Ubuntu and Non Sibi

An email I received in response to my last post about ubuntu reminded me of the philosophy of non sibi, a core value of Phillips Exeter Academy. My wife works at Exeter and my son recently graduated after four successful years there. Several members of Christ Church are faculty, staff, parents, or students. In that sense, Exeter has had a profound influence on the life of my family and community.

As explained on the Exeter website, non sibi is included in the school's seal (I've put the seal here, though it is hard to see the words): "Across the sun, symbolizing the rising sun over the sea of knowledge, is 'Non Sibi, or 'Not for Oneself,' testifying to the philosophy at Exeter that the wisdom gained here should be used for others as well as for oneself."

We live in a world too often defined by the "Bernie Madoff's" of society, those who seek only their own gain at the expense of others. We need more non sibi practiced in society, more people who think not only of themselves but they take seriously the idea that "the wisdom gained here should be used for others . . ."

I think one of the reasons I have found General Convention so uninteresting in the past is that so much of what happens there seems disconnected from life in the world and in the congregation. In many ways, it seems like a lot of "navel gazing," an internal focus on the church and the church's agenda without a real sense of focus on how we live out the call to share the compassion, peace, grace, and love of Jesus with the world.

Perhaps ubuntu can help us to reshape our understanding of community, give us a new vision of who we can be, so that we can be a part of reshaping the world to conform more closely to God's desires for creation. Perhaps we can learn from other communities, such as Exeter, so that we can consider not the church's agenda for itself but God's agenda for the world.

What might the world look like if we live by ubuntu and non sibi? I hope the wisdom gained from General Convention can be used for others as well as for ourselves.

General Convention and Ubuntu

The 76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church began this week in Anaheim, California. I will admit that following Convention in the past has not been high on my priority list. Often, from my perspective, the work of this triennial convention does not seem to have a huge direct impact on me outside of a few particular issues (for example, the consent of General Convention to the election of Bishop Robinson in 2003 clearly impacted my ministry and the life of my parish community).

This year, I'm going to try to pay a bit more attention to what is going on. To help keep me disciplined, I thought I'd make some blog entries giving my "home front" perspective on what is happening 3,000 miles away. We'll see how this goes and whether I can keep up some sort of daily (or almost daily) discipline -- not only to blog about convention but to read from the multiple resources available online to learn what is going on!

The theme of General Convention is ubuntu, an African concept of interdependence and community. It can be summed up in the phrase on the convention logo, "I in you and you in me." Presding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori spoke about ubuntu in her opening address to the convention on July 7. With strong language, she called into question “great Western heresy—that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God.” It is this cultural focus on the individual that is at the root of so many of our struggles today both in the nation and in the world.

In contrast to this, ubuntu reminds us that we are stronger together. "I can only become a whole person in relationship with others,” Jefferts Schori said. “There is no I without you and in our context, you and I are known only as we reflect the image of the one who created us." We were created not to be isolated creatures, but to live and work together in community. As it says in the first chapter of the book of Genesis: "So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." Together we are the image of God.

The challenge that Jefferts Schori is offering the convention is less about legislative decisions and more about how we will live, work, and minister together. What kind of church will we be? What sort of people will we be? Will we be looking after our own needs and listening only to our own perspectives? Or will we listen to others, especially those who are different from us, in order to reflect the diversity of God's creation and promise?

Desmond Tutu, for whom unbuntu stands at the heart of his life and work, wrote:

In God’s family, there are no outsiders. All are insiders. Black and white, rich and poor, gay and straight, Jew and Arab, Palestinian and Israeli, Roman Catholic and Protestant, Serb and Albanian, Hutu and Tutsi, Muslim and Christian, Buddhist and Hindu, Pakistani and Indian – all belong. . . . God’s dream wants us to be brothers and sisters, wants us to be family. . . . In our world we can survive only together. We can be truly free, ultimately, only together. We can be human only together, black and white, rich and poor, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jew. (Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time as quoted in Diana Butlter Bass's book, Christianity for the Rest of Us)

That is an expansive sense of community, to say the least!

Living by ubuntu will be quite a challenge during a 10-day legislative session in a time in which there are deep divisions in the church about our understanding of authority, human sexuality, and interpretation of scripture and church canons. We can only pray that the presiding bishop can lead the church into a new cultural understanding of and appreciation for our need to be an interdependent body of Christ.

The challenge for those of us at home is to make ubuntu a reality in our local communities and congregations. How might we do that? How might we live and work so that we manifest God's promises and hopes for creation and human community?