Robert V. Taylor

Does God vomit at the thought of gay and lesbian people? That’s the graphic image that O’Neal Dozier, pastor of Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach Florida, uses. It’s radically different from the one that many of us know of a God of inclusion and love. Not vomiting but smiling on us – all of us!

What makes Dozier’s view so prominent is that he is the Honorary Chair of Rick Santorum’s Florida campaign. Although Dozier believes that homosexuality is the “paramount of sins” he is an equal opportunity exclusionist. Mother Jones reveals that his Islamaphobia and local crusade against Muslims are fueled by his belief that Muslims have an agenda for taking over America. Dozier, who claims to know the mind of God on election results, has used his position on the Florida judicial nominating committee to seek “God-fearing” judges. The test for him is whether those nominees support anti-sodomy laws.

Dozier believes America should be taken over by those who share his exclusionist views and create a fundamentalist theocracy. The constitution in his view was created only for those who are a “moral and religious people.” God-fearing in his view translates into a projectile God who throws up on those who do not share his religious vision. Thankfully there are other more spacious religious and spiritual paths.

Like millions of other LGBT people I feared God as a young person because of the religious messages I received that God had disdainful disgust for us. Like millions of other young LGBT people I considered suicide. That is one of the reasons that Dozier’s imagery and words are destructive not life-giving.

If the arc of spirituality bends towards inclusion Dozier’s views are not part of that moral trajectory. Pew Research polls reveal approximately 65% of Catholics and Protestants have positive views of gays, while only 29% of Evangelicals do. Among Post-Moderns 91% have favorable views of LGBT people while 80% of them support same-sex marriage.

The moral arc towards inclusion has a foundation of spiritual wisdom from many traditions. Christian wisdom settles largely on a message of generous expansive love matched by acts of mercy, kindness and justice. The notion of repairing the world is a central underpinning in most branches of Judaism. While Buddhist philosophy is rooted in seeking the happiness or well-being of all Buddhist practice points to the inter-connectedness of all sentient beings.

Religious leaders can be found in most traditions that, like Dozier, use their position and authority to tear apart, diminish and demean others at any cost. The climate they create is quite different than that of those who beg to differ but who seek a world in which none are harmed or excluded. The bullies who cloak themselves with the mantle of the Divine are no different than schoolyard bullies who are stopped only when their behavior is challenged.  That choice is in our hands.

We participate in the movement of the moral arc of inclusion when we actively engage in creating a world which acknowledges the goodness and compassion inherent in every person. A world in which imagery of a puking God is replaced with a spiritual path of generous inclusion in which there are no outcasts. That is a life-giving journey acknowledging and celebrating difference.  

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Robert V. Taylor

Watching the news is often an exercise in testing your endurance about crises, disasters and heart-breaking stories.  The tsunami of bad news buries the abundance of good news stories that exist. If we are what we surround ourselves with then paying attention to the good news stories alters our experience of being alive.

A man I know was determined to stop watching or reading the news because he said it made him feel helpless and despondent. A friend of his challenged him – “There’s an invitation in the news inviting you to respond to an issue and become a participant in repairing the world.” It was a transformative challenge for him.

Finding himself repeatedly drawn to stories about the lack of access to education plaguing young girls around the world he began to educate himself on the issue and ultimately give of his time to work with others to build schools aimed at educating girls in Africa and Asia. His life has been changed by the work he has become passionate about. He says, “I’ve become a proselytizer seizing every opportunity to talk with anyone I can about the need to educate girls. I tell stories of the amazing work people are doing!”

His proactive response to the challenge of the bad news that had overwhelmed him is a story of good news. Some media platforms are responding to the yearning for good news.  With its CNN Heroes awards and features CNN has tipped its hat to highlighting positive transformative stories of ordinary people putting compassion and hope to work.

Huffington Post has taken a bold step in launching their Good News platform to counter the cynicism that much of the news invites. Arianna Huffington says that, “Those of us in the news media have provided too many autopsies of what went wrong and not enough biopsies.” She has raised the bar and that is worth cheering!

