The Comma

The thing I want to tell you is how it felt.  More than anything else it was this feeling I took away from my breakfast with Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama last Tuesday.  This feeling.  These two old men up there together – so tender, so loving with each other.  Two funny old men poking each other, acting like little boys. 

“Thank you for being you.”  “You are an incarnation of goodness”, they say to each other.  What are these tears about as I sit listening to them?  What are these tears about as I write now about the experience?  Was it goodness I felt?  Or true humanity?   Two old men loving each other?   Whatever it was and is, I want to spend the rest of my life pursuing it, being it. 

The Dalai Lama turns to Tutu,  “It looks like you put on some weight.”  And Tutu laughs his wonderful high pitched, full of soul and life laugh. 

“You’ve got to understand”, Tutu says, “his extraordinary discipline.  It doesn’t just happen by accident – what we see in him.  It is the hiddenness of the spiritual life.  His extraordinary life of prayer.  The discipline of this man – every morning up at 4 a.m. in silent meditation until 6 a.m.”

The Dalai Lama leans over to Tutu, “3:30 a.m.” 

And Tutu laughs and laughs.   “What an example for us who have a rough prayer life.  We wonder if it is worth a candle.  Those of us who try to be quiet, how hard it is!  Why do these thoughts come up just when we want to be thinking holy thoughts!  Why when we are quiet do we get the image of one we can’t stand!  This man has this disciple all of his adult life.”

The Dalai Lama tells a story about an old monk who was captured by the Chinese in 1959 and put in a gulag for 18 years.  When he was released he talked about the danger he faced – the danger of losing his compassion for the Chinese.  “It is so important to keep your compassion.  There is nothing unique about me.  I am weaker than him.  I consider this monk my elder spiritual leader and my boss.  Whenever I meet him it brings me inner joy.  How do you maintain a generous heart?  You need an honest, sincere heart and a compassionate mind.  Maintaining a positive attitude towards our enemies is difficult and yet essential.  To practice compassion you need an enemy – not just your imagination.”

“We are moved by a baby – so fragile, so full of life”, Tutu reminds us.  “You want to hold it, dangle it, cuddle it all the time.  We want to see this one continue in being.  We are given the privilege of ‘being’ by God.  A God who is omnipotent but a God who is also impotent.  God is the weak one. The One who weeps and feels with us.  In the story of Daniel in the lion’s den, God does not give helpful advice from a safe distance but enters the pit.  Who is the fourth one in the pit with the three men?  It is Compassion.  The One who stands side by side with us.” 

Tutu goes on, “Are we gentle with ourselves?  We are so mad at ourselves often.  Compassion means that we need to be gentle with ourselves so that we can be gentle with others like a mother.  One of the most powerful images of God in the Bible is in Isaiah where Isaiah speaks of God as being like a mother (Isaiah 49:15, 66:13, 42:5, 43:4)  ‘Who can forget the child she bore?  I will never forget you.  I am like a mother to you.  I want to hold you in being.  And breathe my breath into you.’  (Here Tutu cups his hands and blows deep breaths onto his hands.)  You are one that breathes God’s breath.  You are so precious.  You, the fragile, vulnerable one are the one, the only one I have, the only one I have to pass on my compassion, my ‘feeling with’.  Please help me – my world is broken, fragile and it needs gentleness, it needs you who has the breath of life from me.  Please pass it on – my caring, my gentleness.  Help me heal my wounded world.  I have no one but you to help me.” 

The Dalai Lama reminds us, “We have the same message and practices – forgiveness, tolerance, commitment.  All the same.  But different philosophies.  Different ways to approach the same message. The message is the same.  You need to know and understand the value of other traditions and you should gain inner expression through your own practice.  Be serious and sincere in your practice.” 

“Yes”, Tutu agrees, “I know of no faith worth the name that promotes violence, hatred.  Each faith has good people and bad people in it.  For goodness sake we Christians are the last people to be hoity-toity.  Christians supported slavery and justified the Biblical basis for apartheid, are responsible for the Holocaust.  I don’t imagine God looks down on the Dalai Lama and says, “What a wonderful guy.  Too bad he’s not a Christian!” 

“They are on to us”, Tutu says, “we have to try to behave like holy men!”  And of course they can’t – not fill any of our stereotypes of what “holy” men are like.  All they can be is who they are – unapologetically themselves, truly human, two old mischievous old men who have seen so much, grieved and lost so much and who have found through the suffering and depths a wellspring of joy. 

And the two bent old men link arms and help each other down the steps.