CONCLUSION

Conclusion is:

The conclusion of a book is the final section (often a chapter in non-fiction or the final sequence of events in fiction) that serves to wrap up the main ideas, provide a sense of closure, and leave the reader with a lasting impression or final thought.

We are being called to do the work of love, but first we must define the work of love. We must name clearly what it is, and what it is not. We must become willing to see within ourselves when we are being loving and when we are not. We must become willing to name our own shadows in life and in love and take accountability for them; not as a way to admit that we are “bad” but as a way to say “hmm, here I am. Here I am showing myself who I am.”

Often we reject our shadow as evidence of what we are not when truly it is evidence of what we are. This is startling news when we have been conditioned to view ourselves as singular, one dimensional; as only nice and good. And to our human surprise we often find that we are so much vaster and stranger than the good and nice person we think ourselves to be.

We contain within us the seeds of oppressive behaviour and the seeds of liberatory and loving behaviour. Neither of these seeds are bad, but as humans we have the choice to decide which seeds we will water. This is the miracle of being human - that we get to experience choice and be loved by God (and ourselves) all the same. We may moralise these choices but to God it is all the same. I do, however, believe that is why moral and ethical frameworks are so important for humanity. We have the ability to make choices and be redeemed for them (Christ has already died for all of our sins) but we also have the ability to create philosophies and ontologies to guide our behaviour.

Ubuntu is one such philosophy - and it mirrors a knowing that we see in many Indigenous cultures throughout the world:

“I am because we are” - interbeingness.

or

“motho ke motho ka batho” which means “a person is a person because of other people”

Ubuntu is a way for us to remember our relationality because as much as we have choice and all choices are perfect and have already been redeemed our choices do impact each other. And we have a moral and ethical - a human - responsibility to each other to develop our choices within a framework that honours the value of all our relations in the human and non human world; including our relationships with our ancestors and descendants who are always with us, watching us and being impacted by our decisions too.

We do not “have” to do anything, but through this incarnation we are given the gift of being able to, when faced with the choice of being loving or unloving, choose love. There could be nothing more Godly than this, nothing more divine, and this is what turns a human into a saint or a deity. Saints are humans, like you and me, who have been faced with choice, as you and I have, and have chosen love - have chosen faith - have chosen belief - have chosen God and Godliness. To be human is to be given the choice, to be saintly is to choose love. And we can all become saints of love and compassion - boddhisattvas - by setting ourselves within a worldview and framework that reminds us that the choice to love - especially in the face of adversity - will always be the most powerful choice that we make.

May we all be free to make choices that transform the fates of our lineages and our world, forever and ever amen.