Stu Webb Lecture: Truth & Reconciliation: Healing Wounds.
Rev. Nontombi Naomi Tutu
Was up 2am last Saturday, listening to the thought-provoking and passionately delivered speech by Rev. Nontombi Naomi Tutu. Using South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a starting place and model, Naomi Tutu spoke about how we can heal as individuals and as a society.
Her powerful message centred on the theme of courage and the willingness to speak and hear the truth. "That first step to healing is so often the hardest. We are afraid to speak our truth for fear of judgment, rejection, and anger. We are also afraid to hear truths that might question our images of ourselves. Yet the pain is only the the first step, what comes after that is healing and wholeness."
"It takes special courage for someone to realise that he/she is benefitting from the system. It takes a special person to question something that gives him/her comfort/privilege. There is in each of us, the capability of turning a blind eye to the suffering of others or being active participants in imposing suffering on others. That is both scary and yet empowering.
When we recognise that fact, we start questioning ourselves in how we act in all manners of situations. We can build up communities and socialising our children so that they recognise their connections to other human beings that they meet in different spaces. We pay attention to the words that we use to our loved ones. How we walk in the world. The ways we open spaces or close spaces. We pay attention to the words that we use but also how we hear the words of others.
If we can set up spaces for people in conflict to be heard, to hear, to see the humanity of the person they are in conflict with. To recognise the extent that they are able to open their hearts, their ears, their minds to the possibility that this person across the table from you whom you have come to hate, despite or fear might have a story that can touch a place in your hearts. A story that will open places of compassion that you did not realise you had. If we can build those spaces - we can be in the process of hearing and building a new way of interacting with one another."
I took down her beautifully strung words verbatim.
Her message has been echoing in my mind as I reflect on my inner self. I even found myself modulating my behaviour during a zoom consultation to my client this morning!
Such is the power of Naomi Tutu! x
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