teacher in a new online learning series brought to you by Sounds True. It\u2019s called <\/span>Unstoppable Joy<\/span><\/i>, and it takes highlights from a very special conversation that happened between Archbishop Desmond Tutu and His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. And that conversation was recorded. It became <\/span>The Book of Joy<\/span><\/i>, a book that has sold north of a million copies, national bestseller, as well as a popular film called <\/span>Mission: Joy<\/span><\/i>. And now it\u2019s an online learning program, and Mpho, along with Thupten Jinpa, the translator for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and the coauthor of <\/span>The Book of Joy<\/span><\/i> Doug Abrams, is one of the featured teachers in this new course, <\/span>Unstoppable Joy<\/span><\/i>. And now let\u2019s meet Mpho Tutu van Furth. Mpho, welcome to <\/span>Insights at the Edge<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mpho Tutu van Furth: <\/b>Thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS: <\/b>In the very beginning here, I\u2019d love to talk about your calling, your decision if you will, your choice to become a priest in the Episcopalian church. You mentioned that in the beginning of your life, in your early life, you never felt drawn to the priesthood like your father, but something shifted. What shifted?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MTF: <\/b>I think more what happened for me was that I recognized at a certain point that I was expending a lot of energy on why it was that I didn\u2019t want to be a priest. And I noticed that I wasn\u2019t expending that much energy on why I didn\u2019t want to be a marine biologist. And so I thought, \u201cWell, there\u2019s a lot going on there. Let me investigate a little bit further what is going on.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And that led me into a process of discernment and recognizing that, actually, so much of my joy was found in my ministries\u2014in my work with mothers, with young mothers, in my work with survivors of rape and sexual abuse, in my work with children in marginalized communities. And those were the things that brought me the most joy.<\/span><\/p>\n

And ultimately, my sense was that I run incredibly good programs. I\u2019m very good at doing that kind of work, but what I found to be most empowering for the people with whom I worked was what I found to be most transformational. And that was the sense of the deep faith that drove my work.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS: <\/b>Tell me more about that, the deep faith. When you say that, when you use that word, what is that deep faith? How would you describe it?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MTF: <\/b>I\u2019m a theist. I believe in God. And for me, God is love as the simplest definition of: What is God? God is love. God is the love that binds and unites us. I have found that to be best expressed for me in the life and witness of Jesus Christ. And I am a Christian. But as my father wrote, God is not a Christian. And so my Christian faith is the pathway that I have found to be the one that speaks most to me as the pathway to finding my way to love, to guiding me on that journey closer to God.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS: <\/b>You yourself have personally witnessed tremendous atrocities. You spoke even in the midst of your ministry, working with women who have experienced sexual molestation and abuse, and of course you lived during a time of apartheid. Apartheid ended, if I understand correctly, when you were approximately 30, 31 years old. How do you maintain that sense of faith and God as a God of love, in the midst of facing atrocities?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MTF: <\/b>God is a God of love. We as human beings are not necessarily always attuned to God\u2019s love, and not always attuned to the fact that what we are created for is to be loving beings, to be expressions of love. We are created out of God\u2019s love to be expressions of love. And so very often, we act in ways that are absolutely counter to the path of love. We act in ways that are counter to the path of love in small ways and in large ways.<\/span><\/p>\n

