An Evening With Reverend Naomi Tutu
It was the evening of March 8th, International Women’s Day, and the room filled with people who were excited to hear Reverend Naomi Tutu speak. Posters promoting the event had been plastered around Colorado State University (CSU). Everyone was excited to hear what nuggets of wisdom Reverend Tutu had to share. As introductions were made, more and more chairs were brought out to accommodate the growing audience.
To kick off the event, Fort Collins’ mayor, Jeni Arndt, spoke about International Women’s Day and meaning is held in celebrating the day. “International Women’s Day is celebrated globally by those who support gender equity and who seek to improve the lives of women, girls, nonbinary, trans, two-spirit, and gender diverse,” Mayor Arndt said.
Kathleen Fairfax, Vice Provost of CSU’s International Affairs department, introduced Reverend Tutu as a “great advocate for gender and racial justice.” She told the crowded room about how Reverend Tutu had shown great perseverance as a Black woman building a name for herself in the world of academia. “Those experiences taught her that our whole human family loses when we accept situations of oppression and also how the teaching and preaching of hate and division injure us all,” Fairfax said.
Reverend Tutu started the night by introducing the topic of “striving for justice and seeking common ground,” as she worded it. She elaborated on the vast topic and shared what it was like to grow up as an African child who understood the things around her quite literally.
She explained that she struggled to understand proverbs as a child.
“‘The elephant never finds its own trunk heavy.’ First of all, which elephant are we talking about and who asked the elephants if they never find their own trunks heavy?” Reverend Tutu joked.
This example was quickly followed up by a second and her quickwitted humor had only just begun.
“‘The child that does not cry, dies on its mother’s back.’ So wait, this human being took another human being and put that human being on their back and they forgot that they had a human being on their back because that human being did not cry and how many days would you have to carry your child on your back with that child not crying for the child to eventually die? Really?” Reverend Tutu said.
Reverend Tutu gave a final example. This one exemplified her original topic of seeking common ground but still had her everpresent hilarity.
“‘In the time of floods, the wise build bridges, the foolish build walls.’ Now, at the time I first heard it, my initial reaction was, ‘There’s a flood. Why are you building anything? You should be getting away. I don’t care bridge, wall. Do not build. Get away from the flood,’” Reverend Tutu said.
She went on to explain that we all have the choice to either work alone or work together when a crisis hits. It is only once we choose to work together, help one another, and seek common ground that we find solutions.
Reverend Tutu preached about how there is division and intense segregation all around the world. People are divided by family, race, sexual orientation, gender, and wealth. All of these are just social walls that humans put up. There is no method to the madness. At the end of the day, we are all connected by a single thread of gold — We are all human.
“But the truth of the matter is that if you are a parent, a sister, an aunt, a grandmother, a grandfather whose child, niece, member of the community is killed in sectarian violence, the pain you experience is the pain of that loss and that is not determined by your denomination,” Reverend Tutu said.
She shared her thoughts on how to overcome obstacles like those. The answer is clear and open communication. We have to talk about the things that are hard to talk about. We have to voice the thoughts that never get voices.
“We have to have those conversations that are dangerous,” she said. “We can have dangerous conversations politely.”
Reverend Tutu concluded her inspirational sermon by looping back to how she had started it. In today’s world, society is building walls when they need to be building bridges. These bridges will lead to conversation and conversation will lead to change and justice.
