The Wardman Wire

Those of us who are have stuck it out this far through Lent might have been struck by the flurry of apologies earlier this week. Trouble is, none of them seemed to be quite good enough for everyone.

1. Australian Humility? That Can’t be Right….

The apology made by the Australian PM, in a public event, to the Aboriginal peoples, was the strongest statement yet made to the native inhabitants of ‘Australia’ by the white colonisers. However, it’s been criticised as being talk but no action, in the absence of concrete actions to back it up.

After years of calling for an official recognition of the wrongs done to them by settlers, many Aboriginal leaders and communities (“the first Australians”) were today rejoicing at the gesture. But they point out that concrete resources are needed to address the legacy of historical injustices. (from Ekklesia )

This is reminiscent of the debate over slavery in the UK around this time last year, and whether any form of compensation over and above an apology would be appropriate. It’s a fairly new Oz government, so Kevin Rudd probably needs more time.

2. The Lightening Conductor Speaks

The apology made by the Archbishop of Canterbury

I must of course take responsibility for any unclarity in either that text or in the radio interview, and for any misleading choice of words that has helped to cause distress or misunderstanding among the public at large and especially among my fellow Christians . It’s Lent, and one of the great penitential phrases of the Psalms will be in all our minds – ‘Who can tell how oft he offendeth? Cleanse thou me from my secret faults’.

This seemed as far as he could go, since there are major questions over whether he has anything to apologise for, or whether wilful misinterpretation by the media is the prime culprit. The most pathetic sight of the start of the week was the BBC news trying to find somebody, anybody, in the CofE who wanted Rowan Williams to resign, in a desperate attempt to keep the story running. The round of applause at General Synod killed the resignation story, and the Beeb have since ignored the issue, Question Time excepted.

3. A Running Sore?

Then there’s Dwain Chambers, who apologises, pays the penalty, changes his behaviour, and then is just too good on his return to the sport.

There is a question about whether he’s sorry he did drugs, or sorry he got caught, but he’s certainly got guts to face his critics. Mind you:

• He can run away faster than they can chase him.
• By the sight of him, it’s not him who’d be running away.

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

In my line of work, I make a lot of use in marriage preparation with the concept of the target=”_blank” title=”Five Love Languages” ‘5 love languages’. It can help explain why (allegedly) women like flowers whilst men prefer sex. The basic idea is that there are 5 main languages/dialects with which we express love, and different ones come naturally to different people. Because we speak some of these more naturally than others, we can struggle to recieve love if it’s not in our ‘language’, and struggle to express love in a language we don’t ’speak’ very well. Here they are:

• Words of Affirmation
• Quality Time
• Gifts
• Acts of Service
• Physical affection

Which may, or may not, help you to work out why your Valentine’s Day went so well/so badly, after you gave him/her chocolates but didn’t tell him/her that he/she is the most beautiful man/woman on the planet. (Ed: inclusive language is hard work)

How We Say Sorry

The author behind the website above, Gary Chapman, has also identified what he calls ‘The 5 languages of apology’ . (I feel a franchise coming on. Fill in your own gap and write a book, “the 5 languages of…………..”).

Anyway, the principle is the same, for each of us some of these will come more naturally than others. At the same time, for each of us an apology isn’t an apology until it’s in our ‘language’, because we struggle to translate it out of the other languages into our own.

Here are the five:

1. Express Regret
2. Accept Responsibility
3. Make Restitution
4. Geniunely Repent
5. Request Forgiveness

So Kevin Rudd did 1, 2 and 4, Rowan Williams did 1 and 2 (sort of), and Dwain Chambers has done 1 and 3.

Politicians are adept at sounding like they’ve done all 5 but doing none of them.

This all suggests that, unless we do all of them all in one go, there will always be people who feel we haven’t properly apologised. Drat.

Wrapping Up…

I guess the blame culture doesn’t make it any easier - a more adversarial society with people standing on their rights is a harsher environment for words of apology, grace and forgiveness. It makes an apology look like an admission of defeat, rather than just a normal part of human relationships.

And maybe the spiritual pendulum has swung too far as well.

After centuries of majoring on human sinfulness (Book of Common Prayer : “have mercy upon us, miserable sinners”), the church is now much more likely to talk about:

• human potential,
• the face we are made in God’s image,
• and that God loves us.

All this is right and good, but we have to hold it in tension with Jesus teaching in the Lords prayer :

“forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”.

We have all sinned, all of us need to learn how to apologise.

And how to accept apologies, of course.

And Cricket?

What spiritual discipline helps us with this? Become an England cricket fan.

There is nothing better at teaching you to put the failures of others behind you, to let them go, and give people another chance to get it right.

Of course, the Ozzies won’t apologise for their cricket.

They don’t need to.

Tags: apologies, cricket, forgiveness, kevin rudd, archbishop rowan williams, dwain chambers[tags]apologies, cricket, forgiveness, kevin rudd, archbishop rowan williams, dwain chambers[/tags]