mandela and forgiveness

DT - One thing Keep remembering. Evil is an abbrevation. You get upset when a     woman get abused

CF - Yes, you look at me as if I dont?

DT - At Darfur its one of the most awful places worst place, met with refugees, talked with them, they could laugh. the men who Nurse white robes, clean, spotless.

CF - Where do they get the water?

DT - Part of it there are trucks. If the women go out of the camp the women get raped.

CF - What?

DT - Human beings are incredible. I mean you are incredible

CF - The thing I was gonna uh

DT - The second thing.. shh

CF - Oh yeye no you're right, you're good

DT - ..incredible thing, The humanitarian workers. Have we hear enough craze of fantastic people, many of them go their second, third mission. What make them go there? They get no kudos. They can't live normal life if they don't go

CF - Is that why you hang on to the faith? When you see such evil, is it a test of your faith?

DT - It is that Evil is evil. You can't seek to the ghastliness when people put others into gaschambers.

CF - ye..

DT - I mean that is awful there is no word had good enough to describe the level of Evil, I mean in the Truth and Reconcilation commission we had some gruesome accounts. Somebody said we gave him drug coffe, we shot him in the head, and then we burned his body, it takes 7-8hour for a human body to burn completely. And so whilst the body is burning here we're having a barbeque here drinking beer and laughing and there the human body burnin and here cowflesh burnin and you say what could have happened o the humanity of anyone that they could sink so low Had a barbeque next to that.

CF - What could have happened and How do you find reconciliation, how do you find forgiveness in that? It must be its a gigantic tragedy.

DT - It is and yet have met Not just black people, white people too, who had this incredible, One woman was with friends at a X-mas party at a golfclub, and one of the liberation movements threw handgrenades into the party and Several people were killed, she wasnt killed but she was so badly wounded she was in ICU for several months now She is talkin she says she couldn't when she came out, she couldn't wash herself, she couldnt cloth herself, she couldn't feed herself, it was done for her by her children and then she says. I mean a condition that leaves her
Totally hopeless. She said It has Enriched my life. I mean, enriched my life, This woman crazy

CF - It's very advanced for me, I dont get it

DT - And Then she says I'd like to meet the perpertrator. I'd like to meet him in the spirit of forgiveness. I'd like to forgive him and I hope he forgives me.

CF - Is that the only way to freedom? I remember something about Hearing the Dalai Lama talking about he Felt he was in danger with the chinese because he felt himself loosing compassion for them, which I really didn't understand at the time, but it sounds a little bit like your saying. .

DT - The thing is that you and I, and all of us. Even when we don't accept it I mean or understand. It is that God created us in such a way that I can't be human on my own. I wouldn't know how to walk as a human being, I wouldn't know how to think, I wouldn't know how to speak, I wouldn't know how to be a human being Except through learning from other human being. and so our humanity is bound with one another. And you see If you carry out a policy that dehumanizes others in the process you are dehumanized, you know and so you understand now, you understand how others can say in order for me to be me, I want to forgive you. Because, have you discovered? When you don't forgive frequently, you feel it in you tumtum

CF - Ye I always was told that resentment was like drinking poison and then excepting someone else to die, you know that has...

DT - That was beautiful

CF - Thank you very much its not mine. Father Tutu, we must take a break.
((It was a Quote from Nelson Mandela))

Transcripted from an Episode of Craig Ferguson Late Show with guest Desmond Tutu. Check it out on youtube if you wish. I own nothing.