by Rebekah Mays
As a writer, I often wish there was some magic pill I could take that would instantly transform me into Flannery O’Connor. I’ll look at a page I’ve written, think it’s genius, read it again an hour later, delete the whole thing, and start over.
Supposedly, all writers suffer this inferiority complex, and logic and experience tell me that no one becomes great at what they do overnight. But the impulse to think otherwise is really strong. It tells me that what I write needs to be perfect the first time round and that any failure is an omen I won’t “make it” as a writer.
Two years ago, when I was first thinking about converting to Catholicism, I viewed faith a little like a ‘magic writer pill.’ I thought the sacraments would transform me in a way that Calvinism and charisma had not.
The sacrament that first got me considering Catholicism was confession, or “reconciliation.” I was eating pizza and discussing religion with a Catholic friend, and after I made some insensitive comment about the pointlessness of confession, my friend quoted John 20:23. Apparently, Jesus once said to his apostles, “If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” How could I have missed this?
As an evangelical, I believed that to be absolved from my sins, all I had to do was tell Jesus I was sorry, ask for forgiveness, move on, and repeat when necessary. But it was never as simple as that. There were sins that, no matter how many times I confessed them in my prayers, I didn’t stop committing. Confessing in front of friends, which I tried a number of times, didn’t help much, either. There were a few moments which seemed like breakthroughs, for instance, that time at camp when we threw links of paper chains representing sin at the foot of a wooden cross. At first, it appeared successful. But the cycle would soon start over, and I’d fall back into old habits.
When I began studying the Catholic faith two summers ago, I was struck by how tangible everything was. The sacraments, the saints, the rosary – I realized that this wasn’t idolatry after all. These were tokens to help believers taste and see Christ, and I hungered for this kind of solid grace. I wanted to be a part of this faith, as old and rich as a bottle of wine, vintage 1 AD.
The day came for my confession. I was unbelievably nervous, but ready. Maybe this act would be the religious experience I wanted. Maybe receiving absolution would at last bring me peace and would once and for all free me from my guilt.
I opened the door to a small room. A priest was sitting there in a metal chair, facing the wall. There was no screen to separate us, and my stomach tightened into an even tinier knot. It took a few minutes for my confession to come bubbling out, but I told him everything – my sin, my shame, how distant I felt from God. The priest patiently listened. Then, he spoke about grace. He told me that the love of God is what really mattered.
A few minutes later, it was over; I closed the door behind me, spotless as a sacrificial lamb. But I didn’t feel so different. I was expecting the world to be brighter, my heart to be freer, the weight that had been pressing down on my shoulders to be gone. But I felt more or less the same as before. I was relieved, to be sure, but mainly that the priest was kind, and that the confession was over and done with. I’d hoped that partaking in the sacraments would change everything; it was disappointing to find I was the same messy person.
This was all about a year ago. And then, quite recently, I realized that God had been at the dirty work of sanctification all along. Last month, I managed to forgive someone. It was someone who’d hurt me, someone (like my writing, the sacraments, and a host of other things) through whom I’d tried to define myself.
I realize now that when I let go of my anger, it wasn’t just the other person I was making peace with. It was myself. It was relinquishing the idea that I’ll never be good, talented, or beautiful enough to make my life exactly what I want it to be. It was the unpleasant truth that there is no magic pill, that a lifetime of failure and faith is the only option. Solid grace is not some mountaintop experience that centers on the self – it’s living for others, forgiving them when they hurt you, and accepting God’s forgiveness when you hurt them.
And I was able to do this because of Christ, whom I’d met in the form of that priest. This was Christ, whom I’d received in my palms and dissolved on my tongue mere days before, at work in me. This was the sign of the cross over my chest, saying that despite my protests, I really am free.
Rebekah Mays is a Barnard College graduate originally from Austin, Texas. She currently works and writes in Prague, Czech Republic. You can find more of her writing on her blog The Prague BLOG or follow her on Twitter @smallbeks.
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by Lane Severson
God has blessed me with a wife and five children. But when the zombie apocalypse happens, they are out of luck because this guy could never make a fire, or build shelter, or fashion a weapon to fight off zombies – much less figure out how to wipe our seven butts without glorious Charmin Ultra Soft. We would all cake ourselves in feces just to survive the cold, and then we would starve, and then, many days later, the zombies would find us and take a pass on cracking open our poop-encrusted heads. Even zombies would be smart enough to realize that our brains just wouldn't be worth eating.
Jack London would have never written a book about me.
There used to be this ad for Hummers, back before everyone owned one, and the copy read: "If your life was a movie, would it go straight to video?" And the idea was that you need to stop doing whatever people did back in '95, and get out and encounter nature...in your enormous luxury vehicle...with the A/C on. At least, I assume the A/C would be on. It gets pretty hot outside. Jack London would probably write a book about me if I hunted bear in my Hummer. (Picture me driving through the woods at top speeds, shooting at a bear with that gun from Predator, and screaming at the top of my lungs.)