So the way in which we\u2019re ravaging our planet would be one example of actions counter to love. The fact of war, the fact of rape and incest and child abuse. The fact of all of the criminality that we see in the world, the fact of abuse of workers, the fact that we have refugees, both internally and dispersed throughout the world\u2014all of those are examples of how far short we fall of living out of that sense of A, being loved first and foremost, and being lovable because we are loved. And B, the sense that all other beings are also loved, beloved, created out of love, are and are expressions of God\u2019s creative love. And so we act in ways that diminish one another, that we treat creation as being less than it actually is.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS: <\/b>You mentioned knowing that we\u2019re lovable because we\u2019re loved, we\u2019re loved by creation, we\u2019re loved by God. And I know you cowrote with your father <\/span>Made for Goodness<\/span><\/i>. And yet I think so many of us, at some level, don\u2019t feel lovable. Something in us is like, really, something that happened early in our life. We formulated this belief there\u2019s something inherently, truth be told, if you get underneath it all, something wrong with me. How, in your teaching and in your preaching, can you help people open up to that sense of being unconditionally loved?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MTF: <\/b>It\u2019s simple. And because it\u2019s simple, it\u2019s really difficult, as simple things are wont to be. We tend to get it twisted. We think that our task is to work to be deserving of love, to be deserving of God\u2019s love, to be deserving of the love of those around us. But it kind of begins with that notion that we have to do something to earn or deserve God\u2019s love.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And if we get it right, then we understand that we can do nothing to earn or deserve God\u2019s love. We have it. It\u2019s a free gift. That just came with the package. We got delivered into God\u2019s love. It just is. And our task in life is to live as beloved people, to live our gratitude for that love.<\/span><\/p>\n

But as you say, it\u2019s really hard to get into ourselves the reality that we are beloved. And for so many people, experience in the world challenges that from the word go. They came into the world as a result of unhealthy relationships. All they have experienced in life has been hardship and distressed.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so it\u2019s really an uphill battle to be able to claim that, actually, I am beloved, and I am deserving of all the joy that comes to me because I am beloved. And the good that I do is not in pursuit of love. The good that I do is in fact, in gratitude for what has already been given to me as birthright.<\/span><\/p>\n

And in my preaching, that is something that I say and I emphasize over and over and over again, that each of us has as birthright God\u2019s love, and that we are called to act as those who know themselves to be loved.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was over the weekend with some friends, relatives of\u2026 Well, actually my relatives because they\u2019re relatives of my wife. But it was a couple older than me. And the thing that I loved or I thoroughly enjoyed about watching their interaction was just how evident it was that this man just loved his wife, and how radiant\u2026 She just seemed to be like a flower open in the presence of this man who so obviously loved her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And the thing is that when you are so obviously loved, you come at life from a different direction. You come at life with the expectation that what I am doing doesn\u2019t decide whether or not this person is going to love me. And so I do the loving thing just naturally, just easily. That\u2019s just what I step into.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I think that if we, as a world, ever got even a hint of the incredible love with which God loves us, we would be living in such a different world than we do now. We would know that we have access to so much more than we think we do, that we have no need to hold on with clenched fists to the good that we have, that we would know that there is infinite love available for all of us, and that we would be able to pass on that infinite love to one another.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS: <\/b>Mpho, I\u2019m going to take this even a little further, because in my own life, it\u2019s taken so many decades to actually discover the goodness that I am. It\u2019s been such a long and difficult journey, and yet I\u2019ve had so much support and kindness and generosity from so many people along the way. And I know how hard it is, it can be, especially if we\u2019ve had difficult childhood, difficult family, early upbringings, to really get this sense of our own purity inside, our own goodness inside, our own golden quality. So for that person who\u2019s listening who says, \u201cGod, I think I\u2019m going to go replay what Mpho just said again and again and again so I can hear it again and again and again.\u201d But the truth is, after they replay it a couple times, they\u2019re going to be on their own, and they\u2019re going to be working with themselves and their life. What do you suggest? How can people make this realization of our inherent goodness something that\u2019s their own genuinely?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MTF: <\/b>That for me is that piece of having a faith journey. Ultimately, what faith is trying to teach us, what all faiths are ultimately trying to teach us is our way to God, is our way to love, is the path to follow to get to that understanding and that grasp of God.<\/span><\/p>\n

So you know how, if you want to climb a mountain, you can follow the beaten path, but you don\u2019t have to. You can kind of go up any other path that you want to. You can make your own path up the mountain.<\/span><\/p>\n

