Alien Drums

Bob Abernethy and the other folks behind PBS’s Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly have produced a book, The Life of Meaning, reflecting some of the great interviews they have done. In a story on the R&EWN web site, Abernethy writes about creating the book and talks about Desmond Tutu.In 1998, Abernethy interviewed the retired South African archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner. Abernethy said Tutu “described his wordless prayer at the beginning of every day, his sense of being in the presence of God, and he likened that to sitting near a warm stove on a cold morning.”

Tutu: “I don’t have to do anything. … The fire warms me. I just have to be there, quiet.”

Abernethy: “His simple description moved all of us in the room.”

I found myself moved, as well, by the archbishop’s description.

Abernethy said to the people interviewed over the years: “Whatever their fields and age, and whether they are formally religious or more independently spiritual, the contributors turned out to have in common a powerful underlying conviction. Many of them expressed it as the ‘Something More,’ their bedrock intuition that beyond or beside or as part of everything that is material, everything that can be sensed and measured, there is another realm of being called by many names but central to their understanding of life and the universe. Many referred to this as God or, for Muslims, Allah. Some spoke of ‘Ultimate Reality’ or ‘the Really Real.’”

I have said similar things on this blog before, but this is said so well that I wanted to share it.