Confession
Creepy men behind grates whispering forgiveness. Mantras repeated while fondling tiny beads to count off your punishment. Sins reveled in to be neatly absolved- go on, do another evil, it's OK.
This is what I used to think about confession.
I come from a fairly unreligious background: I grew up Methodist but rarely went to church and really only liked going for the watery fruit punch and stale cookies after the bells rang and organ bellowed us out of the stain-glassed hall. And for the arts and crafts. I remember making little pinch pots with little crooked crosses pressed into the brown clay. I asked to go to Sunday School more often after that. Jesus? He was the guy with the sandals and beard who went around washing peoples feet (guh-rohss!), right?
So when I went from a rough, multi-ethnic (like 90 languages spoken) public school where tight pants, black eyeliner, aqua-netted bangs, and a hard ass stare were the uniform, transferring to an almost all white Catholic high school was a culture shock. I went from cliquey popular to painfully shy and didn't think that most of the kids "got" what real life was like. But life is always real, right, no matter where you are. I didn't get that.
There were a lot of other things I didn't get. Like Mass. The whole standing up and sitting down thing, the call and response, the wafer thing. Even though I wasn't a huge fan of interaction within the service, I did think that the whole "Peace be with you" part was pretty cool, even if it meant acknowledging the people around me.
Then there was the whole confession thing.
I asked my catholic friends about it and apparently you go in and say what you did that was bad and the priest tells you to say Hail Mary or whatever and you are free from those sins. Um, OK. So you can do whatever you want and you'll be forgiven? Sounds like a lot of bullshit to me. All those catholics running around molesting kids and cheating on their spouses and hurting people and they are just forgiven like that? That's nonsense. Fucked up even.
Fast forward about 20 years (Wow!). I am 34 and long out of Catholic school. I have been on a sailboat in the Caribbean islands for the past month and a half and have spent much of that time disconnected from distraction- no constant connection to internet and all the distractions within a distraction that portal has to offer. No phone (not as if I'm a real phone talker anyway as most my friends know). No meetings or errands or lunches or To-Do lists other than what needs to be done on this boat. Cleaning, cooking, serving. That's about it. Yes, that takes up about 16 hours of my day. Sure I get breaks and can lay on my bunk and write this, but I always have my ear perked for the inevitable, "Jenny? Jenny, there you are. Can I have/Can you do/Can you cook/Where is...?" I am on duty at all times in the 72 ft kingdom of this boat.
Once again I digress. What is the point? I have a lot of freaking time to think. It's like meditation with my eyes open. I have led a pretty awesome life and have not done too much harm in this world, yet there are things I have done that I don't feel great about, situations I wish had gone differently, people I hurt with actions or words I wish I could alter. Regrets? Is that what they are? Some of the things I had little control over they just played out the way they did. Other situations I think I could of changed, been more compassionate, listened more, felt more, kept my mouth shut or spoken more truth.
When uncomfortable memories surface and linger sending me spiraling into an emotional collapse (at least in the eyes, the heart if not the body as visible to others) sometimes I have a hard time pulling myself out of the pit. I don't really have anyone to talk to. (My fellow crew is great but I'm not going to dump all my personal woes on him. Or the guests.) I can't call anyone. Writing in my journal definitely helps but sometimes that is not enough or even exacerbates the pain. My brain keeps on whirring and those events are replayed. I try to follow the Buddhist podcaster's advice to forgive, be compassionate towards myself, love, blah blah blah, etc. But that doesn't help me when all my brain is saying is "You fucked up. Now look where you are. You shouldn't have done it that way. How dumb was that?" It's hard to tell your brain to fuck off (compassion compassion compassion) even when you know that your heart is rooting for your soul.
Thats where the creepy guy behind a grate comes in.
I finally GET confession. Sometimes we just need someone else to tell us we're forgiven. The fact that it is a stranger (or at least someone you don't have to look at) makes it better than a friend because you know that this person doesn't necessarily care about you and want you to feel better, so it feels more genuine in a twisted way. We want them to tell us that it's OK, that we're not perfect and we might have done some less than stellar things in our own perception but that its ALL perception and illusion- good and bad. That we can still be a beautiful child of ___ (insert your Creator). That we all do things that merit a consequence and sometimes that consequence doesn't turn out quite how we thought it would but that there is no point wallowing in past actions. That everything is perfect. That we are exactly where we need to be on our path.
OK, so I don't think most priests go into this detail. I wouldn't really know seeing as I've never actually confessed, but I think that if you have all this as subtext, it can work. To be able to admit your faults aloud and be able to move on, if just a little, helps. Whether you go to confession or not, slowly time should erode those feelings of guilt or anger or sadness. If they start to grow like stalactites with each tear drop of a worry seeping down the original nubby memory and thickening it with residual deposits into a potentially fatal dagger...
Um, counseling? I don't know.
But I'm trying to steer clear of that stalactite thing. And I am. Because with so much time to think and feel through these things, well, my heart, even my stubborn 'set in its old neuro-pathways' brain, we're working it out. I feel pretty great most of the time. When those anxious or guilty moments come about, sure, it would be nice to take the shortcut of confession, but instead I feel, observe, breathe, and try to let it go.
