2022: A Year for Caution, Courage and Community

Like many in recent days, I have been considering the life and legacy of that great African and even greater human, the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and I am reminded of one of his many quotable musings: 

“It is through weakness and vulnerability that most of us learn compassion and discover our souls.”

We have seen this year a great deal of weakness and vulnerability – in our hospitals, in our care homes, in the upsurge in foodbank usage and in the loneliness of the, black-clad queen sitting apart from her family as she mourned her beloved husband. 

But among that vulnerability, among the chaos that leads to it, be it politics or pandemic, old age or old ways of thinking, we can still find the mettle of our souls when we have the courage to seek to make a difference, a community with whom to work, and the caution - especially in relation to Covid - to make sure our efforts are for that which is best for our fellow humans' health and wellbeing.

At all times, we must hold fast to what President Obama referred to as ‘the audacity of hope’. 

Hope is not always rewarded immediately. This time last year, we had hope that 2021 would be the year we would see off Covid. Those in poverty, I am sure, hoped that this would be the year when the innovations made despite and, in some ways, because of these chaotic two years would bring about opportunities for them. Those paying their last pennies to be put into a boat to cross the English Channel undoubtedly did so in hope. 

But hope is a flame that sometimes burns low but is very hard to extinguish. 

Hope, when nurtured, breeds courage and it is courage, however quiet, that makes mere humans work miracles. Courage fed by hope gave Archbishop Tutu the wherewithal to take on a powerful government, enriched by the resources of the dispossessed, and encourage the world to fight alongside him for a future free of racial injustice. And it will be that courage, fed by hope, that will bring us as nations through the weary, battle-scarred fight against disease and social injustice, even in our richly developed lands, to a future of peace and plenty, of health and happiness, of divine love manifested by human hands. 

Desmond Tutu did not live to see that future made real, but he hoped for it and he believed in it. Many of us will not live to see the end of inequality or the quelling of global pandemics, but those of us who trust in God know that we have eternity before us to rejoice when that future comes to pass on earth. 

In the meantime, I say this to the governments of the world, and particularly those of the UK and Ireland: make yourselves vulnerable, forego a hollow, macho sense of strength in favour of an acknowledgement of human weakness and see the world through the eyes of those who suffer most in your lands and, often, through your actions: the poor, the ill, the elderly, the immigrant, the child without a family and those who suffer when the rich see human disasters as economic opportunities. If you can do this – if you can come down to look these people in the eye and hear their truth, maybe you too will truly discover your souls.

My prayers are with you all and I wish you a very happy and healthy 2022.

Rev. Dr. Sahr Yambasu
President of the Methodist Church in Ireland

ENDS

29/12/2021

Issued by:
Rev. Roy Cooper

Press Officer
T: 07710 945104
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