What faith is, is a little bit of the beaten path. It doesn\u2019t say, \u201cOK, well you\u2019ll get to the top of the mountain if you follow this path.\u201d It just says, \u201cYou\u2019re more likely to find your way to the top of the mountain if you follow this path. Other people have got to the top of the mountain following this path. So if you follow it, your chances are a little bit higher that you\u2019ll make it to the top.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

If you forge your own way up the mountain, there\u2019s a chance that you will also get to the top of the mountain, and it may work better for you to forge your own path up the mountain. But you can lean on the experience of others.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so whether that is following the Christian faith, which is the path that I\u2019m following to find my way up the mountain and to help me as I stumble, or it is reaching out for resources from other faith communities. These people have done this before. People have found their way to love before. People have gone through hardship and created resources that are there to help us to find the path that leads us to that.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS: <\/b>Now as I mentioned in the introduction, Mpho, you married a woman in 2016. And there was a series of events, repercussions that came from that decision related to your ability to officiate in South Africa. Can you share with us a bit what happened? Were you aware when you got married that this would be the domino effect that this would occur?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MTF: <\/b>Yeah, so 2015 we got married.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS: <\/b>OK.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MTF: <\/b>So we got married in December 2015. And then 2016, bishops of the South African province, Church of the Province of Southern Africa, had a meeting at which they decided that the bishop of Saldanha Bay, where I was serving under license, must revoke my license to officiate.<\/span><\/p>\n

But before the meeting and before I married, I contacted the bishop. As I said, I was serving under license in Saldanha Bay, but I\u2019m canonically resident. I was still canonically resident in the diocese of Washington in the United States, so still a priest in good standing. And I contacted both my bishop in Washington to say that I was remarrying. He said, \u201cWonderful, great, all of my blessings for you as you go into your marriage.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And then [I called] the bishop of Saldanha Bay to say, \u201cYes, I know what the canons say in South Africa. I\u2019m not trying to start something for you as bishop, but I want you to know that this is coming up, and it\u2019s going to be crossing your plate. And is there anything that you <\/span>want from me<\/span>? I am informing you. I\u2019m not trying to get you in trouble, but this is what I\u2019m going to do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He said, \u201cActually, it\u2019s a conversation that we have been shoving under, pushing off until the next meeting, next meeting, next meeting in the Church of the Province. And it\u2019s actually a conversation that really needs to become a front-and-center conversation for us. And you go and get married with my blessing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And then when I came back from the Netherlands, because I had married here in the Netherlands, he asked to come and see me, which kind of hierarchically, he could have summoned me to his office and said, \u201cCome to my office and I will\u2026\u201d whatever. But he asked to come and see me, and I knew what he was coming to see me for. And I said, \u201cRather than have you revoke my license, I am going to hand it in to you.\u201d <\/span>It doesn\u2019t, distinction without<\/span> a difference, but a distinction indeed, and it\u2019s the distinction with an emotional difference. To which he said, \u201cAs long as we both understand that this is temporary, I\u2019m only accepting your license as a temporary gesture.\u201d Yes, I knew that my license was likely to be revoked.<\/span><\/p>\n

And even so, the emotional impact of that was, for me, unanticipated. As you said in the introduction, I was the founding executive director of the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, and that was my primary ministry. And so my ministry as a priest in the diocese wasn\u2019t my primary ministry. It wasn\u2019t how I earned my income. It was really the place from which I served with great joy. But it really was painful to hand back my license.<\/span><\/p>\n

