Colsonâs story shows that vibrant renewal is possible, even after scandal and disgrace, but not by trying to erase or correct the past.
Many of Colsonâs obituaries followed a narrative of a man reviled in his earlier life, whose faith conversion had initially been viewed with suspicion and who largely redeemed himself through his nearly four decades of work on behalf of prisoners. Iâll share one excerpt, to illustrate, from The Wall Street Journal: âStill, for nearly four full post-Watergate decades, Colson, who died this past Saturday at age 80, steadfastly practiced what he preached about prisons, prisoners and penal reform. Where criminal justice was concerned, he was Godâs good man, not Nixonâs bad man.
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You must struggle to truly remember this past in all its nuance, error, and humanity. You must resist the common urge toward the comforting narrative of divine law, toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice. The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history. They were people turned to fuel for the American machine. Enslavement was not destined to end, and it is wrong to claim our present circumstance - no matter how improved - as the redemption for the lives of people who never asked for the posthumous, untouchable glory of dying for their children.
He [Winnicott] was by no means a Buddhist, but I believe he, too, healed by modeling being. He mostly used mother/infant vocabulary to describe his mode of relating, but this did not stop him from describing, in disarmingly frank terms, his own internal process:
It is only in recent years that I have become able to wait and
wait . . . and to avoid breaking up this natural process by making
interpretations. . . . It appals me to think how much deep change I
have prevented or delayed . . . by my personal need to interpret. If
only we can wait, the patient arrives at understanding creatively
and with immense joy, and I now enjoy this joy more than I used to
enjoy the sense of having been clever. I think I interpret mainly to let
the patient know the limits of my understanding. The principle is
that it is the patient and only the patient who has the answers. We
may or may not enable him or her to encompass what is known or
become aware of it with acceptance.
By its very nature, this study relies on people with highly visible accomplishments. I worry that some readers might misinterpret this as an implicit worthiness hierarchy that valorizes achieving fame over taking more unseen paths. I also worry that some of the people in the study can feel so unapproachable in what they made of their lives that readers might discount the relevance of learning from them, or be left wondering, âWell, their lives are interesting, but could I ever do what they did?â I share that feeling. Studying Charles Colson made me feel somewhat intimidated by the standard he lived to after prison.
The Dangerous Lure of âLegacyâ
A number of years ago, a few people began to ask me, âWhat do you want your legacy to be?â and âWhat do you want to be remembered for?â At first, this question struck me as reasonable, until I asked Joanne what she thought. âItâs a waste of time to think about your legacy or how you want to be remembered,â Joanne said. âItâs self-centric and distracts from doing whatâs right in front of you. Besides, you won't be here to enjoy it anyway.â
This study reinforced Joanneâs wisdom. Charles Colson achieved a legacy, but not by trying to achieve or burnish his legacy. He had responsibilities to fulfill, too much work left right in front of him to get sidetracked into the irrelevancy of how he would be remembered. He cared far more about how God would assess the way he spent his life while alive than what people would think of him after he was dead. Colson spent his energy principally on responsibilities so far beyond Watergate and Nixon that it was almost as if heâd gone to another solar system. My own read of Colsonâs story is that he did in fact build a âlegacyâ that outlived him, but only as a residual side artifact of living to the responsibilities he chose.
I also take solace from Franklinâs life, in learning that he endured an extended trough in his 50s and 60s (relative to the rest of his life). If Benjamin Franklin can make mistakes and misjudgments, then I donât feel so bad about my own mistakes and misjudgments. If Benjamin Franklin can spend years on efforts that ultimately ended in failure, then I donât feel so bad about my own efforts on projects that ended up being dead ends or cul-de-sacs. If Benjamin Franklin can feel dispirited and in a fog funk, then I donât feel so bad about my own existential fog funks. If Benjamin Franklin can enter his 60s with half of the most significant pages of his life yet to be written, then I feel quite good about the possibilities for the late decades of life.
In writing about Benjamin Franklin and casting back through all the remarkable people in this investigation, Iâm struck by the imperfections in their lives. The stories led me to a gigantic, calming exhale about my own life imperfections, letting go the anchoring weight of past mistakes and missed opportunities. I take from studying them a reminder that I wrote for myself and that I return to whenever I find myself being pulled around backward in the saddle by past regrets: You cannot straighten out the road behind you.