Naomi
Tutu Transcript

​More Elephant Intro

[00:00:38] Jason Rudman: My guest today once said that she knew from early in life that the one thing she would never be as a priest. She has always said, “I have my father's nose, I do not want his job,” but life had other plans.

So, growing up in apartheid South Africa, the Reverend Nontombi Naomi Tutu experienced humanity at its rawest and most unequal. Those experiences have been transformational in the foundation of her life as an activist for human rights. After decades of professional experience, she was led to the call to preach and finally, in her 50s, she responded to that call and went to seminary to continue advocating for the underrepresented and the marginalized.

And so, there is no better way that we could start the second season of More Elephant, which is all about ‘listen, learn, live, better,’ than to be in conversation with, as she told me I should call her, Naomi Tutu. Welcome.

[00:01:36] Naomi Tutu: Thank you, Jason. Thank you.

[00:01:39] Jason Rudman: So thrilled that you're here.

[00:01:41] Naomi Tutu: It is so great to be here.

[00:01:43] Jason Rudman: It is. In these very fascinating times… everybody should understand that we are recording this in late summer  and we're doing that because you are on your way to go on a mission of sorts to the West Bank in East Jerusalem, which is a tinderbox right now of all things faith, religion, humanity, and everything that we know about this world in these volatile times. So, I wish you Godspeed there.

We're going to talk today about your origin story, what moves you, what's important to you, and we're also going to touch on the role of faith and religion in our future narrative. So what I'd love to do is to start with your origin story. I know everybody will say, well, I know Naomi Tutu's father the late, great Reverend Desmond Tutu. What's your origin story?

[00:02:32] Naomi Tutu: It's so interesting that question because one of my good friends, we started out in an almost conflictual relationship because he asked a question where I was doing a presentation and I said, you don't know my story. He said, yes, I do. They read out your CV at the beginning as they introduced you. I said, yeah, that's my CV; that is not my story.

And my story surprisingly starts in a township in Krugersdorp, the township is Munsieville. I was born in my grandparents home, which now my aunt, my Dad's younger sister, lives in. And so, every time I go and visit her, I get to stay in the room I was born in.

And my mother had moved in with my grandparents because my father was at seminary. So I was born and Daddy could not get away from seminary but a friend of his came to see the new baby and take back the report.

And she reported back to my father that, well, this one, all we have to do is put on a cassock and glasses on her, and she is you. So that was the first thing I ever heard growing up was that I looked so much like my father from my very birth and that they were talking about putting a cassock on me. So I knew that I would never be a priest. It didn't matter whether there was no other job on the planet, I was never, ever going to be a priest because I was just so terrified of being identified as Desmond Tutu Mark II.

[00:04:23] Jason Rudman: Hmm. And those are pretty big shoes to fill.

[00:04:27] Naomi Tutu: Yes. I am happy that I decided that it was not my place to try and fill those shoes.

And then, the other part of my origin story, I think, is being born a Black girl in apartheid South Africa. And I think that if you ask any Black South African who was born during apartheid, each of us has a story of when we were cognizant of entering into the apartheid system.

And for me, that was at six-and-a-half, when my older brother, my older sister and I were sent to boarding school, in neighboring Swaziland. It was a wake-up moment for me because our family, at that point, lived in one of the only, if not the only, integrated community in South Africa, which was the federal seminary. And so, in the federal seminary, there were families: Black families; White families; Asian families; so-called Colored families; all living on the campus of the seminary.

And yet, the white children at the seminary went to school down the street and came home at lunch and then went back to school. We could not do that as a Black family and my parents took the opportunity of educating us out of Bantu education. And so we went to boarding school at a place that was like 36 hours drive away from home.

And so at six-and-a-half, that realization that the people who I considered my friends, who were the same age as I was in the community that we lived in, had rights and privileges that I did not have as a Black South African. And that the choice to send us to boarding school was a difficult choice for my parents but was also a choice that came out of their experience of having been teachers and leaving the profession when Bantu education was introduced.

So, I have this origin story that is both a very personal one around my identity within my family and therefore what that meant to my identity in the world, and then one that is a much larger one that is the story of Black South Africans and how apartheid determined so much of our lives and the access and the opportunities and just the opportunity to live with your parents, right, and go to school down the road.

