An Elder Statesman Calls For Youth to Lead the Way

The 655 girls of the private Holton-Arms School in Bethesda had read about Desmond Tutu. They knew him in the abstract as a great man: archbishop emeritus of Cape Town; the warrior against South African apartheid; the winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize. A profoundly dignified figure.

He's certainly not the sort you expect to show up at your school and tell a knock-knock joke about Jesus, or jest about President-elect Barack Obama's good looks. Yet that is what he did yesterday, after the parents of a sophomore at the school arranged the visit.

Surrounded by young women ages 8 to 18 and a few hundred parents, teachers and staff, Tutu spoke to all of them, often invoking religion before the secular student body. His speech moved in hairpin turns from giddy, childlike laughter and jokes to the gravity exuded by a 77-year-old man who overcame the white-dominated apartheid government of South Africa. For instance, there was that knock-knock joke.

"Knock knock," Tutu said.

"Who's there?" the audience replied.

"Gabriel."

"Gabriel who?"

"Gabriel the archangel."

The crowd was amused and perplexed as Tutu continued, acting out a conversation between Gabriel and Mary, Jesus's mother.

"Hello, Mary." -- "Hello." -- "I want you to be the mother of the Son." Tutu made an expression of Mary's shock and said in a squeal: "I'm sorry, try next door!"

("It was so cute," said Christine Kim, 18, a senior. "He's just really engaging and funny," said Margot Allen, 17, a senior.)

There was, however, a serious message packed in there. Noting that Mary and several other biblical figures had been teenagers, Tutu told the students that "God has been using young people from the beginning of time," and urged them not to "allow yourselves to be infected by the cynicisms of us oldies."

A case in point, he said, was the next president of the United States.

"You have a young president coming into office in January, and he's not only young," Tutu said, pausing for comic emphasis. "He's handsome as well. I'm not jealous!"

Calling America "a crazy country," he added: "It's so unbelievable. It's such an amazing thing that's happened. You are the leader of the free world. We want an America that is willing to collaborate with others. We want an America that can say things like Guantanamo Bay are abominations. We want an America that cares. You are a fantastic country. The world is filled with a new exhilaration, a new hope."

He encouraged the young women to help change the world.

"You, you, you, you, you," he said, pointing to them. "Will you be my partner? Will you be my helper? Will you help me? God says please, please, please, please."