The Cross of Ubuntu
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Ubuntu appears as a wonderful word, but I feel a bit cheated because
I wasn’t raised from childhood hearing that word. Only in that wise
can we really come to know the vast spiritual and physical
complexity that is Ubuntu; I believe it has its root in Nature.
If, while driving down a country road, we see a field of various
types of flowers in full bloom, we might stop the car, get out, and
take a picture and marvel in its beauty. But when those flowers are
people, we become crippled in our appreciation of them—we seem to
separate ourselves from Nature—as if Nature is not a part of us.
In the context of prayer, I see Ubuntu as a communicative essence,
forming itself into an angular and cross-cut structure coming into
us invisibly and flowing out from us visibly in all directions at
once, to spread itself out as Love enmeshed and inscribed upon the
face of Creation. And when we yell our agony to God from our
prayerful place, Heaven and Nature rush to embrace and comfort us,
and we hear it and feel it and it is unbearably beautiful.
It is in this “embracing” that the spiritual weds with the physical,
and we can then ask and “feel” in a more “full” way: “dear Lord,
direct us to the fulfilling of your purpose ...”
Paraphrased from: “Between a Rock and a Beautiful Place” (by Br.
Anthony-Francis) and "A Collect for Grace" (Book of Common Prayer,
page 100)
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