With every act of compassion, with every idea implemented to improve the lot of others, with each word of kindness the experience of being human and being alive is transformed. The courage, imagination and voice of each of us have a cumulative energy and power to polish the world.

The real crisis and heart-breaking stories invite us in, reminding us of our common humanity and our need for one another. The mantra of media executives is that the titillating, the scandalous and the invented crises are what the public responds to or craves. That presumption and the life-draining news that results from it can only be changed by you and me.

In neighborhoods, offices, community groups, families and towns across the country the stories of the good abound. When you intentionally tell those stories you create a different energy. When you interject a conversation about gloom and doom news with positive stories you shift the narrative of what is possible, of what it means to be human.

The negative news is highly overrated. The way to change those ratings is to engage with the positive stories. Not to avoid the awful realities or crises that exists for many, but to invite ourselves and others into a fuller narrative. Good News will become more highly rated, more sought after when we make our need for it known. Social media reminds us that it lies in our hands to do that!

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Robert V. Taylor

The “politics of envy” in the United States is political fodder masking a truth that Dr. Martin Luther King pointed to almost 50 years ago. He said his entire work pointed to one goal – the creation of a “beloved community” of Americans. His prescient words invite a new conversation about who we are.

The Pew Research Center reports that two thirds of Americans believe that conflicts between the rich and the poor are strong or very strong. The stagnant or falling wages for the poor and the middle class over the last decade stands in sharp contrast to increasing wealth held by a few. The Great Recession and the Occupy movement make those data starker.  

The data do not reveal envy of the wealthy.  Instead Pew and the latest Gallup research reveal that most people want jobs, fair wages and opportunities to work and succeed. Fairness is a very different conversation than the envy that some expediently talk about.

It’s not politically fashionable to talk about the poor these days. Those who dare to couch it in language about the “working poor” as if honest honorable work is a bearer of poverty. The political consensus that most of us implicitly support is that it is more prudent to worry about the middle class. It is a false either/or compact. It diminishes all of us by casting some aside.

Marti Luther King believed that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice.  While we celebrate his leadership on civil rights we generally ignore his leadership on economic issues made plain in his Poor People’s Campaign.

King was clear that civil rights and economic opportunities are questions of justice collectively pointing to the overarching vision of creating a new “beloved community” in the United States. His faith and politics were rooted in how to create that community.

Imagine leaders who lead us to a new sense of oneness as people; who remind us of our need for one another; who celebrate the richness of our collective strengths; who see strength in our diversity and who are not fearful of the truth that none of us prosper unless the well-being of all is possible.

Imagine that leader being you and working intentionally to make a beloved community possible. It’s often said that we get the leaders we deserve. I’m not sure that is true. Instead we often cede the public conversation and leadership to the alpha types who have their own agenda about political power.  All too often we disengage out of exasperation.

There is another path that celebrates Dr. King’s living legacy. Celebrating your leadership and work to bring about the beloved community, you begin to shift the expectations of what kind of society and people we want to be.  King believed that it was possible to “transform opposers into friends” and “transform the deep gloom of the old age into exuberant gladness of the new age.” That possibility lies in your hands; in the possibility of organizing for our oneness when the well-being of all is a value.

This moment in history is an invitation to that dream becoming a reality.

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Robert V. Taylor

Is it possible to imagine peace in the New Year? It is if you claim your voice and imagination. The world needs that from each of us. Every intention and act of yours shapes what it means to be human and create a culture of peace as you take steps in that direction.

Peace sounds too big, too overwhelming to many.  Instead of being debilitated by what you can do to bring peace about back up and approach it from two other vantage points. Peace emerges when conflicts are resolved and ended. Peace in the tradition of the Hebrews is all about actions that promote the well-being of all. Not too different than the Buddhist intention of happiness for all beings.

When you think of ending a conflict, or seeking the well-being of another, or desiring happiness for others the possibility of peace is reimagined.