I wonder if confessing to a jellyfish would help. At least I don't have to look it in the eye...
This is what I used to think about confession.
I come from a fairly unreligious background: I grew up Methodist but rarely went to church and really only liked going for the watery fruit punch and stale cookies after the bells rang and organ bellowed us out of the stain-glassed hall. And for the arts and crafts. I remember making little pinch pots with little crooked crosses pressed into the brown clay. I asked to go to Sunday School more often after that. Jesus? He was the guy with the sandals and beard who went around washing peoples feet (guh-rohss!), right?
So when I went from a rough, multi-ethnic (like 90 languages spoken) public school where tight pants, black eyeliner, aqua-netted bangs, and a hard ass stare were the uniform, transferring to an almost all white Catholic high school was a culture shock. I went from cliquey popular to painfully shy and didn't think that most of the kids "got" what real life was like. But life is always real, right, no matter where you are. I didn't get that.
There were a lot of other things I didn't get. Like Mass. The whole standing up and sitting down thing, the call and response, the wafer thing. Even though I wasn't a huge fan of interaction within the service, I did think that the whole "Peace be with you" part was pretty cool, even if it meant acknowledging the people around me.
Then there was the whole confession thing.
I asked my catholic friends about it and apparently you go in and say what you did that was bad and the priest tells you to say Hail Mary or whatever and you are free from those sins. Um, OK. So you can do whatever you want and you'll be forgiven? Sounds like a lot of bullshit to me. All those catholics running around molesting kids and cheating on their spouses and hurting people and they are just forgiven like that? That's nonsense. Fucked up even.
Fast forward about 20 years (Wow!). I am 34 and long out of Catholic school. I have been on a sailboat in the Caribbean islands for the past month and a half and have spent much of that time disconnected from distraction- no constant connection to internet and all the distractions within a distraction that portal has to offer. No phone (not as if I'm a real phone talker anyway as most my friends know). No meetings or errands or lunches or To-Do lists other than what needs to be done on this boat. Cleaning, cooking, serving. That's about it. Yes, that takes up about 16 hours of my day. Sure I get breaks and can lay on my bunk and write this, but I always have my ear perked for the inevitable, "Jenny? Jenny, there you are. Can I have/Can you do/Can you cook/Where is...?" I am on duty at all times in the 72 ft kingdom of this boat.
Once again I digress. What is the point? I have a lot of freaking time to think. It's like meditation with my eyes open. I have led a pretty awesome life and have not done too much harm in this world, yet there are things I have done that I don't feel great about, situations I wish had gone differently, people I hurt with actions or words I wish I could alter. Regrets? Is that what they are? Some of the things I had little control over they just played out the way they did. Other situations I think I could of changed, been more compassionate, listened more, felt more, kept my mouth shut or spoken more truth.
When uncomfortable memories surface and linger sending me spiraling into an emotional collapse (at least in the eyes, the heart if not the body as visible to others) sometimes I have a hard time pulling myself out of the pit. I don't really have anyone to talk to. (My fellow crew is great but I'm not going to dump all my personal woes on him. Or the guests.) I can't call anyone. Writing in my journal definitely helps but sometimes that is not enough or even exacerbates the pain. My brain keeps on whirring and those events are replayed. I try to follow the Buddhist podcaster's advice to forgive, be compassionate towards myself, love, blah blah blah, etc. But that doesn't help me when all my brain is saying is "You fucked up. Now look where you are. You shouldn't have done it that way. How dumb was that?" It's hard to tell your brain to fuck off (compassion compassion compassion) even when you know that your heart is rooting for your soul.
Thats where the creepy guy behind a grate comes in.
I finally GET confession. Sometimes we just need someone else to tell us we're forgiven. The fact that it is a stranger (or at least someone you don't have to look at) makes it better than a friend because you know that this person doesn't necessarily care about you and want you to feel better, so it feels more genuine in a twisted way. We want them to tell us that it's OK, that we're not perfect and we might have done some less than stellar things in our own perception but that its ALL perception and illusion- good and bad. That we can still be a beautiful child of ___ (insert your Creator). That we all do things that merit a consequence and sometimes that consequence doesn't turn out quite how we thought it would but that there is no point wallowing in past actions. That everything is perfect. That we are exactly where we need to be on our path.
OK, so I don't think most priests go into this detail. I wouldn't really know seeing as I've never actually confessed, but I think that if you have all this as subtext, it can work. To be able to admit your faults aloud and be able to move on, if just a little, helps. Whether you go to confession or not, slowly time should erode those feelings of guilt or anger or sadness. If they start to grow like stalactites with each tear drop of a worry seeping down the original nubby memory and thickening it with residual deposits into a potentially fatal dagger...
Um, counseling? I don't know.
But I'm trying to steer clear of that stalactite thing. And I am. Because with so much time to think and feel through these things, well, my heart, even my stubborn 'set in its old neuro-pathways' brain, we're working it out. I feel pretty great most of the time. When those anxious or guilty moments come about, sure, it would be nice to take the shortcut of confession, but instead I feel, observe, breathe, and try to let it go.
I wonder if confessing to a jellyfish would help. At least I don't have to look it in the eye...
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