[00:07:15] Jason Rudman: So that is a story of upheaval and being cleaved from that, which, you know sitting in a position of privilege, it is hard to hear that and determine how to relate to that on a humanistic level.

And again, what I love about you talking about that story is if everybody were to reflect on your father and his legacy without hearing from you that, and the system you were born into, and the challenges that it even presented for somebody as prolific as your father and the family that you were born into, one would assume that it's been an easier ride.

[00:07:52] Naomi Tutu: Right.

[00:07:53] Jason Rudman: And I know that you've written about the fact that those experiences have taught you that the whole human family loses when we accept situations of oppression. And your life work and your focus on racial, economic and gender empowerment for girls and women is as a direct connection to what you experienced in apartheid.

[00:08:13] Naomi Tutu: Yup.

[00:08:13] Jason Rudman: So again, we're going to time jump appropriately, and we'll probably time jump back because things will be revealed but it then feels almost natural on some level that you would find your way to focus on racial, economic, and gender empowerment. It's not as easy as that. Was it simply I walk in these shoes every day. And so that my purpose was revealed to be doing and solving for and working on behalf of those that I absolutely represent and walk in those shoes every day.

[00:08:47] Naomi Tutu: Right. Right. My parents were very clear for us growing up that there wasn't an expectation that we would follow directly in their footsteps, but there was an expectation that whatever we would do in our lives, would be something that moved our humanity forward.

My parents always used to say anything that you do for human rights, you do for all human rights. So, you find your passion and what calls you and make sure that you are doing the work to make the world slightly better than you found it.

And so I always tell people, so being the lazy person that I am, I looked in the mirror and I said, Oh, I'm a Black woman. So clearly it's going to be gender and race, that is where I'm going to do my work.

And then the economic justice for me came out of when I went to college, I had originally planned out that I was going to work for the U.N. (United Nations) and I was going to be doing something at the U.N.

So, I decided that the best entry was to have a lot of languages under my belt. So I went to college planning to major in languages. I had done French in high school and then started taking Spanish and was planning to expand those languages as I went on, but I was at a liberal arts university college, and as part of the liberal arts, you had to take political science, economics, sciences, history, art.

You had to be, at least have a taste of each of those, and I got a taste of economics and just fell in love with the…I didn't fall in love with the way that I experienced economics, but I fell in love with the idea that here was a subject that could allow me to challenge injustice, not just politically, but also the way that it impacted people economically.

So I ended up not doing languages. I did Economics and French as my major and then did a Master's in Development Economics and started working as an economist in a private development agency that did contracts for the World Bank for different countries on the African continent. And got frustrated very quickly at the way in which economics was…I guess when you try and make something scientific, then in trying to be objective, you take out the human perspective on it.

I remember I was on a project in Ghana. I was the economist on a forestry project that was looking into harvesting timber and turning it for export from Ghana. [I] went as part of the team to go and look at the places where we were considering doing the project and visited the forest that was going to be harvested and realized that in our economic planning, we were not taking into consideration that this forest was being used by the community, that when we were there looking at the trees, there were children in the forest playing, there were families gathered in the forest having picnics.

All that human part of the lived experience could not be captured in any way in the work that I was called to do. At the same time, [I] was talking to somebody who had been involved in a project in Lesotho, which is one of the places we grew up. My Dad taught at the University in Lesotho and then became the Bishop of Lesotho. So, Lesotho was also a home for me. And this man was talking about projects in Lesotho and how they brought projects into communities and women refused to invest even a small amount of money into the projects.

And, I was like, well, maybe they didn't have the funds to invest. And he said, no, we know that they did because the government had an agreement with the South African government that migrants had to deposit their money in the bank in Lesotho. And I'm like, yeah, the migrant; that didn't mean the wives had access to the money. The men deposited the money and probably did not give access to the women in the community. So that doesn't mean the women have access.

So, I was just getting frustrated over and over in the way that economics that we seem to try and make it an automatic thing that we did not act as though they were human beings. You know, we talked about producers and consumers. We're all producers and consumers, but we're also human beings with stories and with fears and with concerns. And so, that was when I added the economic justice component to my race and gender work.

