Ubuntu: our better choices

The word ubuntu comes from the Bantu tribe of South Africa.

It was introduced into general use by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and prioritizes inclusivity over exclusivity, community over competition, hospitality over hostility, dialogue over confrontation, and respect over domination.

A few years ago, when the archbishop visited Seattle, I was privileged to have a scheduled meeting with students from the University of Washington with Archbishop Tutu presiding.

He reminded the students of the difficulties he experienced with the education of his children.

He had to drive between one and two hundred miles to find a school without segregation.

In his travels he might have to drive a hundred miles to find a restaurant that would serve him a meal or a motel where he could stay.

He told the students that on their graduation there was an important factor to keep in mind: In ministering to the needs of others they would find fulfillment for their own needs. Their education, he said, was lacking if they did not know about ubuntu. Others were not to be treated as a means to achieve their own ends. Others should be treated with the spirit of ubuntu. With it they could find happiness and give happiness to others.

All of us have come to know a person who fully revealed ubuntu in his or her life.

John Lewis died July 18.

He was the son of a sharecropper who had a great love for America.

At the same time he was aware of the discrimination he experienced in daily life.

Beginning in his twenties he campaigned for racial justice.

In a march in Selma, Alabama, with 63 other marchers he met a hostile reception.

John Lewis suffered a fractured skull in the violence but, with Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr., he continued the struggle for racial equality without ill will for those who mistreated him.

In 1986 he was elected to a seat in Congress, which he held until his death.

When Barack Obama was elected president, moments before he took the oath of office, he turned to Congressman Lewis – whom he had invited – and said to him, “I could not be here without you.” Lewis was regarded by both political parties as “the conscience of Congress.”

During all his activities, painful and sad times, he always had within him a spark of joy.

He enjoyed life and enjoyed the struggle to make life better for millions of others.

An event in Kenya four years ago reveals the absence and presence of ubuntu.

Muslim extremists arrived with no knowledge of the true spirit of their religion and forced a bus to halt.

As on previous occasions they ordered everyone to leave the bus and form two lines well separated from each other.

One line was for Muslims, one line for Christians.

They were about to shoot the Christians when a Muslim teacher spoke out to protest the separation into two different lines, saying all were Africans.

He was immediately shot.

When the extremists left after their murderous actions, friends took the wounded teacher, Salah Farah, to a hospital in Nairobi.

On June 16, 2015, Salah Farah died during surgery for his wounds as surgeons – possibly Christians – tried to save his life. His life is, in the words of a fellow African, A.E. Orobator, is a potent antidote to legal religious claims and conflicts in Africa and elsewhere. His life and death should be made known all over the world, that we may all follow his example of the practice of ubuntu.

Father William Treacy is a very active 101-year old Catholic priest living in Skagit County.