June 27, 2013  / 19 Tammuz,  5773

Thirty-nine years ago, this summer, the American people watched an unfolding drama that was both captivating and disgraceful, and which culminated on August 9, 1974, when Richard M. Nixon became the first President to resign from office.

I remember the strong of days vividly, as my family was on a camping trip with several other families, and I recall one of my parents' friends remarking, "We are living through history!"

Over and over, I would ask myself the question: Why would someone who had worked so hard to attain the most powerful position in the world give it up?

"By taking this action," Nixon said in a solemn address from the Oval Office the previous evening, "I hope that I will have hastened the start of the process of healing which is so desperately needed in America."

Nixon's departure from Washington did not, however, lead to an immediate resolution to the Watergate scandal and, in fact, it continued to cast a pall over the brief term of his successor, Gerald R. Ford, whose abrupt pardon of his predecessor ensured that voters would not let go of their suspicions two years later.  And, indeed, they would elect someone else as President.

Most dictionaries define the word resign as an act of relinquishing or surrender, or to accept as inevitable.  These terms all convey a loss of control over a particular situation, and the subsequent decision to escape.  This, I believe, was a substantial component of the disgrace that emitted from Washington four decades ago; that a sitting President, charged with moral responsibility could lose self-control enough to authorize illegal activity and then to conceal the evidence of that behavior was a devastating blow to the American narrative.  Moreover, the squelching of any prosecution or public hearing brought about by the executive pardon prevented any possibility for forgiveness.

Herein resides the difference between letting go (about which I wrote last week) and resignation:  when we let go of anger, frustration, failure, we do so with an intent to forgive ourselves and the people with whom we commune, for the sake of moving on to a better place; when we resign from adversity, it may afford oneself temporary shelter but resignation prevents the necessary cycle of forgiveness from cleansing oneself of the ordeal.  So, in Nixon's case, there was anything but healing going on during the ensuing months of his departure.

Our recognition of the perils of resignation would be a healthy step in the maintenance of our relationships and communal entities.  When people resign from memberships, as some people choose to do when dealing with problems at their synagogues, it deprives all parties of the chance to perform repentance and to achieve forgiveness.  It prevents not only the resign-ers but also the institution from letting go of the hurt.

Susan Gregory, an author, Bible teacher, and life coach, writes that "letting go of the past takes work ... If we want to move into a New Beginning, we must let go of the past. Again, the choice is ours. Will we purpose to do it, or will we stay in the rut of the past?"