[00:14:15] Jason Rudman: It's remarkable to your point, as I reflected on what you just shared, you talked there about unequal access and assumptions. Assumptions based on people in the room who did not have a lived experience that required you to walk through that door and you just described, I think, a wonderful More Elephant moment in your life.

It's like, hey, I'm in the forest. Other people are not looking at this forest the way that I look at this forest. So again, I think talking about access and bringing your lived experience to that led you on a different path.

And as part of that discussion there, you thought, there was an inequity that led you to think about bringing economic justice to your work. And so, let's jump forward even further at the current movement and what you and I talked about the sense that there's a backward slide across the equity spectrum that has implications for empowerment.

What are you seeing? Or what have you seen in the recent past? And what are your thoughts on how we redress and find balance?

[00:15:21] Naomi Tutu: Yeah, and you know, I am struck by the fact that for so many people, their view of the world is that if I share with this person, that means I'm going to get less and we have politicians who are feeding that narrative, right? That this idea that if we expand access, that means that you who are already at the table will have less access to the table rather than thinking about if we expand access, it means that we're making the table larger. And not only are we giving access to people, we are getting access to other people's ideas.

You know, when I give presentations, I often talk about African proverbs, and one of my favorite ones is that in the times of flood, the wise build bridges, the foolish build walls.

And, you know, it's talking about when we are faced with a crisis, those who are wise recognize that, wait a minute, we need new perspectives and new voices and new ideas if we're going to deal with this crisis because obviously, what we have been doing has led us to this crisis.

And so, those of us who are already here, we need some input from people who are looking at things from a different perspective, who have had different experiences, who view the world slightly differently than we do. That when we allow those stories to be part of the process, we are more likely to find a way out of the crisis, whereas the foolish say, ‘Oh my gosh, we're in a crisis. I'm going to hog that little bit that I have. There's no way I'm going to share what I have because that will mean that I will have nothing.’

And, I think that it is a lack of imagination. And I am so angry that we are giving voice to politicians with this lack of imagination, who are now attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion, when diversity, equity, and inclusion…we haven't even touched the top layer of what diversity, equity, and inclusion can give us as communities. That people who have been on the margins still have to fight to get into the spaces.

So, we haven't even really included diversity, equity, and inclusion in our planning so far and now we're jettisoning it without having to acknowledge the ways in which our perspectives, as much as they haven't shifted very much, but our perspectives have had an opportunity to shift. 

That people who were at the table, suddenly realizing that the people who weren't at the table, they were not left off the table because they were stupid or had nothing to offer. It was the way that we structured society that said white men needed to be at the head of the table and we're going to allow other people at the table as we think they will not challenge the way the table has been structured, when really we just need to change the table.

We need a completely different table that allows people to bring their gifts. I worked at the African Gender Institute in Cape Town, at the University of Cape Town, and I cannot tell you the number of times I was challenged and educated by the people that I thought I was bringing projects to. Having high school students say things to me that made me go, ‘Oh, wait a minute. Why hadn't I thought of that?’

And so, when we expand the table, we get more opportunities ourselves. And I wish that we had leaders who are saying, ‘Folks, we have so many minds available to us and let's use every single person, every single gift that God has given people on this planet to make our world a better place.’

[00:20:16] Jason Rudman: I'm reflecting; we've used a couple of key words in the moments that we've been together so far. We've talked about access. We've talked about the constriction and the restriction of apartheid. And then I love your description of the fact that for all of the noise that we have around us, around DE&I, and again, a fundamental moving backwards tied to wokeness and which I like to say for me the word woke, I'm not woke, because I've always been awake.

[00:20:48] Naomi Tutu: Right.

[00:20:48] Jason Rudman: And so to you, meeting with the high school students and them bringing their lived experience that allows you to open up your mind to say, I had never thought about that. And if we add that to what were the solution, we're in a better place, we're able to serve more folks.

Your point around the fact that we're an inch deep - we're not a mile deep - and we're an inch deep in the layer because we're still redressing. We're still actually coming to terms with and attempting to redress the specter of apartheid in South Africa. We are still working through the impact of four hundred (400) years of the lack of civil rights for African Americans in this country, or women having the right to vote.

