He was not wearing sackcloth and ashes, but Tiger Woods met with a select, closed group of reporters and issued a statement of apology and regret about the behavior that was a nightly staple of the news for a while. Woods says that he is in intensive psychotherapy and that he is turning to religion to help him turn his life around.
Frank Lockwood at Bible Belt Blogger says that this is probably not what Brit Hume had in mind, but here is some of what Woods said:
“I owe it to my family to become a better person. I owe it to those closest to me to become a better man. That’s where my focus will be. I have a lot of work to do, and I intend to dedicate myself to doing it.
Part of following this path for me is Buddhism, which my mother taught me at a young age. People probably don’t realize it, but I was raised a Buddhist and I actively practised my faith from childhood until I drifted away from it in recent years.
Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes and unhappy and pointless search for security. It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint. Obviously I lost track of what I was taught.”
Most of us would probably prefer to do live our mortality and penitence in quiet obscurity. Repentance is hard enough without the whole world watching your every move.