Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
—Step 5 of the Twelve Steps
Richard Rohr names accountability and confession as vital in the healing process:
Early Christians were encouraged to participate in the healing power of communal confession: “So confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, and this will cure you” (James 5:16). Step 5 of the Twelve Steps says the same thing. Clearly, some notion of peer accountability and personal responsibility for our mistakes and failures is essential to heal or restore actual human relationships.
When we human beings honestly and humbly “admit” to one another “the exact nature of our wrongs,” we invariably have a human and humanizing encounter that deeply enriches both sides, and even changes lives—often forever! It’s no longer an exercise to achieve moral purity or regain God’s love, but in fact a direct encounter with God’s love. It’s not about punishing one side, but liberating both sides. God resists our evil and conquers it with good, or how could God ask the same of us?! God shocks and stuns us into love. Only love effects true, healthy inner transformation. Duress, guilt, shunning, or social pressure cannot do this.
Nothing new happens without apology and forgiveness. These are the divine technologies that regenerate every age and every situation. The “unbound” ones are best prepared to unbind the rest of the world. [1]
Writer and activist adrienne maree brown normalizes making mistakes and working towards accountability instead of “canceling” others:
We will tell each other we hurt people, and who. We will tell each other why, and who hurt us and how. We will tell each other what we will do to heal ourselves, and heal the wounds in our wake. We will be accountable, rigorous in our accountability, all of us unlearning, all of us crawling towards dignity. We will learn to set and hold boundaries, communicate without manipulation, give and receive consent, ask for help, love our shadows without letting them rule our relationships, and remember we are of earth, of miracle, of a whole, of a massive river—love, life, life, love.
We all have work to do. Our work is in the light. We have no perfect moral ground to stand on, shaped as we are by this toxic complex time. We may not have time, or emotional capacity, to walk each path together. We are all flailing in the unknown at the moment, terrified, stretched beyond ourselves, ashamed, realizing the future is in our hands. We must all do our work. Be accountable and go heal, simultaneously, continuously. It’s never too late.
We will not cancel us. If we give up this strategy [of canceling], we will learn together the other strategies that will ultimately help us break these cycles, liberate future generations from the burden of our shared and private pain, leaving nothing unspeakable in our bones, no shame in our dirt.
Each of us is precious. We, together, must break every cycle that makes us forget this. [2]
References:
[1] Selected from Richard Rohr, Breathing under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, 10th anniv. ed. (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2011, 2021), 35, 44, 38, 40, 46.
[2] adrienne maree brown, We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2020), 76–77.
Image credit and inspiration: Jenna Keiper, drop (detail), 2020, photo, Albuquerque. Click here to enlarge image. Water’s shapes and currents can be confusing. Where is the beauty in being underwater?
Story from Our Community:
Advanced cancer peeled away layers of my false self and allowed my truest self to break through the surface and breathe for the first time. Three months after I received the miraculous news that I was “cancer free,” the pandemic shut down the world. I watched with compassion and empathy as friends and family struggled with the idea of something larger than themselves directing their path. My experience with cancer guided me in my response to them…. I reminded them that we are not our bank account, our position in the community, or our reflection in the mirror. We are spirit. We are connected. Right now, we breathe; we are seen; we are held. In this moment, and in this way, we are always safe.
—Marcia O.