Your own choices and awareness will invite you to make a difference in the year ahead. These steps might add to your intentions:

Be Intentional. Peace is only possible when your hope becomes an active virtue. A specific intention to make peace will ground and make you accountable. Perhaps you will actively work with the children in your life to model attentive listening that transforms misunderstandings and makes reconciliation possible.

End a Conflict. Choose to end a conflict in your community, at work or in your family. When the happiness or well-being of all is a goal it becomes possible to imagine a resolution that moves those involved beyond entrenched positions.

Choose Compassion. We are made for compassion. Your intention to live a life of compassion creates a ripple effect among all whom you engage with. Every compassionate action of yours invites others into the circle of compassion. Learn from organizations like the Charter for Compassion or the Compassionate Action Network.

Say Yes to Peace by saying No to violence or bigotry. Join others in breaking the silences that give permission to violence or threats against people who are perceived as different.  Show up to a rally against school bullying; participate in a school board or legislative meeting to provide protections against discrimination.

Engage with the world and Universe to remember that we need one another.  Learn about an issue affecting the well-being of the planet or about a religion or culture you do not understand. Share your learning’s with those in your orbit; write, blog and speak about them. Your voice will mitigate fears of the unknown, illuminate others and point to our oneness.

With these and other choices you may already have made your voice and imagination is engaged in shaping a world where a culture of peace is possible. The happiness and well-being of yourself and others is all bundled together. Ending conflicts wherever you encounter them opens the path to a happy life of well-being for all.

Peace in the New Year depends on your active engagement!

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Robert V. Taylor

The Protester has been elevated by Time Magazine to a richly deserved new status. When you claim your voice as an individual you become more fully alive. When your voice joins together with the voice of others for the well-being of many you become more fully human. The Protesters invite us to new awareness about our oneness as human beings.

From the streets of US cities to those of Egypt, Libya, Syria, Myanmar and other countries a common human thread is being given voice to. It is the human yearning for our interconnectedness and shared humanity to be dignified and honored.

In place of the narrow interests of a few, the Protesters who Time honors as the Person of the Year demand that the well-being of all be reflected in political and economic arrangements marked by fairness and opportunity.  It is a reminder that our humanity is all bundled together. 

While the specifics of what that looks like will always vary from country to country the yearning for freedom and accountability stands in stark contrast to the violence inflicted by severe distortions of economic and political benefits that accrue only to a few. The magnificence of each person flourishes when the well-being of all marks how we engage with one another.

No wonder Time highlights the Protesters. They invite us to remember that our humanity and purpose is best discovered together.

The invitation to this truth is discovered each time we claim our voice. With every seemingly small contribution in our local communities our voices collectively turn into actions that seek to expand what it means to belong as members of the one human family. Every voice is of value; every voice is important; every voice is needed.

How will we each join with others as Persons of the Year in words and acts that point to the truth that we perish or flourish together?

Robert V. Taylor

The Holiday Grinch is incensed that White House cards do not refer to Christmas. While the Grinch makes political hay the rest of us celebrate the holiday spirit that Hanukkah, the Winter Solstice and Christmas invite us into. It is a choice about whether to define life by a spirit of steadfast exclusion or discovering our oneness.

Sarah Palin has sharpened her holiday knives according to the LA Times, with a full attack on Fox News about the “odd” nature of this year’s White House card. She is incensed that the card does not refer to the Christmas values of “family, faith and freedom.”  The unwed teenage girl who gave birth in a roadside feeding trough to the son named Jesus does not reflect the values that Palin has in mind.

The furor has been joined with political expressions of horror that this year’s card has “no Christmas” in it according to Business Insider.  Their gallery of sixteen different White House holiday cards shows that the “no Christmas” message has been consistent.

This is a life-draining energy storm in a tea cup! The holiday celebrations invite a life-giving energy.

The origins of Hanukkah lie in the miracle believed to have happened with scarce oil burning in the candles for eight days instead of one. It is a holiday about the scattering of the profusion of light. Whatever your tradition Hanukkah is an invitation to be an active participant in the spirit spreading of luminous light pointing to a power greater than ourselves.

