Nobel prize winner urges graduates to work for peace
By PHILIP WALZER, The Virginian-Pilot
© May 15, 2006
Last updated: 1:19 PM
WILLIAMSBURG – Portraying God in a sweet, high-pitched whisper, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Sunday urged the graduates of The College of William and Mary to become “partners” in creating a “glorious garden blooming with justice and goodness.”
“God says, ‘Please help me, please help me, please help me so that we can turn the world into a more gentle and compassionate world,’ ” said Tutu, who received the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize for helping to lead the struggle against apartheid. ” ‘I believe in you. Dream with me. Don’t allow the old ones to make cynics of you.’ ”
Tutu, 74 , wore a green robe with black stripes over his clerical collar and a large cross hanging from his neck. His 24-minute speech at times resembled more a sermon on God’s ways than a graduation talk.
“We have an extraordinary God, an omnipotent god,” Tutu said, but he waits to work with humans to correct injustice. Hungry people will be fed, Tutu said, not by “hamburgers floating down from heaven,” but by “you and you and you and all of us saying, ‘God, I want to be a partner.’ ”
Young people, Tutu said, often are God’s instrument, whether in the 1960s U.S. protests against the Vietnam War or the campaign to end apartheid. In South Africa, he said, youngp eople “accomplished something that was unthinkable. They changed the moral climate of the country.”
After the abolition of apartheid, Tutu became the first black person to lead the country’s Anglican Church. He also led South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and became a voice urging forgiveness. However, he has waded into controversy over issues beyond South Africa. Tutu has spoken ardently in favor of ordaining gay Episcopal bishops. He also has sharply criticized Israeli treatment of Palestinians and “the very powerful Jewish lobby.” Nor did he play it safe during his speech Sunday before the graduates at William and Mary Hall. He lamented “the genocide in Darfur, Zambia, Sri Lanka and the Middle East.” He praised young people for being “amongst those who demonstrated against the war in Iraq.”
The world, he said, is “spending billions … on death and destruction,” when a fraction of that money could alleviate poverty and illiteracy. Returning to the role of God, Tutu knocked his forehead and said: “Sometimes I weep. Whatever got into my head to create this lot?”