Ariel Dorfman and Desmond Tutu

That very special moment – Ariel Dorfman and Desmond Tutu one Friday morning
You sometimes experience that special moment, and even while you are in it you realise that it is just that – special. One such moment was taking shape in St George’s cathedral one Friday morning in July this year. Desmond Tutu celebrated the Eucharist and one of the incoming guests was Ariel Dorfman, an Argentine-Chilean-American novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist, who also has given his heart to the truth and reconciliation process in Chile.
He is not a Christian but asked to be blessed by the Archbishop (instead of receiving communion). After the Eucharist we assembled in the crypt for coffee and I was sitting next to the two men. Dorfman started off by saying that he at least believed in angels, perhaps that was not such a bad start after all. Tutu did not say so much at this stage but was there, was very much present. And that is perhaps what to quite some extent created the moment. Tutu allowed Dorfman to carry on with his reflections, allowed a presence to unfold, a presence that just meant that incredible togetherness, that we as humans have such unused gifts; this was not the time to come up with good Christian arguments for the Christian Way, it would have been to denounce the presence that was there. Maybe this is so; from the Eucharist may sometimes flow this enormous grace, permeating everything. This was such an occasion. It at the same time allowed for a space that embraced everything human; there was an acceptance.
Being able to engage with these two remarkable men, so different and yet so conducive in terms of the human spirit, I also got inspired: I started to talk about church life in Sweden, unplanned, spontaneously. I said, secularization boarding on secularism, has reached very deep in Swedish souls, for so many years. Once I had a baptism of a child and was then invited to the house where there was a meal. I ventured to say grace and I did so, but before I even had finished one of the parents exclaimed, ‘what are you doing that for?’ And I will never forget the facial expressions of both Dorfman and Tutu: they were incredulous. Should there not be at least a basic understanding and respect of the sacred?
Again, for me, at the time a young priest, to share this very agonising moment with Dorfman and Tutu was very precious. It was like a homecoming, like saying, you did what you were meant to do and it certainly must have had some blessing with it. The term religion can easily be misleading, creating a detachment that is not on par with actual life. It is about God and yet, those who do not believe must also be respected; but likewise those who know the presence of God in this world are called to make that real, not by enforcing on others that which is alien to them, but by being constantly open to that dimension that is of God; a dimension that more than anything else is characterized by grace, something which the world hungers after.