Reflections on Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom 
By Bruce McIver

[Dr. Bruce McIver is a well-known author and public speaker. Before retirement he was pastor of the Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas.]

I've just finished reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. It's a challenging and magnificent read. As you know, he spent 28 years of his life in prison--in the worst of privations. But, like his hero, Gandhi, he both refused to bow to the authorities and to retaliate with violence.

Near the end of his prison stay he was given a small piece of ground that he cultivated into a garden, growing a variety of vegetables and plants.

"A garden was one of the few things in prison that one could control. To plant a seed, watch it grow, to tend it and then harvest it, offered a simple but enduring satisfaction. The sense of being the custodian of this small patch of earth offered a small taste of freedom.

In some ways, I saw the garden as a metaphor for certain aspects to my life. A leader must also tend his garden; he, too, plants seeds, and then watches, cultivates, and harvests the result. Like the gardener he must mind his work, try to repel the enemies, preserve what can be preserved, and eliminate what cannot succeed.

I wrote Winnie torn letters about a particular beautiful tomato plant, how I coaxed it from a tender seedling to a robust plant that produced deep red fruit. But, then, either through some mistake or lack of care, the plant began to wither and decline, and nothing I did would bring it back to health. When it finally died, I removed the roots from the soil, washed them, and buried them in a corner of the garden.

I narrated this small story at great length. I do not know what she read into that letter, but when I wrote it I had a mixture of feelings: I did not want our relationship to go the way of that plant, and yet I felt that I had been unable to nourish many of the most important relationships in my life. Sometimes there is nothing one can do to save something that must die." (Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, Little, Brown and Company, 1994, pp. 489-490)

I have read Mandela's words dozens of times--words of wisdom that grew out of pain and privation, suffering and aloneness for 28 years. Words of a prophet.

In retrospect, too much of my time has been spent pulling up dead or dying tomato plants, examining them, whining and wishing for some sign of life. In short, I've too often given energy to "saving" things that have already died.

Sometimes it's time for a funeral…and a benediction. Amen.

Updated Sunday, December 17, 2000