September 14, 2005
Changes
It’s taken six years plus Katrina for the president to admit a mistake. It was a welcome surprise when he did and an example we can all attend to. It’s never easy, and it surely was not easy for him. But, we might well ask in the light of these years of dissembling on other matters, So what?
Life patterns of denial and grandiosity are often symptoms of addictive personalities. Twelve Step programs have this in mind when, after several cleansing and confessional steps and strenuous introspection, one must “make amends,” a move that is often wrongly understood as merely saying one is sorry. To amend something means to change it, and, in this instance, to change one’s behavior at the least into a more productive direction.
A lot of mistakes led up to Katrina, not just the president’s, though an office of such great privilege must always accept great responsibility sooner of later. We’ll probably never know how much our collectively careless stewardship of the environment, of the economy, of society, of the poor, of international relations, and whatever left us so pitifully vulnerable. Nor can we avoid being curious as to what led to this sudden change in the president’s behavior, but we can and must be grateful for it and seriously consider following it ourselves.
But now come the amends. Addiction is a spiritual malady that takes many forms. We dare not relegate it only to chemistry, for it is also and mostly an inerrant and selfish lusting after and use of control and power. What changes is our administration and are we willing to make in our stewardship as we move through these Steps in our own ways to the eventual spiritual cleansing, awakening, and renewal that they promise?