2026 Season: Episode 5 with Reverend Mpho Tutu van Furst
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Forgiveness frees me. Forgiveness frees you. Forgiveness clears the path. Forgiveness sees through.
In one of the most profound conversations of the season, host Lisa Littlebird sits down with the Reverend Canon Mpho Tutu van Furth — Episcopal priest, artist, author, and daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu — beaming in from the Netherlands for a conversation about the most demanding and perhaps most necessary human practice: forgiveness.
Mpho is the co-author (with her father, Desmond Tutu) of The Book of Forgiving, which many members of Wholehearted Chorus have been reading together in a season-long book club. This conversation is the living extension of that work — rich, personal, and beautifully honest.
Together Lisa and Mpho walk the fourfold path of forgiveness: why "I'm sorry, let's move on" is not the same as repair; how skipping the step of naming the hurt leaves stones in the shoe of every relationship; the way righteous indignation becomes a fortress we hide inside; and why guilt and shame, if left unexamined, become the very thing that keeps us from facing the harm we've caused.
They explore the African concept of ubuntu, an ancient African philosophy meaning "humanity" or "I am because we are”, as a fundamentally different frame for forgiveness, one where healing can only be collective. And they hold a timely tension: the difference between a healthy boundary and a closed heart, and what the epidemic of family estrangement may cost us in loneliness and regret.
Woven in: the remarkable story of Lyndsey Scott, Wholehearted Chorus's primary song collaborator this season, whose own profound forgiveness story led to a songwriting partnership across prison walls — and the inmates at Fort Dodge Prison currently working The Book of Forgiving together.
The episode closes with the words of Lyndsey's forgiveness song — first spoken, then sung.
The Book of Forgiving is available from book sellers everywhere.
Forgiveness and Reparation, the Healing Journey is the other book by Mpho referenced in the podcast.
Lyndsey and Tony’s story was shared here with permission. Learn more in the 3rd and final conversation with Lyndsey coming soon here in this podcast season.
Get “All the Colors” on Bandcamp, as part of her new Work Of Love EP:
A Song For All Of Us: asongforallofus.org
Wholehearted Chorus: wholeheartedchorus.org
Wholehearted Chorus October Concert Tickets:wholeheartedchorus.org/tickets
Live well. Sing more.
