What’s been going on in Iran over the last two months is unspeakably painful and unabashedly evil. I find myself screaming silently, none of us even knowing how many thousands of people have fallen into the black hole of torture or murder at the hands of the Iranian government. All that is multiplied by the agonizing, unbearable grief of their friends and loved ones.
Our pain only increases when we consider America’s role in overthrowing the democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, his having committed to the audacious idea that the Iranian oil reserves should belong to the people of Iran. Imagine! For all our talk about supporting democracy, how often we ourselves have blocked it when it didn’t serve what we felt to be in our “national interest.” And often we were terribly, terribly wrong.
Truly, how many people have died over the last hundred years - the answer, by the way, is many more than a million - because America wanted someone else’s oil? The American people are recognizing these things finally. Our healing, now, in our own dark hour, can only be accomplished by a deep and meaningful moral reckoning. The absolute soullessness, even murderousness, of so much of American foreign policy over the past 80 years must be on the list of things we admit to God with our deepest and most sincere remorse. Read one article about what’s going on in Iran today, consider what might have happened if we hadn’t overthrown democracy in that country years ago, and I defy you not to fall to your knees.
If I’ve learned anything in my life, it’s that the world isn’t black and white. As much respect as I hold for President Eisenhower for his role as Supreme Allied Commander fighting the Nazis in WW2, I abhor his decision to participate in Operation Ajax. As much as I admire Lyndon Johnson for his domestic policies like the War on Poverty and Civil Rights legislation, I recognize his abject war crime waging the Vietnam War. These are dramatic examples of the uniquely American character: when we are good, we are very very good, and when we’ve been bad, it’s not an overstatement to say we have brought unnecessary pain and suffering to people around the world.
The spiritual healing of the United States will precede any chance we have at political repair. This is a moment to be deeply sober, even somber, about our country’s past mistakes, for only in allowing ourselves to genuinely feel what we have done will we release the spiritual power of redemption. Whether we like it or not, what goes around does come around. Every Cause does have an Effect. And truthfully, what America is now doing to itself we have done to others multiple times. Before someone got inside the gates to assault our own democracy, we assaulted the democracies of other people whenever we damn well pleased.
I know, I know, it’s very tempting to say, “But I didn’t do that!” And of course you didn’t, unless the likes of Henry Kissinger are rising up from the grave to read my Substack. Yet there’s a difference between taking blame and taking responsibility. You take responsibility for the karmic debts of your nation not because you personally incurred them, but because you have inherited them. When a company buys another one, it inherits its debts as well as its assets.
And it’s time. All of us feel so powerless now before the horrifying suffering in Iran today. There’s no easy fix, though it grieves me terribly that President Trump told the Iranian people to keep protesting … that “help is on the way.” Clearly, it was not. That’s not to say I know what President Trump should do in this situation, by the way. It’s not an easy one by any means. But if only we’d kept our hands off in 1953….
Let’s atone for America’s mistakes, knowing that Divine Intelligence then undoes their effects. Let’s pray for the people of Iran, and for the suffering they endure now. Let’s open our hearts in humility and grace, praying that God in His infinite mercy will work a miracle for the people of Iran. For every Iranian man, woman, and child now enduring the agony of this moment, may an angel set them free of the evil that has befallen them. None of us know how miracles work, but in the greater glory of God’s infinite universe may a miracle be upon them now.
Dear God,
Please send miracles to the people of Iran.
Pave a way for their freedom.
Comfort them in their agony.
Lift them up in their grief.
Take away their fear.
Free them, heal them, and help them, dear God.
We atone for our part in the darkness that has befallen them.
May Your Love repair us all.
Amen
And so it is. May it be so.
THANK YOU, MARIANNE WILLIAMSON! Anyone born in the USA carries the national karmic need for HUMILITY and ATONEMENT.
What i appreciate is your willingness to take responsibility for humanity's collective shadow. "Yes!" to, "We atone for our part in the darkness that has befallen them."