But that’s not me. I am at the complete opposite end of the spectrum.
I'm not joking. The other day I almost sold my car for scrap metal, only to find out it hadn’t actually broken down; the battery was just dead. I ALMOST THREW AWAY A PERFECTLY GOOD CAR BECAUSE I COULDN'T JUMP THE BATTERY!
My children, young as they are, already sense my utter dependence upon the modern world. They understand that my ability to "provide" is a step removed at best. When we ordered a pizza recently, they thanked the delivery guy, but not me. "But Dad, he's the one who brings us the pizza," they said. The vacuous act of purchasing the pizza holds no intrinsic value for them.
Of course, I know that I'm perfectly well equipped to survive the modern world and that a zombie apocalypse probably isn't going to happen, but I still feel guilty that, if I was born ten thousand years ago, I would have been told to stay with the women and children to "take care of them," while the other men went hunting for our food.
Even as a child, I sensed the potential importance of being able to provide for myself should my plane crash into an ocean or my sled dogs all die, thereby stranding me alone in the Alaskan wilderness. I read a lot of books about how to build a shelter out of snow, or how to avoid sunburn when stranded in the ocean. I don't remember any of that now; a much more effective strategy for survival is to not explore the Alaskan wilderness with sled dogs in the first place. But I digress.
Somehow, human evolution has produced me - a man who could have never survived at any point previously in all of history.
Don't worry, dear reader, I'm about to go all David Blaine on this post and pull a heart-wrenching point out of this insanity and guilt.
Because the truth is, there are two kinds of guilt. Let's say that one kind of guilt is two chocolate cookies, and the other type of guilt is that delicious white stuff in the middle. They seem easy enough to tell apart: one is the guilt you feel from doing something wrong; the other is the guilt you feel because you don't measure up to the ideals society has set for you. It seems like it should be easy enough to tell the difference between the two. I mean, one is a cookie and the other is filling. But in our brains, the cookie and the frosting have been blended up into little pieces, and now there are gummy worms all over the place too for some reason, and it’s pretty hard to figure out where the filling starts and the cookie begins.
So, the idea that I need to be able to survive a zombie apocalypse without Charmin Ultra Soft is crazy, and obviously the kind of guilt that comes from other people or society or something. But I also feel the other kind of guilt too, because I'm an idiot and make bad decisions. And if that's the case, that's on me. On the other hand, maybe I’ve made the best decisions I could, considering the information I was presented with, and so I'm off the hook.
But then, there’s this other layer here where the idea of self-sufficiency is to be lauded, and is the measure of being wise and responsible in America. Except maybe that has nothing to do with the things that should be important to me as a Christian. Yet, being wise is a big deal in the Bible, at least in Proverbs.
And then there is that entire part of me that is obsessed with the idea that, if I'm not providing "value," people will abandon me. Actually that's the worst fear of them all. The zombie apocalypse I'm really worried about is the one where I'm alone, not the one where I can't provide. This whole line of reasoning is a messy, messy thing. That’s because it’s the Oreo-Cookie-dirt-pie that is guilt. You can't pull these strands apart cleanly any more than you can reconstruct a whole Oreo cookie out of dirt pie.
Maybe this is why I love the Christian practice of confession so much. Some people have told me that they find ritual confession depressing. But for me, it is the place of freedom. In the Anglican Church, we have a phrase during the prayer of confession wherein we ask forgiveness for "the things we have done and the things we have left undone." It is "the things we have left undone" that seems to cover that dirt pie mess of guilt in my head.
So when the priest stands up to absolve our sins I hear something like:
May the Almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins – even your stark dependence upon Charmin Ultra Soft, and your persistent navel gazing, and fear of failure, and persistent longing for affirmation – through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness to go live a Christian life – despite the dirt-pie of guilt in your brain – and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, keep you in eternal life. Amen.
And I say, “Amen.” And then, I believe a double miracle happens. Miracle one: I'm forgiven for my guilt and my insanity. Miracle two: God uses me, in my weakness, to help other people. And the coolest thing for me is when I say all of this and it’s actually helpful for another person, because they feel the same way about their guilt and insanity but have had bad experiences with confession in the past, or else have never really done it before. Because God has made us as communal creatures, and has called us to bear one another’s burdens, and when we go through public confession together, we’re doing just that; we’re helping one another. Oh, and also, if I can help you by giving you info on how to jump a car battery, I totally know how to do that now.
Lane
Severson blogs at On Pop Theology and Out of Ur. He likes charismatic
liturgy and listening to Kanye West or Jay Z with his wife and five
children. Lane can be found at about.me/lseverson or on Twitter @_lxnx.
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