Sunday, August 11, 2002
Sunday, August 11, 2002
For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few
who find it.
"There's not a city you can enter," he said, "not a cab, a hotel, a school, a theater, a store you
can visit in which someone might not hold you in contempt. Your very name can inspire
revulsion in almost every nook and cranny from coast to coast. How can you live with this?
Why have you not taken your life?" Anderson wanted to understand how any person could
survive such terrible public shame. John Ehrlichman, after all, had been a trusted aide to the
President of the United States. His fall--going from the White House, where he wielded
enormous power, to the prison in which he served his time--had been steep, complete and
humiliating. What kept him alive?
"I thought about dying," Ehrlichman said. "Actually, I thought about it a lot...I had to decide for
myself whether to live or to die. That was the choice. No one else could pull me out of
self-pity. If I couldn't live with the truth that many people will never accept me as a person. If I
have to depend on others for my self-esteem, then I must choose death. If I wanted to live, I
had to quit my depression. I had to say my life had value, and I had to mean it. I chose life."
John Ehrlichman's voice had been soft until his last sentence: "I chose life." Anderson said he
would never forget those words or the voice in which he spoke them. It sounds like this time,
perhaps, John Ehrlichman has chosen wisely. The decision to follow Christ is a decision to
choose life.
(Matthew 7.14
NRSV)
Walter Anderson, editor of PARADE magazine interviewed John Ehrlichman for a job as a
writer immediately after Ehrlichman's involvement in the Watergate scandal and his
subsequent stay in prison. Anderson decided to throw caution to the wind and ask Ehrlichman
a very pointed question.
Loving God, may I make the decision everyday to choose life and to choose you. Amen.
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