God too is necessarily dependent on love.… God would not exist unless there is someone to love. In such love, we are all invited out of exile and into the holy life.
—Michael Battle, “A Holy Exile”
CAC affiliate faculty Dr. Michael Battle served as chaplain for South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1931–2021). He writes about Tutu’s passionate belief that we all belong and are invited out of exile:
For Tutu, God is a fellowship, a community, not an individual or modality. God is unified because love binds the three persons of God together. So, God created us the same way—out of love, not out of necessity. Herein is one of Tutu’s greatest contributions to how a holy life moves out of exile—namely, no one can be human alone.…
I heard Tutu preach often when I served as his chaplain. One of his common refrains was that each of us represents God, not just the clever, the strong, the rich, the beautiful, the tall, or the impressive ones.… Tutu would go on to explain how monumental this was in terms of a paradigm shift—namely that in God, no one is exiled. Now, the old black lady that cleans houses and takes care of white children, whose employers do not even use her real name “because it is too difficult” and simply call her a generic name like Mary or Jane—when she walks down the street, and people ask, “Who’s that?” she will now think with her head in her heart, “I am God’s representative.” This is what I mean by Tutu’s holy life: He facilitated the perspective in others, even among those despised on this planet, that they are holy people. This was Tutu’s genius—that everyone, religious and nonreligious, friend and enemy, are all created in the image of God.
It also must be said of Tutu’s holy life that he said his prayers. He didn’t pray ostentatiously, which Jesus warned against, but through his daily disciplines and rule of life. Tutu prayed the way my Apple watch makes me stop and breathe deeply several times a day. In addition to the Anglican daily office, Tutu recognized the wisdom of the Eastern world that prayer is tied to how we breathe. We all have the spirit of life breathed into us, and life is thus a gift from God. For Tutu, we become God’s breath in the world in order to transfigure creation to look like the Creator. I can still hear Tutu say, in his pastoral visits to churches, that you and I are placed in this world of hatred, violence, anger, injustice, and oppression to help God transform it, transfigure it, and change it so that there will be compassion, laughter, joy, peace, reconciliation, fellowship, friendship, togetherness, and family, and so that black and white people would want to be together as members of one family: God’s family, the human family. We are here to bring others out of exile.
Reference:
Michael Battle, “A Holy Exile,” ONEING 13, no. 1, Loving in a Time of Exile (2025): 77, 78. Available in print or PDF download.
Image credit and inspiration: Kryuchka Yaroslav, Untitled (detail), photo, USA, Adobe Stock. Click here to enlarge image. Things will break, and we are invited, when ready, to put the pieces back together again.
Story from Our Community:
I was raised Catholic and put myself into self-imposed exile decades ago. After a failed marriage, children to support, and a hectic career in Silicon Valley, going to Mass felt like a “repeat after me” empty exercise. Now in reading the Daily Meditations from CAC, I am learning to apply contemplation to a very ordinary and simple life. When I talk to God, I speak to the creator of the Earth, the oceans, the mountains, the forests, the cosmos and I rest in the simple question, “What is mine to do?” Thank you for offering me the courage to know that this path—this prayer—is a worthy one.
—Carol H.
