Last week at Westminster, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu made a special address to everyone involved in international partnerships. Here are some highlights of a speech which was both spiritual and a ringing endorsement of the power of international partnerships to foster cross cultural understanding:

There’s an awful lot of awful news – we hear a great deal about that. We don’t hear enough about the good things.

You are the cat's whiskers!  You put a smile on God’s face – and I have a hotline!

The media are very good at finding good news, bad news - if you know what I mean. It’s not telegenic. I think that is untrue. When people hear the things that you are doing the gloom we experience globally, the pessimism would lift.

There's only one way to eat an elephant - a piece at a time.

So frequently we say – my little bit, what difference does it make? Many people say, this is so massive it is almost insignificant what I am doing.

Don’t ever be inveigled by that argument.

Do you know the starfish story?  A child is walking along a beach that is covered with starfish. And all the starfish have turned up the wrong way and they are waving their legs in the air and can’t get back to the waves.

The boy walks along and turns them over one by one, when along comes an old man – someone like me – and he says to the boy, “What are you doing? You must be crazy! This whole beach is covered with starfish!”

“For this starfish,” the boy replies, as he turns another, “for this one – it really matters.”

There’s only one way to eat an elephant: a piece at a time.

Be more exuberant!  Celebrate - celebrate!

Things change.

I used to go to Lords and you would sit there and clap quietly. “Well played, well played,” you'd say.

Now the British have really learnt something from their sisters and brothers in the Caribbean.
Be more exuberant!

Celebrate - celebrate!

Some people think God made a mistake in creating us. No. When God created us he was rubbing his hands. “This is pretty good… This is lovely!”

You shouldn’t be going around as if you were an apology. You aren’t. You are the best thing God created: YOU.

You are not an after thought.

You are not an accident - some of us might look like accidents - but you are not an accident. God has placed us here.

If our world is going to be saved, it’s not going to be enacting the war against terrorism.

We won’t win the war against terrorism as long as there are conditions in the world that make people desperate. I can tell you that.

You are saying that we are family. And if we don’t learn this lesson pretty quickly we are candidates for extinction.

To use my hotline. God says, “Thank you. Thank you for putting a smile on my face.”

How did they do that?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was speaking at a meeting of the charity BUILD (Building Understanding Through International Links for Development).

He was also interviewed by The Sunday Programme on BBC Radio 4.

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