When my father became Archbishop of Cape Town, he said that there were three things that he wanted to accomplish as part of his archiepiscopacy. He wanted to see the end of apartheid, he wanted the ordination of women, and he wanted full inclusion for LGBT+ people in the Church of the Province of Southern Africa. Two of those were accomplished during the time of his archiepiscopacy. And as a result of that, I was able to serve at the communion table, at the altar with my father. And that was a wonderful and meaningful experience for me. And so the revocation of my license, even though effectively, it had no great import, emotionally it felt cataclysmic.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS: <\/b>Well, I can only imagine. So I\u2019m imagining this. But the faith journey home, the home of that journey of goodness and love is now saying to you that your marriage, which is also the center of one\u2019s heart, at least that it\u2019s the way it is in my life. My marriage with my wife is the center of my life as well as my love of God and faith journey, to have those things somehow be in conflict seems extremely excruciating to me. That\u2019s what I imagine.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MTF: <\/b>Yeah, it was excruciating. But as I say over and over again, when in doubt, choose love. And for me, choosing love was choosing for my marriage with my wife.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS: <\/b>Now, you mentioned that your father had these three agendas, two of which were accomplished. And this third one, the full inclusion of LGBTQIA+ members as priests, as ministerial representatives. Now it\u2019s on you in a way. Your event has catalyzed this in South Africa. How do you see that unfolding? Do you feel in a way, that\u2019s part of you carrying forth and enacting the next phase of his legacy, what he left undone, you\u2019re doing now?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MTF: <\/b>I\u2019ve never thought of it that way, but OK, I\u2019ll take that. Yeah. I think my father had, at least as long as I have been alive, had been intimately engaged in justice work. And his work for justice was absolutely driven by his faith. That was how his faith was expressed. My work for full inclusion, maybe it\u2019s a little more self-interested. I don\u2019t know. I\u2019ve never understood, even during the course of my first marriage, which was to a man, I never understood the exclusion of people from full participation in the community for reasons of gender or sexual identity or sexual preference. It never made sense to me. It still doesn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know whether I take this as the piece of his legacy that is my task to carry on. It does feel like, OK, this is part of my work. This is part of who I am.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS: <\/b>I\u2019m going to share something now. I wasn\u2019t necessarily thinking I would, but this conversation is asking me to. It\u2019s a little confessional here, but obviously I\u2019m very public about talking about my wife, and I\u2019ve been married now and in this relationship for 21 years.<\/span><\/p>\n

But when I was a young person, when I was 20, I remember lying on a healer\u2019s table and this healer saying to me, \u201cYou are 100 percent loved and accepted, even as someone who loves women, Tami. That is true.\u201d And I remember crying and just lying on the table and crying and being, I am loved and accepted? And I didn\u2019t even know that I thought I wasn\u2019t. But I did think, some part of me thought I wasn\u2019t OK because of growing up in the culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I think in terms of connecting these ideas of our innate goodness and having the institutions around us, especially our faith institutions, affirm that. It\u2019s actually really, so important.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MTF: <\/b>I couldn\u2019t agree with you more. God knows what God is doing. God created each of us in the ways that God has created us to be the people we are, because we\u2019re exactly the person that God wants us to be. And there is a way that we have of expressing that love that is unique to us, that is the unique beauty that we bring into the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS: <\/b>Now Mpho, I never had the chance to meet your father. I feel that I missed that opportunity, it never came in my life. But I feel like I\u2019m meeting him through the film <\/span>Mission: Joy<\/span><\/i> and now the Sounds True online program, <\/span>Unstoppable Joy<\/span><\/i>, and I\u2019m meeting him through you. And so I would love to know, as I meet Archbishop Desmond Tutu through you, if you could help me in that meeting the way you know, understand, and love your father.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MTF: <\/b>I think what my mother says now\u2014my parents were married 67 years before my dad died\u2014and my mother says now that she is discovering so much about my father that she never knew or saw or experienced. And I think that one of the gifts for those of us who were close to him and his family, had lived with him day-to-day, are in the stories that people tell of their encounters with him.<\/span><\/p>\n

He was hilariously funny. He was really smart. I remember going to seminary. And in every single one of my seminary classes, either he was quoted, or there was a paper he had written that we were assigned to read, or there was something that he had done or compiled. And it was just a whole new vision of who this person was that opened out to me as being a seminarian. I\u2019d never, before I went to seminary, I\u2019d never taken him seriously as a theologian. Which sounds maybe ridiculous, but he was absolutely an incredible theologian. And that in his writing as much as in his praxis, a theologian of note.<\/span><\/p>\n