So, I think part of what you're talking about is we have to recognize that that is just a short amount of time in the spectrum of humanity and to say that the work is done or to say that we've done enough is the fundamental challenge that I think you and I, and many others that are on the side of creating a more open, free, accessible experience for all, struggle with this rebalancing that is going in the opposite direction.

[00:22:08] Naomi Tutu: Yeah, the movement backwards is scary. And yet, you know, I was saying to my children that the strange thing for me is the way that I'm experiencing the U.S. right now reminds me of how I experienced South Africa in the ‘80s, which was a time of increased repression by the apartheid government. The states of emergency were never ending, the number of people who were being banned and banished was just rising, the number of people being arrested, the death squads were increasing.

And, as I reflect on that kind of experience in South Africa and this is where my gut feels right now in the U.S., I said to them that, to me, it feels like the ‘80s in South Africa, which were the last kicks of a dying horse. That it is the attempt to hold on to illegitimate power with all your might when you can see that on the horizon, the change is actually unavoidable.

And so, this is what I am holding on to especially when you see the young people out on the campuses questioning the violence, the genocide that is going on in Gaza. This is something that is completely new in the U.S. You would never have had a youth movement around solidarity with Palestinians in the U.S.

And I remember when I first came to this country and people had no idea about apartheid and South Africa and I was educating my classmates, my professors, about South Africa and apartheid. And then, the swell of solidarity that happened on college campuses, from trade unions, from church organizations, from not-for-profits that started the focus on the anti-apartheid movement that grew in this country.

That is what I'm seeing reflected now in this country not just around Palestine, but around the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, particularly young people, are paying attention to the ways in which we are connected with what is going on in so many places around the world. And how these young people are then saying that we recognize that the suffering that is going on in Congo is not separate from the kind of police brutality that we are experiencing in this country.

The move of the Supreme Court to say that a president has immunity, you know, that people are saying, ‘Oh, this is all connected.’ And, for us to be in solidarity with the people in Palestine and the Democratic Republic of Congo means that we have to be in solidarity with one another in this country, for those who are marginalized, for the response to the Supreme Court ruling around homeless people, that you can charge homeless people for being on the streets, for me, has been uplifting to have people saying, this is not human, this is not humane, this is not who we should be as a nation, as a world.

Yes, I see this movement backwards, but I completely have recognized it as a movement from those in power to try and keep hold of their power when it is clear that the world is moving in a different way.

[00:26:17] Jason Rudman: The world needs a different table.

[00:26:19] Naomi Tutu: Right.

[00:26:20] Jason Rudman: And I think it's an acknowledgement, I just want to be clear as you and I talk through this, what you're preaching is that the table needs to find room for different voices that cannot be a single voice, and a single view on this, particularly when we want to invite as many people as possible to the table, and that is actually how we should think and deconstruct these issues, right?

We've got to be able to get all parties in whatever conflict, in whatever situation around the table to listen first, because my experience is not your experience.

You said something in that history has a habit of repeating itself, if we pay attention. That causes us, if we are students of history, to be able to say we're starting to see what that looks like. That should marshal our forces to say, we have got to ensure that we don't repeat that again. That's your point around connecting what you see now to the early ‘80s under de Klerk (in South Africa) and everything that was being rained down to continue to oppress the population in South Africa.

So I remember watching on the six o'clock news and it was only when I went outside of the BBC, a phenomenal institution, but you've got a three minute snippet in a 30-minute news broadcast, And so, I think what you're encouraging us to do is to know your history, learn from history and use history as a guide to how you redress some of the imbalance that we have in the world today.

So, we talked about the forest in Ghana that led you to Lesotho but I know it didn't stop there.

So you have this More Elephant awakening that's not what I'm supposed to be doing. I see this path that connects public policy, social justice, economic justice and I have to find a different way to live up to the legacy of my parents that said, you don't have to follow in our footsteps, but you have to do something that improves the human condition. So where did you go next?

[00:28:38] Naomi Tutu: I started off by thinking that I needed to do more studying and so I went and started a Ph.D. at the London School of Economics, which I never finished, [and] which my Dad never, never forgave me for not finishing my PhD.

And I tell people that anytime something went wrong in my life, he would say, see, if you had done that Ph.D., this would not happen. And I would say to him, Dad, we're talking about a leak in my roof that has nothing to do with a Ph.D., I can promise you.

