Today I spent half the day upgrading my computer to the beta version of ubuntu linux. Ubuntu linux is a [[Linux distribution]] funded by a [[philantrope]] who wants a good easy to use home user operating system to be spread out to the masses, and hopefully with it the ideology of ubuntu. Ubuntu linux also includes edubuntu a special school version of linux to make computing easy and affordable for the education systems of the world, all in the spirit of ubuntu, that is what I do for humanity will make life better for me.
I spent sometime with their homepage and I found this quote by archbishop Desmond tutu about [[ubuntu]].
…It is the essence of being human. It speaks of the fact that my humanity is caught up and is inextricably bound up in yours. I am human because I belong. It speaks about wholeness, it speaks about compassion. A person with ubuntu is welcoming, hospitable, warm and generous, willing to share. Such people are open and available to others, willing to be vulnerable, affirming of others, do not feel threatened that others are able and good, for they have a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that they belong in a greater whole. They know that they are diminished when others are humiliated, diminished when others are oppressed, diminished when others are treated as if they were less than who they are. The quality of ubuntu gives people resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanise them. – Archbishop Desmond Tutu
“God Has A Dream” © 2004 Published by Doubleday
The idea of ubuntu is the idea that we are all in it together and only together can we get out of the mess we got us into. The idea that I am only as human as I treat my fellow humans. The ideas of sharing, openess, warmth, generosity.
A friend of mine working for the Dream center in LA, who had been to Brownsville said:
What they have at Brownsville is a wonderful thing for Christians, but it would be an error calling it revival, Revival is when crimerate drops in neighborhood, when the hungry are feed, the homeless are housed and the community is transformed. When we where at brownsville nobody one block away from the church even knew it was there.
It’s time we get ubuntu! It is time that you and I make a difference in somebody elses life in person, it is not good enough to sponsor a program we need to be in the program, we need to get our own hands dirty, because only when our humanity meets their humanity do we rise up as a community and form ubuntu.