He was incredibly courageous. And I think that that courage is exactly the right word, because it\u2019s not bravery. It is a mode of action that comes first from the heart, the coeur, so a person of heart, and that he would do things that looked brave, but they weren\u2019t. They were courageous. It was stepping up on behalf of others, or stepping out on behalf of others, sticking out his neck on behalf of others. And he was just incredibly warm and fun to be with.<\/span><\/p>\n

On our way back from Dharamsala, from that trip, my father was going to attend the funeral for one of his brother bishops in the US. And the town in which we were was hosting a festival. So there weren\u2019t a whole lot of hotel rooms. And we ended up, my wife, my father and I, sharing a room, sharing a hotel room. Two beds in one room.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it was incredible how little space that he took up. He\u2019s very neat. He was very neat, but also very contained. He could absolutely, almost like folding in on himself. So we arrived, had his time of prayer. He was going to be quiet, getting up in the morning. He\u2019d get up in the morning and he would exercise, kind of marching back and forth inside the room, walking back and forth inside the room, because he couldn\u2019t go out for a walk or a jog or whatever. But it could have been acutely uncomfortable to be in that space together. And yet, it just wasn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yeah, he was a remarkable person. And I think it was\u2014I can\u2019t remember his name, it\u2019s gone from my head right now, it\u2019ll come back\u2014who described my dad as the smallest giant. That he was a giant on the world stage, but that he was really tiny. But he was also gigantic in the sense of care for others and small in the sense of just not grasping, not greedy or grabbing. Just always willing to contain himself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When we drove\u2014my brother and my sisters were in boarding school in Swaziland, and we would drive from the Eastern Cape to Swaziland. And on the drives, at some point my dad would say, \u201cOK, I\u2019m going to disappear.\u201d And he would disappear in plain sight, which just meant he was being quiet and taking his prayer time, and so we could go on and have our conversations and so on and so forth, as long as we weren\u2019t trying to talk to him.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it\u2019s that kind of balance between being able to be so contained, and yet also being able to be larger than life, that he could walk into a room and just fill the place. You\u2019d hear him laughing all the way down the hall.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS: <\/b>That\u2019s very helpful. Thank you. The smallest giant. That helps sort of attune me. I think the question, though, that I\u2019m still left with after watching the film <\/span>Mission: Joy<\/span><\/i> and seeing the tremendous humor and playfulness between his holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, I was like, \u201cWhat is the source, really, of this overflowing joy and banter and playfulness?\u201d And it still feels, quite honestly, a little mysterious to me, especially how these two great holy figures, in the face of so much systemic oppression, grew in their age to be such fountains of lighthearted, bubbly, humorous joy. And I wonder what your explanation of that is.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MTF: <\/b>Yeah, that\u2019s a big question, isn\u2019t it? Yeah. I think in part, that the joy begins in that centering, in that strong sense of themselves. And that they don\u2019t need to occupy a huge amount of space in the world, but that they are so deeply resourced with love.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I think both of them, and I know certainly\u2014well, I know certainly my father was very connected to himself. He laughed easily, but he also cried easily. And he didn\u2019t think too highly of himself, maybe, that his times of quiet and reflection allowed him to have a very clear sense of who he was and his own limitations.<\/span><\/p>\n

But because he had that strong sense of who he was and his own limitations, that he was also open to others, he could be open to others, because he knew where he ended, where his boundaries were.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think that sometimes, arrogance makes us quite joyless, and thinking too highly of ourselves makes us quite joyless. And being too stuck on the \u201csupposed tos\u201d of life can make us incredibly joyless. It puts so much pressure on us. And I think having as the single centering role that \u201cI\u2019m here to love\u201d is a source of incredible joy.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS: <\/b>Well, I think now we\u2019re getting into the answer to my question. \u201cI\u2019m here to love.\u201d Because I notice sometimes, when people talk about being joyful, it feels a little bit to me like I\u2019m putting something on the outside, like I\u2019m trying to put lipstick on my situation. And it\u2019s not that I don\u2019t think there\u2019s so much\u2014there\u2019s a lot of value in practicing gratitude and finding the things to appreciate. It\u2019s true. But often I notice in my authentic self, often I don\u2019t feel joyful. I wish I did more. So I\u2019m looking for, how can I be wholly authentic and more joyful?<\/span><\/p>\n