In December Solstice celebrations the shifting of the earth’s axial tilt in relation to the Sun is cause for celebration. The beginning of more light filled days or the dawning of shorter days has been celebrated in cultures in the northern and southern hemispheres. The Solstice celebrations are about the human and spiritual cycles of death, birth and rebirth. They are a reminder of our interconnection with the Universe.

Christmas may be a specifically Christian celebration but it is also freely claimed by those rooted in other traditions or none at all. The vulnerability of a child born out of wedlock in precarious circumstances is a story that invites us in with our vulnerabilities. Beyond the theologies of God taking on human form Christmas is a reminder for many of the Holy found in each person. In taking stock of love made manifest in an infant there is cause for celebration and remembering our oneness with the rest of the human family.

Gifts, festivities, music and rituals reflect the celebratory time of the holidays. It’s not surprising that the holidays scatter the light of goodwill no matter how glum things might be. Or is it that the holidays invite us to remember that delight in one another, in hope and in our shared human story is still possible?

The Grinch’s may promote exclusivist views and try to spread divisiveness. But the choice of living life with delight in our oneness brings a life-giving energy to life beyond the holidays.  

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Robert V. Taylor

How dangerous is His Holiness the Dalai Lama? The South African government in denying him a visa to attend Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s 80^th birthday celebrations appears to believe he is a danger to freedom loving people. His life, like that of Tutu’s, points to a very different message of the inter-connectedness of all things and people.

The South African government has rejected the Dalai Lama’s visa application, according to The Times of India, as “incomplete.”  With one of the world’s most progressive constitution’s the “New South Africa” has enshrined the rights of freedom of expression and those of women, children and gay and lesbian people in its constitution. The Dalai Lama’s pending visit tests the spirit, intent and letter of the values of that constitution.

The denial of his visa is a reminder of the old apartheid South Africa in which freedom of speech and association was ruthlessly denied. In the nineteen seventies the then Minister of Justice responded to concerns about the house arrest – or banning – of those whose voices were at odds with apartheid.  He said that those under house arrest had as much freedom “as a goldfish in a bowl.”  Is the new South Africa beginning to act like the old one?

Tutu and the Dalai Lama are iconic figures because they are moral leaders who will not be silenced in speaking truth about the well-being of all people. Tutu’s Ubuntu – that a person is only a person in the context of other people – is very much related to His Holiness’ emphasis on the intertwined nature of all human life. Both are passionate advocates for freedom and compassion. Their personal friendship and affection is longstanding.  

© 2011 Zapiro (All Rights Reserved) Printed with permission www.zapiro.com

The recent cartoon from The Times of London points to the real reason for trying to silence the Dalai Lama in South Africa which is pressure from the Chinese government. If that is true it is ironic that the new South Africa, free of the colonialism of apartheid would subject itself to a new colonial master.  The dangerousness of the Dalai Lama lies in the South African fear of ruffling trade and diplomatic relations between China and South Africa.

The courageous lives and leadership of Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama would be affirmed by an equally courageous decision to grant His Holiness the visa now. The freedom and compassion of these iconic Nobel Peace Laureates would be matched by the act of issuing the visa now.

Compassion, kindness, reconciliation, justice and the oneness of the human family are the messages of Desmond Tutu and His Holiness. It is moral, inspirational and practical leadership that they invite others to exercise. In a time when there is vacuum in such leadership the world needs to keep hearing from these two leaders.

It is not too late to grant the visa and allow the Dalai Lama to present the Inaugural Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture on October 8^th the day after he lights the candle on Tutu’s eightieth birthday cake.  The light of their messages may be dangerous to some but the world longs for more of it.

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Watch His Holiness and Archbishop Tutu talk about compassion – click here

Robert V. Taylor

The Compassion Wars are here and they’re ugly. The loud cheering about health insurance and booing of gay soldiers is chilling. This is not the generous hearted spirit of America at its best. Where is the compassion that leads to hearts cracked open to discovering our common humanity and oneness with one another?

