Sabbatical reflections #5: confession

"it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash. I wish I had paid more attention to it...
This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it."
(Marilynne Robinson, Gilead, p.32)

Monday was my first full day on retreat at the Community of the Resurrection. Early on that day I had realised that I was carrying a 'heaviness' with me - a heaviness that was at least three-fold: I was feeling enclosed, cut off from everyone, everything that usually sustains me; I was aware of how much I had left behind, back home and at work, that felt 'left undone', half-finished, unresolved; and, if I was honest in my deepest depths, I was feeling unready for an honest encounter with God.

On Tuesday afternoon, after another lengthy daytime sleep ('nap' would be understating it!), I found myself writing a confession. You'll understand if I don't share the details here, I'm sure! But I will say that it covered everything from my presence and attentiveness to my family, my neighbours and my congregation members, to some of the relationships in my life that are at times more strained, to my over-reliance on a car and my slowness to respond to the urgent challenges of our planet-destroying habits, to my insufficient attentiveness to white privilege and racism - to acknowledging that the book I was supposed to be finishing by the end of July was not going to get written any time soon. If there was one headline that encompassed most of the detail, it was my failure to receive my fellow human beings, my own inner life, and the earth itself, "as the precious gifts of God - to be treasured, and to change me - that they all are".

When I had written out all that I could write, I went for a walk in the woods...

"Walked through the woods in the pouring rain. The rain poured down my eyes like tears, drenched my feet like a Maundy Thursday foot-washing. Cleansing, forgiving rain. For me, yet indiscriminate - for all who choose to walk in it, or who are caught up in it unchosen.

I've come to see the heavy burden of guilt I've been carrying. Some of it I can see ways to amend - some I'm not so sure. I've never made a sacramental confession before - I'm not even sure how to do it. But tomorrow I will ask for help to do so." (Tuesday, 5.20pm)

Having resolved to 'make my confession' with my guide when we next met, I woke up on Wednesday morning feeling really, really nervous.

"The best comparisons I can think of are:
- my first date with Janey - the risk of offering / exposing a good deal of myself, in the hope/longing for acceptance, love, reciprocation, desire - but genuinely not knowing what the response would be
- going into a meeting / conversation to address head-on a conflict, or a failure
… and I guess, in a way, it's a bit like both..." (Wednesday, 10.25am)

It didn't take long...

"OK, so... That was, on one level, utterly straightforward. I read some words off a card. I read my 2 pages of confession [that I'd written the day before]. [My guide] suggested I took the rest of the day "off", other than reading the story of the Prodigal Son, from the Father's perspective. He read the words of absolution. And I left. Back to my room, in less than 15 minutes.

On another level... I could feel the tears welling as I came to the end of my bit. They held off, until half way down the corridor. And then they came, in floods. I'm writing this with red eyes and a snotty nose..." (Wednesday, 10.50am)

"But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion,
and ran and embraced him and kissed him...

"But the father said.... 'Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him;
and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet;
and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry;
for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found."
(Luke 15:20, 22-23)