And Mpho, I thought you could actually help me and our listeners with this, because you\u2019ve gone through so much, as I\u2019ve learned more about your life story, tremendous losses, and a huge trespass that you write about in <\/span>The Book of Forgiving<\/span><\/i>. And yet here you have a natural, joyful presence. So tell me more about this notion of \u201cI\u2019m here to love,\u201d and the connection that then comes to being naturally joyful from that.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MTF: <\/b>Well, it\u2019s a helpful reference. I mean, I find it as my ready reference point. I\u2019m here to love. And whatever it is that I\u2019m doing, is this loving? If I\u2019m questioning, do I turn right, do I turn left, or do I go straight ahead? What to me is the most loving thing to do in this moment? What is the thing that is most loving for myself, and what is most loving for my surroundings? So when I\u2019m juggling conflicts, still, what is the most loving thing?<\/span><\/p>\n

And when I do the most loving thing\u2014even if the most loving thing that I can do right now is go and take a nap, because I\u2019ll be a much nicer person for the rest of the day if I do that\u2014then that\u2019s the thing that I need to arrange my life to be able to do. Because that is absolutely the most loving thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I look at the schedules of His Holiness and my dad, and both of them had real significant chunks of this time I am reserving to myself to be quiet, to be prayerful, to be meditative. Nobody\u2019s allowed into this chunk of time, because this is the chunk of time that I need in my own space.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I think that for many of us, where we are living so much on fast-forward and go, go, go, go, that we never get a sense of who and how we are at our most loving. And I think that\u2019s maybe the best advice I can give for anyone who is seeking their joy is: check in. Is this the most loving I can be? Is this the most loving thing I can do?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS: <\/b>It\u2019s beautiful and very helpful. And I just want to ask if you can make something even more explicit, which is how to hold that question and that viewpoint? What\u2019s the most loving thing as you\u2019re working for justice in a situation? And it\u2019s clear that in the face of injustice, there can be a rising sense of, \u201cThis is wrong, this is bad, I\u2019m angry.\u201d And then this question, what\u2019s the most loving thing? How does that alchemy work in you?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MTF: <\/b>Well, maybe I can do a half-circle back and just say how watching that alchemy work in my dad, just in South Africa over June the 16th, which was the anniversary of the Soweto uprising, when children went out to protest the government deciding that Afrikaans was to be the medium of instruction in Black schools. And many children were killed by police. And for several years after 1976, each year, there would be a commemoration of the June 16th uprisings. It was then, it became a time when the government would have another crackdown, and there would be more tumults, often more deaths at the hands of police.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I remember on one of those occasions, seeing my dad trying to mediate between police and crowds of young people, and asking the police to show restraint, and asking them to just allow the young people to disperse, which they did. And his saying on camera, \u201cI have to commend the police for the restraint with which they acted, or for showing restraint,\u201d and saying to me afterwards that, \u201cIf you\u2019re going to criticize them for what they do wrong, you have to be sure that you also commend them when they do something right.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And it\u2019s that kind of lived sense of, what does love look like in that moment? Love looks like being able to say both, \u201cYeah, you messed up here, but also, you did this right.\u201d And I think very often, we get so locked into our camps as justice workers that we fail to see the people across on the other side of the issue from us as people. As people who, as wrongheaded as we believe them to be, are still people with caress and concerns and needs and desires and loves and dislikes, just like us.<\/span><\/p>\n