But I was looking at my research [which] was around the women headed households in migrant communities, looking at economic survival strategies of those communities. And I actually did my field work in a community in what is now the Eastern Cape in South Africa at the border between South Africa and Lesotho because that Lesotho part continued to tug at me as somebody who had lived in Lesotho.

And having that person talking about women in Lesotho, which made me so angry because I knew the story of so many women in Lesotho. And was there at the very end of the ‘80s and just at the time when, in fact, they released the first group of political prisoners, Walter Sisulu and Andrew Mlangeni. That was also a time of growing political violence in South Africa, and in the communities that I was researching, the political violence was rising at the same time as intimate violence was also rising.

So, I ended up looking not so much as economic survival strategies of women-headed households, but looking at how in times of instability, violence against women, because political violence was largely targeted at women as well as intimate violence, so in times of political instability and challenge, that women are at risk outside their homes as well as inside their homes. And how do we understand that confluence, if you like.

And [I] took that focus on intimate and political violence into the work on gender and continued my focus on gender empowerment…ended up at the African Gender Institute in Cape Town working on gender-based violence in our communities, but particularly in educational settings.

The reality is that there are so many things that limit women's access to opportunities and we had not paid attention to the ways in which gender-based violence impacts women's access to education and therefore their access to employment and professional opportunities. And so, was looking at that in the context of the Western Cape. And I think it highlighted for me the way that race and gender intersect and how hard it is, as a Black woman, to separate the places of racial oppression from the places of gender oppression and economic oppression.

I came to give a presentation at the Race Relations Institute in Nashville, and was introduced to the work of Kimberly Crenshaw around intersectionality.

This is why I say that if we expand the table, the opportunities we have for, I mean, are mind blowing, absolutely, you know, that I am always amazed at where I get ideas and stories and information and clarity and education. And when we close off, you know, so like now they're telling us that people cannot talk about the school desegregation because it might make some people feel bad. Like people died. So I can feel bad for a few minutes to acknowledge that people died for my freedom and my access.

And if you cannot have your feelings hurt for a few seconds then I would suggest that what you need actually is therapy. It is not closing off of books [rather] that there is something wrong with your soul, with your spirit if hearing about a struggle and the ways in which people overcame the dehumanization that a system was trying to impose on them…that if that is so horrific and terrifying to you, then you have more to worry about in terms of your own humanity and your very soul than the stories themselves.

And I'm not just saying this, that for me, it has been one of the greatest gifts that I have been given to be exposed to people from different backgrounds, with different stories. [It] is what has enriched my life to meet people who lived a life of privilege and to hear what that life of privilege…I mean, it is astounding to me, but then to meet people who lived life on the margin and continue to have a love of humanity as a guiding principle for them.

So with being part of the Peace Jam, meeting Nobel Peace Prize winners from around the world, spending time with Rigoberto Mantrutu, Betty Williamson, Mered McGuire, with Shirin Abadi, these amazing women who, in many ways, were on the margins in their societies but lived out of a place that this society can be better, not just for me, but for everybody.

And I am going to use my story and whatever access I have to making this better for others. Just blows my mind!!

[00:35:32] Jason Rudman: Listen, we're getting church right here. Like you are in sermon mode, even if you said, look, that's not what I was supposed to be doing with my life. I'm telling you right now, I'm just listening to you. You are in full on preacher mode. And you know, not everybody's going to be seeing this, but I think I just reduced the Reverend Naomi Tutu to..kind of laughter there because she's like, I found my way into this, that's not where I was going to go.

What I appreciate about what you just described is we all have the capacity to burn brighter than our station in life. That's what you just described. And it is very often humans with the least that burn the brightest and point us in a way that is good for society, is good for humanity, is good for the world.

And so, I said you were preaching right there, so we'll go there, but in the context of this volatile and uncertain world that we're in, right. What do you see as the role of faith and religion in our future narrative and especially if we connect it to your outline of what you see politically here?

What do you see as the role of faith and religion in our future narrative as a force for good, particularly as you and I talked about, attendance to religious service largely down, our connection to faith feels like a very introspective, not often talked about and when talked about, not necessarily talked about in a way that can uplift and move forward peoples, nations, the world. So, your thoughts?

