Do we have ubuntu in our families?

I  am writing this on the feast of St Joseph the Worker, also international Workers’ Day. The family theme for May — parenting and work-family balance — can apply to all of us, young and old, families with young children, teenagers or no children, but obviously in very different ways.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls on South Africans
to “wake up”. (Photo: B Mathur, Reuters/CNS)

Padraig Smith of the bishops’ Department of Ecumenism and I recently attended an ecumenical event, the 7th Annual Ubuntu Lecture and Peace and Dialogue Awards Ceremony of the Turquoise Harmony Institute.

This Turkish organisation promotes interreligious dialogue, peace and harmony among the diversity of all peoples. Awards were presented in various categories, such as education, media, arts and sports. But the highlight of the evening was the thank-you speech by Archbishop Desmond Tutu who received the main honour, the Gulen Peace Award.

In his inimitable and carefully considered way, Archbishop Tutu was able to bring God and religion into a gathering made up to a large extent of secular and political figures, who of course nevertheless are members of different faiths. With reference to our past and our future he concluded: “Wake up South Africa, wake up!”

By the time this column appears we will have woken up to another new dispensation. The election will be over, the rhetoric done with and the work of applying or re-applying ubuntu will be under way again.

What is ubuntu? Have we lost it? Is it dead? Ubuntu is a concept we love to idealise; it is a memory of a traditional life-view and also the African dream.

In 1994 the first Synod of Bishops for Africa gave us a vision too: the Church as the Family of God. This embraced not just the spiritual aspect, but a model, one based on the qualities of the ideal African family which was already then challenged to retain those qualities of warmth in relationships, acceptance, dialogue, trust, solidarity. In other words, ubuntu qualities.

Times have become tougher for family unity as diversity in family forms and experience grows. But we can’t tackle all aspects in one go. Consider the aspect of work, the theme for this month.

We identify with Pope Francis who has much to say on the subject of care for the poor. There is also the issue of whether the poor are doing enough to uplift themselves, but even that is not really our issue here.

Every single family unit has a call to ubuntu, a human but also a spiritual task of building up and strengthening its relationships in whatever context they find themselves. That is the way to become a true domestic Church.

Our focus is on parenting and its components as the subject for reflection and sharing with other members. Fathers, mothers, grandparents, fosterparents, godparents, child-parents do it in different ways, inside or outside the home.

Working outside the home so as to provide for the most suitable education often takes precedence in family life. But are materialistic demands and expectations too high, creating a work-family imbalance? Are we each taking co-responsibility? Are we taking ubuntu into the extended family and community?

Many families, rich or poor, and members of all ages, are doing their best, or are trying to do so.

Around International Family Day on May 15, why not set aside some time away from work and study and everything else and plan to have some fun and your own ubuntu awards celebration? You might be in for a surprise.