Today we’ll see what Desmond Tutu thinks about the quest for wealth. I’m sharing some interview excerpts from Lili Fournier’s new PBS DVD – Quest for Success. We will learn about what some of the participants think about the quest for success and the quest for wealth. Visit each day throughout the week to learn about what another participant in Quest for Success thinks about this topic. Throughout the week I’ll share thoughts from Richard Branson, Marci Shimoff, Jack Assaraff, Jack Canfield and Desmond Tutu.
Desmond Tutu What People Are Questing For Today
DESMOND: Really, we are wanting to find our way back home. I think it was T.S. Eliot who said… we will travel, and when we arrive, we will recognize it for the first time, the way we were, and were meant to be. Because the extraordinary thing is discovering that what will give us ultimate satisfaction is not this, or that possession, or even a state of mind or consciousness, it will be God. The infinite. That we are almost the ultimate paradox. The finite, who are created for the infinite. Nothing less than God will ultimately satisfy us. And so many of us strive after this, that, or the other, seeking, seeking, seeking satisfaction. And it all turns into dust and ashes in our mouths because incredibly, we’re made for transcendence, and that’s what we’re seeking. And when we find it, we say ahh. This is home.
LILI: What was your most life-transforming experience? In that regard…when you found your own core and inner strength and the faith to take you through what you’ve been through.
DESMOND: I never thought that I had inner strength. I’ve known that I depended so very much on others. I had a wonderful mother, she was not an educated person. She was incredible in her generosity. And I resembled her physically, she had a large nose like mine, she was dumpy, too, like me… but I’ve always said, I… I hope I will be able to resemble her in her spirit as I resemble her physically. She was such an incredibly compassionate person. And I think that I owe [unintelligible] some of who I am others, Father Trevor Hardenston who came to work in South Africa. The first time I saw him, I didn’t know who he was. I was surprised.
I was about 9 years old, standing with my mother who was a domestic worker, a cook at a facility for black blind women, and this white man strutted past wearing a long white cassock, and he had a huge sombrero, and as he passed my mother he tipped his hat to my mother. I didn’t know then that gesture was …, made such an incredible impression on me. A white man… tipping his hat to my mother, a black woman…in South Africa in those days, it was just mind-boggling, but I discovered later when I met with Trevor Hardenston, that was how he believed, that was what he believed about human beings—that we were created in the image of God, and that we have a dignity and when I was about 15 or so I had T.B. and I spent 20 months in hospital.
And …, who was a very busy person, almost every week of those 20 months, and I was just a township ghetto urchin, and this very important man made me think and believe that I was special. And I’ve had so many who have nurtured me and helped me to grow into a sense of wonder of God’s creation, how human beings are of infinite worth, whatever, whoever they may be, and it was just some of that that sustained and inspired me as I with others struggled against the injustices of apartheid.
About Desmond Tutu
Archbishop Desmond Tutu is a South African cleric and activist who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. Tutu was elected and ordained the first black South African Anglican Archbishop. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 , the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, and the Magubela prize for liberty in 1986. In February 2007 he was awarded the Gandhi Peace Prize. He was generally credited with coining the term “Rainbow Nation” as a metaphor for post-apartheid South Africa. The expression has since entered mainstream consciousness to describe South Africa's ethnic diversity.
For additional information visit http://www.questforwealth.org/
To learn about all of Lili Fournier's products, visit http://www.questthejourney.com/products/products.html
The complete list of tour stops is available at: http://virtualblogtour.blogspot.com/2008/09/quest-for-success-dvd-directed-by-lili.html
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