Self-compassion is a journey that leads to compassions for others. I’ve come to believe that we are each hard wired for compassion. So how does that square with what I witnessed in recent Republican presidential debates from the candidates and the audiences?  How does it affect your practices of compassion?

In early September at a GOP debate sponsored by CNN and the Tea Party in Florida one of the candidates, Ron Paul, was asked if an uninsured man with cancer should be allowed to die. The crowd whooped it up cheering the question.  Ron Paul suggested that it was a choice of personal responsibility on the part of the man and that charity could always step in to help him.

I’m all for personal responsibility and the debate on whether there should be universal health care coverage are still unsettled.  But the cheering on of the death of another person because of their lack of insurance reflects hardened hearts.  Would the cheerleaders cheer on their own death or that of a loved one if they were in that situation?

Compassion invites you to be at one with another person by knowing that you could be in their shoes. Our lives are all bundled together, intertwined. Compassion leads to asking if life is just a game of Russian roulette or whether we want the best for another person.

When Stephen Hill, a gay soldier serving in Iraq asked the GOP field if they would circumvent the repeal of Don’t’ Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) if elected as President the audience at the FOX News-Google debate booed him.

In both cases none of the candidates offered leadership by suggesting it is inappropriate to cheer the death of a person or to boo someone serving his country.  Their silence was breathtakingly disturbing.

To boo another human being for whom they are or their circumstance is to say, “You don’t count as a person. You have no value as a human being.” Is this an expression of a new mob rule in which those we do not approve of are discarded to a human trash pile?

It feels like a declaration of war on compassion. To respond with equal fire power is not the compassionate response.  So how do you respond?

In your personal life one expression of compassion is to detach from negative or life-draining energy while whole-heartedly hoping for the best for the person from whom you detach.  When the death of others is cheered or a group of people are booed you might detach from the negative energy as you deal with your anger and amazement.  But detachment is very different from disengaging.

Disengagement is not the answer! When I disengage I cede the ground of compassionate oneness, of wanting the best for all people to those who would consign others to the trash basket of life. To mindfully engage is vital because your life and that of others is stake.

Every intention of yours is important. Every time you give voice to the questions and hopes of compassion your voice joins that of others. Your voice, your imagination and your compassionate life matter just as those who have been cheered and booed matter.

Detach but do not disengage! How will you be part of the human circle expressing compassion for all? How will you compassionately speak to the cheering and booing ones engaging in the oneness of the human family that includes those gay and lesbian soldiers and the dying uninsured?

So how will you engage with compassion?

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Check out the Charter for Compassion!

Robert V. Taylor

I was unprepared for what I would see as I headed to spend a few days on the site of Ground Zero in November 2011.  Visiting the site again this week I am apprehensive about its impact. I wonder if a violent rupture is making way for transformed hearts about how we engage with the human family.

     As I walked from the subway station past St. Paul’s Chapel its wrought fences were a billboard of hand drawn posters from people across the United States and the world expressing love and support for the efforts underway. 

     The walk from Broadway in lower Manhattan to Ground Zero is just one city block long. Walking towards Ground Zero had an ominous steely grey quality to it.  Approaching the site I was struck by the quiet chill in the air of an otherwise frenetic, bustling city. 

     I knew this part of the city well from my years of living in the New York. I had stayed at the high rise hotel opposite the once World Trade Center. In 2000 I participated in a meeting on the 98^th floor of the World Trade Center, finding it difficult to focus on the meeting when the panoramic view of New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty kept luring the eye. I had enjoyed the July Fourth fireworks displays in the harbor the early 1980’s. Now, a once bustling area was a scene of carnage.

     Thousands of people stood pressed up against the high wire fences enclosing Ground Zero. They looked like the pilgrims I had seen at various holy sites around the world, reverent and filed with awe. But theirs was a desolate awe. The smoke and noxious fumes floating upwards from the rubble and still smoldering ruins had none of the fragrant smell of incense. It was like a funeral pyre.