[00:37:12] Naomi Tutu: Yeah. So I'm a clergy person, so I have a love for the church and it is a love that is both fed and feeding of our faith, but also a love that therefore is clear of the places that we have to criticize what Christianity particularly…

So I'm going to speak as a Christian. I think that people of other faith traditions can take it and look at their faith traditions and see what is going on in their communities, but as a Christian, I actually preached about this a few weeks ago at the parish that I serve as a priest associate.

And I said, I want you to go back to 9-11, the American 9-11 not the Chilean 9-11, and think back to people's response after 9-11 kept being, where are the good Muslims to criticize what is going on? And I said to them, and today, people are asking, where are the good Christians to say that Christian nationalism is not the Word of God?

It is not Christian. It is not the faith that is supposed to come from a leader, a Messiah, who said ‘a new commandment I give you.’ If you don't read the Bible at all, you should at least read the one commandment that he said, ‘I give you a new commandment that you love one another.’

And so anytime our faith is not about love, then it cannot be our faith. And what we are seeing is a Christianity that has been weaponized to be misogynistic, to be homophobic, to be xenophobic, to be racist. You cannot claim to be a Christian if you do not love your fellow beings.

And don't tell me about I love the sinner, I hate the sin.That is not a thing. If you are using your faith to enable the oppression, dehumanization, the exclusion of others, then it cannot be Christian faith. And I wish that we had more faith leaders who are of that position that I have just stated, out in the marketplace reclaiming Christianity.

Because, I promise you that part of the reason that our numbers are falling is that people are saying, well, the loudest voices that are claiming Christianity are the voices that are telling me that I am less than because I'm a woman, telling me that I am less than because I am LGNTQIA plus, telling me that I am less than because I am an immigrant. How can we allow that to be the voice of Christianity?

That for me is the challenge of our faith at this time is that we have allowed our faith to be hijacked by people who clearly, when they heard Jesus say a new commandment I give you, heard Jesus say that you hate those who are not like you. And so, they are reading a completely different Jesus story from the Jesus story I was raised with and I'm really frustrated that those leaders in our faith who say this is not a Christian message say it in the safety of our sanctuaries [or] say it in the safety of our Sunday School classes.

I'm not saying it with megaphones the way that those who are using Christian nationalism as their podium are doing it, that we have ceded, we have actually ceded the public arena of what faith is to those who are using faith as a weapon to bludgeon and actually kill our brothers and sisters.

[00:41:59] Jason Rudman: And to deny access, right? Again, I think a theme of everything that we've talked about is access. So you know, the world is volatile and uncertain. What gives you hope?

[00:42:10] Naomi Tutu: So, I always say that what gives me hope is looking to the past and seeing what the young people are about for our future.

So, when I say that looking to the past, I am so aware that so many people fought against apartheid who never saw the end of apartheid; that people sacrificed their lives, people went into exile, people spent time in prison and people worked for an end to apartheid, even knowing, for many of them, that they would never see the end of that system of oppression.

But, that they had a faith that somewhere down the line, people were going to see an end to apartheid. And I am a beneficiary of all those people who struggled, who died, who never saw apartheid [end], but had the faith that this system could not be sustained forever.

So, that to me is a huge source of hope that there are people who dreamt of my freedom and were willing to sacrifice for my freedom. They didn't know me. My great, great, great, greatparents never knew me but they believed in…that at some point in the future of their children's, children's, children's children, that one day they would be a free South Africa. And they struggled for that.

And so, I mean who am I then to not have hope when I actually was fortunate enough to see the end of this system that so many gave their lives for? So that is my first source of hope that I come from a line of people who believed that freedom would be a reality and struggled for it.

And then, the second is when I look at our young people and in so many parts of the world, we have young people leading the charge around climate change, we have young people challenging the narrative around Israel and Palestine, we have young people questioning an economic structure that continues to benefit a small portion of the world's population and keeps a vast majority of the world's population in poverty, in hunger, in need.

And that to me is hope.

To see young people, and not so young people - because I'm around people - I think there's a group that, it came out of the Children's Defense Fund, that was started by Marian Wright Edelman, and she then convened a council of elders. So, these are people who are even older than I am, most of them, and their whole focus is how do we make the world better for the children.

So I keep saying young people, but it's not just young people, I find hope in all the people who believe that the world can be better and don't just say the world can't be better, but are doing things.

