…Because We Are

---

As I was approaching the final editing stage of my dissertation I recall being overwhelmed with appreciation and gratitude for the many people who had taught, cared for, supported, challenged, blessed, dared, and loved me. And not just during my studies… throughout my life. Amidst this season I began gathering photos of friends, family, teachers, theologians, pastors, therapists, spiritual directors, youth leaders, ancestors, and others who’d help shape the person I was becoming. I pulled those photos together to create this mosaic image.

Around that time I was first introduced to some of the teachings in the South African philosophy of Ubuntu which acknowledges a profound interconnectedness of all… “I am because we are.” Michael Onyebuchi Eze describes the core of Ubuntu this way:

“A person is a person through other people’ strikes an affirmation of one’s humanity through recognition of an ‘other’ in his or her uniqueness and difference. It is a demand for a creative intersubjective formation in which the ‘other’ becomes a mirror (but only a mirror) for my subjectivity. This idealism suggests to us that humanity is not embedded in my person solely as an individual; my humanity is co-substantively bestowed upon the other and me. Humanity is a quality we owe to each other. We create each other and need to sustain this otherness creation. And if we belong to each other, we participate in our creations: we are because you are, and since you are, definitely I am. The ‘I am’ is not a rigid subject, but a dynamic self-constitution dependent on this otherness creation of relation and distance.”

Michael Onyebuchi Eze, Intellectual History in Contemporary South Africa

Archbishop Desmond Tutu described it this way:

“A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, based from a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.”

DESMOND Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness

The following photos – in no particular order – are just some of the many people and communities who are helping me grow more open and available, more affirming of others, etc. I am because of y’all… and I am so grateful.

Peace, dwight