     I was there to be alongside my friend Rand who had been volunteering seven days a week as a chaplain working alongside the workers at Ground Zero. He led me through a secure entrance onto Ground Zero. Taking in the carnage I wondered what evil imagination had planned such destruction. Within a few minutes there was complete silence on the site. Part of a body had been recovered from the rubble. Excavation activities stopped and workers lined up in silence as the remains were carried from the debris. This was no ordinary work site. The reverence for the dead and those who loved them was sacred. I was walking on holy ground.

Firefighters at Ground Zero 2001

     Over the course of those two days I spoke with endless numbers of firefighters and police officers. They had each known colleagues who had died in the attacks. Most of them had been on the site for weeks without a break. Many of them were experiencing respiratory problems caused by the toxic fumes from the smoldering remains of the buildings that had collapsed. At the fire house on the edge of Ground Zero there were wreaths and flowers alongside the photographs of the fire officers who had died on September 11.

     The remarkable firefighters and police officers on the site revealed a richly textured face of human compassion and selflessness. Darkness and light seemed to wrestle with one another at Ground Zero. In those working there I experienced hands literally reaching out, delicately working in the rubble. Hearts were offered as if lighting a wick of hope.  Like lighting candles in the dark, their actions seemed to cry out to the darkness, “We beg to differ.”

     At the end of the second day, as I made my way past an exit area from the fenced-in Ground Zero work site, past police officers and sniffer dogs, I paused.  I stood with scores of onlookers pressing up against the fence, looking in from the outside at where I had spent two days.  I thought of Chanukah, the Jewish Festival of Lights.

     Chanukah is celebrated in the northern hemisphere at the darkest time of the year. The nine branched menorah, also known as a Chanukah, is placed in windows by way of pointing to the Light of the Holy One. The timing of the festival in the midst of winter reinforces the image of moving from darkness to light. Many of those who observe Chanukah understand the candles as offering a spiritual light enabling people to overcome difficulties, allowing them to move from places of personal darkness towards light.

      In the Jewish mystical tradition light is synonymous with the Divine. Robin Levinson observes that one such powerful image is of the overwhelming energy of God’s light shattering the vessel that held it and scattering it into countless “holy sparks” that spread across the entire universe. So we find the mystical tradition of “raising holy sparks” connected with the mandate to Jews of tikkun olam – repairing the world.  

     Looking down at the Ground Zero site that afternoon in 2001 each team of workers was like the nine-branched menorah. This was no place for working as a solitary individual. Together they were shedding light, differing with darkness, repairing a rupture in the world.  As I walked away with that image flooding my imagination I was crying. 

St. Paul's adorned with love offerings from around the world

The tears streaming down my cheeks were a common sight around Ground Zero. I wondered if others were coming away wondering how to be part of “holy sparks” of the Creator’s light. More than a cathartic response to the emotional intensity of Ground Zero, the tears were in recognition and acknowledgement of the internal shift on my spiritual landscape that came from being present at the site. Like most sacred places of pilgrimage the pilgrim comes away changed and transformed in some way because of being present in the presence of the sacred.

     I returned to historic St. Paul’s Chapel where George Washington was inaugurated as President of the United States. It had been transformed from a place of worship into a respite center for the workers at Ground Zero. A place of worship was revealing the meaning of service.

     Inside cots were set up for workers to nap on, food was served to them from the kitchens of New York’s finest restaurants, massages were offered to exhausted and stressed workers many of whom had not seen home in days.

     That night as I travelled on a train to rural Connecticut I realized that I was leaving a place where terror had ripped the veil of American innocence. I was heading to the bucolic beauty of a conference center alongside a river surrounded by the resplendent beauty of the colors of the last changing leaves of fall.  My destination felt both like a dislocation from the reality of Ground Zero and a reminder of human beauty coexisting with it.

Ground Zero Reimagined

     On the train ride I remembered some lines from Yeats – “I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” I wondered, as I still do, how we will tread softly on the dreams of the Holy for the entire human family.