And that it is so important to hold on to that sense that, even if I disagree with you from the absolute core of my being, I don\u2019t have to be disagreeable. I can disagree without personalizing or attacking or demeaning or diminishing. Now you see with the war in Ukraine, for instance, the war in Ukraine has kind of become a war between Putin and Ukraine. So it has kind of collapsed into one person.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so then, the ways that we talk about Putin are so demeaning and diminishing, that it kind of closes the space for negotiation or peaceful settlement to this war, to this conflict. And that how we talk about people actually matters. And if we talk about people as people, however wrongheaded their concerns, they are still people with whatever concerns it is that they have. And if we want to be able to create peace and justice in our world, we need to open out the spaces for conversation, rather than close them down unnecessarily.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS: <\/b>Mpho, I just have two final questions for you. One, has there been any bitterness in your own life that was really, really hard for you to work through? And how\u2019d you do it?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MTF: <\/b>Yeah. Bitterness is actually not my flavor. And that may be constitutional, that I am not constitutionally inclined to bitterness. I think I probably internalize. So psychologically, that\u2019s not one that I\u2019m good at describing because it\u2019s not\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS: <\/b>Maybe a lack of forgiveness would be a better, I could use that instead, some type of forgiveness, some way that you maintained a position of judgment. But at a certain point, you did break through it. And how did that happen?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MTF: <\/b>Yeah. I don\u2019t know that I would speak to a specific place of struggling with unforgiveness. And I think maybe part of the grace that I have had in my life has been having people around me who have allowed me to tell my story. Regardless of what that story was, to be able to tell my story enough times for me to be able to process it, and to move through that forgiveness process of telling the story and naming the hurt. I have been really blessed and privileged to have in my life people who have been willing to listen to me say the same thing over and over and over again.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS: <\/b>And then just a final question. When you do your own version of disappearing inside, disappearing into your own prayer life, would you be willing to share with me, just give me a taste of what that\u2019s like\u2014where you go, what\u2019s happening?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MTF: <\/b>I have a couple of modes of disappearing. One of them is that I say the daily offices. So there\u2019s morning, evening, and noonday prayer. I typically use the official morning prayer. And then in the evening I pray the Compline, which is also one of the daily offices, which I love. And my wife, who\u2019s an atheist, will listen to me praying the Compline.<\/span><\/p>\n

But sometimes, what I\u2019m finding speaking to me in my prayer life now is actually placing my hand on my heart and breathing my prayers. So if there are people for whom I\u2019m particularly concerned or situations that are on my mind, then just placing my hand on my heart and either saying aloud or just allowing those people or situations to run through my mind as my expression of prayer.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS: <\/b>Mpho Tutu van Firth, thank you so much. Thank you so much for being with us here on <\/span>Insights at the Edge<\/span><\/i> and for your loving presence. Thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MTF: <\/b>Thank you, Tami.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS: <\/b>I\u2019ve been speaking with Mpho Tutu van Furth. What a loving presence. Thank you so much. Mpho is part of Sounds True\u2019s new online learning program. It\u2019s called <\/span>Unstoppable Joy<\/span><\/i>, and it features highlights from a recorded conversation at Dharamsala in India with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Those highlights are then folded into a new online learning program with Thupten Jinpa, longtime translator for His Holiness the Dalai Lama; Doug Abrams, who\u2019s the coauthor of <\/span>The Book of Joy<\/span><\/i>, more than a million copies sold based on this conversation; and Mpho is also one of the featured teachers in this course. You can learn more at soundstrue.com. Thanks everyone for being with us. Sounds True: waking up the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

And if you\u2019d like to watch <\/span>Insights at the Edge<\/span><\/i> on video and participate in after-the-show Q&A conversations with featured presenters and have the chance to ask your questions, come join us on Sounds True One, a new membership community that features premium shows, live classes, and community events. Let\u2019s learn and grow together. Come join us at join.soundstrue.com. Sounds True: waking up the world.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","meta":{"_expiration-date-status":"","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"class_list":["post-20444","transcript","type-transcript","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nIm Here For Love - Transcript | Sounds True<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Read the full transcript from this Sounds True conversation with Im Here For Love. 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