Ordinary Saints | Lent Week 5
Desmond Tutu
1931-2021
Mercy
“Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds.” - James 2:18
O Merciful One, I see you in the eyes of the stranger but often show no mercy. Widen my heart to embrace those who are different from me, and in so loving them, love you. Amen.
Along with Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu began the laborious process of dismantling apartheid and introducing democracy in South Africa. Tutu spoke out against the injustices of those marginalized by white supremacy. He also sought no revenge against the perpetrators. “When I forgive...I open the door of opportunity to you to make a new beginning,” he states. Like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., Tutu discovered in the teachings of Jesus a better way, not just personally but for society.
A man of prayer and study, Tutu practiced what he preached. His contemplative life aligned with his social activism. While leading the South African Council of Churches (SACC) - one of the few Christian institutions in South Africa in which Black people had the majority representation – he incorporated a regime of daily staff prayers, regular Bible study, a monthly Eucharist, and silent retreats. As a Spirit-led force, he hoped that the SACC would one day advance human rights.
In 1985, Tutu became bishop of Johannesburg. From this position of power, he appealed to foreign governments to apply economic pressure on South Africa. “I have no hope of real change from our government unless they are forced,” Tutu confessed. “I call on the international community to apply punitive sanctions against this government to help us establish a new South Africa – non-racial, democratic, participatory, and just. This is a non-violent strategy to help us do so.”
Tutu’s tireless work of speaking out against injustice, organizing strikes, and leading peaceful protests paid off. By the early 1990s, apartheid had been dismantled.
Archbishop Tutu could have become a voice for vengeance and violence; instead, he became a leader of mercy. “Do your little bit of good where you are,” Tutu encourages us; “It’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
About the portrait collection, from the artist, Kreg Yingst (from the introduction of his book, “Everything Could Be A Prayer.”
I began creating icon-style portraits as a New Year’s resolution at the beginning of 2013. Creating them was a means of confronting the darkness around us – more specifically, as a direct response to the Sandy Hook school shooting. Through my art, I wanted to bring light and healing: something tangible that could be seen and held. Prayers that the viewer could speak. Images that contemplate that might offer a sense of peace and solace.
My daily devotional routine was to find a prayer – one per week – and then meditate on it, draw it, carve it, print it, and paint it. Each block print featured the saint or mystic who had spoken the prayer. By the end of the year, I had completed 52 prints.
In the ensuing years, I’d occasionally do one, but my work on these portraits was sporadic at best. Then in 2020 the pandemic struck, and many of us encountered solitude in a new way. George Floyd was murdered by police, and the country and the world faced a renewed reckoning with the persistence of injustice and racism. In despair and dogged by a sense of hopelessness, I decided to again focus on this spiritual discipline. I needed models of faithful Christian witness in times of suffering and fear. This time I searched for wisdom of self-imposed hermits and leaders from marginalized communities.
The collection that emerged features portraits of people of faith: saints and mystics from different periods, cultures, ethnicities, genders, and denominations. They are contemplatives and activists, well-known and obscure, Orthodox and Protestant and Catholic... Their commonality is their love for God and their enduring awareness of God’s love for them.
The saints and mystics in this book share a deep and abiding devotion to Christ, whose essence shines through them. But not all aspects of their lives are commendable. Like the writer of Hebrews names as ancients commended for their faith, they were certainly not perfect. Yet put together, these saints and mystics offer us a colorful light spectrum seen through a God-shaped prism, each an individual piece of glass. When the pieces are assembled, they form a stained-glass window that reveals the imago Dei: the image of God written into humanity.
Artwork by Kreg Yingst. Used with permission.