     Perhaps the answer lies beyond the memories of the carnage of Ground Zero in the other story of Ground Zero. It was a story of people uniting in their common humanity across boundaries of religion, place or race. Selflessness was unassumingly assumed. Holy sparks of light were present in the determination to overcome the darkness of what had happened. Anger, loss and grief were giving way to oneness discovered in service and generous hearts at work.

     I don’t know your memories and experiences of Ground Zero but mine were transformative. 9/11 and Ground Zero still beckon with the invitation to oneness that takes us beyond our own memories and into the well-being of all. We’re still invited to be holy sparks for goodness and repairing the world.

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Robert V. Taylor

The attempt to silence His Holiness the Dalai Lama is an exercise in futility akin to trying to block the flow of eternal spiritual truths. Yet this is what the government of South Africa is trying to do. Their refusal to grant him a visa to give a lecture in Cape Town in honor of his friend Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s eightieth birthday is ironic at best and, at worst,  hostile to free speech and religion.

     These two iconic human beings are honored in much of the world for their willingness to speak truth to power out of the spirituality of their respective Buddhist and Christian traditions. Tutu’s fearless defense of the voiceless and the inclusion of all people is an expression of the abundantly generous love of the God he believes in. The Dalai Lama’s insistence on the inter-connectedness of all beings arises from his Buddhist tradition.  He says that his religion is one of kindness. These two Nobel Peace Prize Laureates share a common spiritual and pragmatic insistence on the power of forgiveness over retribution.

     There is nothing kind, inclusive or generous about the obfuscating responses of the South African government as they dither about whether to succumb to China’s pressure to keep the Dalai Lama out of South Africa.

     In 2009 the Dalai Lama was denied a visa to give a lecture in South Africa with News24 reporting that the government admitted its move was made “in order not to jeopardize ties with China.”  The Sunday Independent reported that the South African Embassy in New Delhi had not received the Dalai Lama’s visa application. On August 22, 2011 the Ministry of Home Affairs spokesman was quoted by Phayul News saying, “The Dalai Lama’s visa issue is not only administrative but political and diplomatic in nature.” In others words the South African government is considering colluding with China in an attempt to silence His Holiness’ voice in South Africa.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

    The irony lies in the history of apartheid giving way to a robust democracy in 1994. Many members of the current government were silenced by the apartheid regime under which freedom of expression and association was unknown. It was Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s voice against apartheid that could not be silenced at home or on the global stage. Calling for the end of apartheid and for justice he insisted that the human family is made not for separateness but for togetherness. He calls it Ubuntu – we are only human beings in the context of others human beings.  

     The long fought for freedom of expression, association and democracy in South Africa is called into question by not granting a visa to His Holiness to deliver the inaugural Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture in honor of his good friends eightieth birthday on October 7.

     Driven by the spirituality of their respective traditions Tutu and the Dalai Lama tirelessly work for freedom, reconciliation and the inclusion of all. In addition to the Tutu invitation the Durban based Gandhi Development Trust intends to honor His Holiness in South Africa with the 9^th Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Reconciliation and Peace.

Robert V. Taylor, His Holiness the Dalai Lama & Archbishop Tutu

Dumisa Ntsebeza, Chair of the Desmond Tutu Peace Center in South Africa, expressed a generous hope saying, “Althoguh uncertainty over the visa has proved challenging…the Peace Center is confident the visa will be granted.”

     Archbishop Tutu and The Dalai Lama will not be silenced by any government. The question is why, given the remarkable history of South Africa’s journey, it would even consider trying to keep the Dalai Lama’s voice out of the county?

      It is a futile flourish that the old apartheid government would have been proud of.  Perhaps it is the South African government that is need of reconciliation – the reconciling of a country’s liberation and constitution with a visa that will welcome one of the great religious and human rights crusaders to its country. What is to be feared from the voices of these two Nobel Laureates celebrating their voices and those of humanity in the quest for spiritual and human freedom?

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