And some of the things, we always look for the huge, dramatic acts that make it to the media that are the headline news. One of the things that gives me the most hope is that I get the opportunity because I travel around speaking to hear about small projects that people are doing in their community that are making a change for people. Whether it is children who are getting fed and getting cared for, or the incarcerated who are being visited and are being prepared for life once they are out of prison, that the young people who are being tutored, old people who are being visited and kept connected to the larger community.

So there is all of that out there that, I mean, human beings are pretty amazing when they are given the opportunity to be amazing. And when we believe that we can make a difference in our world, the things that I have seen people do, and say, and be, when they believe, gives me hope.

[00:47:14] Jason Rudman: I feel I need to bottle that up and just say when people ask me, why did you create this platform, More Elephant - we have two ears, one mouth, [and] we should probably use our ears much more than we use our mouth, and the tagline is, listen, learn, live better - it is encapsulated with what you just said.

The human spirit is one of positivity and change is so often the small things and when you build all of those small things together, that's how you create the crescendo. And, we so often are only paying attention to these big things and we celebrate them, and they're remarkable, because they are needle moving. But so many of these little changes, this platform is about sharing ideas and inspiring change. So I thank you for that. And it wasn't anything that we planned.

We're almost at time. One more question. So your father, prolific, the world knows who he is. You started this conversation with, so often, people say, well, I know your story, and you're like, well, you don't…you know who my father is. Who was your mother? What did you learn from your mother?

[00:48:24] Naomi Tutu: So the first thing I learned from my mother was that I did not need to be Desmond Tutu Jr., and she was so adamant about that when we were growing up.

You know, how people will say, Oh my goodness and she's a priest's child. And they would say to my mom, and you're a priest's wife’ and my mother was really right back and say, yes, exactly what you said. Priest's something. We are not priests. Only one person in this household chose to go to seminary and he is living out his call. We will also live out our calls and we will find out what our path is.

And so, I think that was the most liberating thing my mother ever could have said and ever said consistently was it doesn't matter what people say. You are not meant to be a carbon copy of your father, a miniature version of your father, Desmond Tutu, Mark II. That is not who God created you to be. You were created to be yourself and to find out what it is that you yourself have to give to the world.

[00:49:42] Jason Rudman: Find your table. You and I are seasoned. That's what I like to say. That's the new word I'm using, seasoned. You know, I said to somebody the other day, I'm feeling a little older, they're like, you're not older, you're seasoned. So we're going to go with seasoned.

And somebody asked as you've fallen down seven times, you've picked yourself up eight times. You've gotten to this point in your life. What piece of advice would you give to somebody? What I've come to share is be the writer and producer of your play, not an actor in somebody else's.

And I think that connects very deliberately to what your Mom said, you were put on the surf to find your spot, even though there's a bright light here that will encompass you and wrap you in love. But find your light, find your table.

[00:50:28] Naomi Tutu: Exactly.

[00:50:29] Jason Rudman: What a blessing. Thank you. I am so honored to have just spent the last 60 or so minutes with you. Thank you for sharing your story. How do people find out more about how you view the world and engage in you in conversation beyond this? How do people get in touch?

[00:50:48] Naomi Tutu: So I do have a website, but I don't even know what my website is.

[00:50:54] Jason Rudman: I know what it is. It is www. naomitutu.com. So I know what it is.

[00:51:01] Naomi Tutu: My daughter runs it for me.

[00:51:03] Jason Rudman: And I know your daughter as well. So we will figure all of this out. We started in joy. We will end in joy. I feel like because I've reduced you to laughter and tears at least three times in this conversation, that this has been a home run.

[00:51:14] Naomi Tutu: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:51:18] Jason Rudman: Oh my goodness, my goodness, I feel as though I want to invite you back after you've taken in everything that happens on your sojourner to the West Bank in East Jerusalem.

I feel as though that will give a perspective to people that appreciate that there are a number of voices that hold different points of view about this and we have to figure out a way to solve that as just one of the many conflicts that humanity is looking at and staring at and saying, how can we be better? So I may ask for a repeat, if that's okay.

[00:51:53] Naomi Tutu: Okay, that would be wonderful. Thank you.

​More Elephant Outro