Lenten Calendar: Confession

Why and how to reckon with the things on our conscience?

Confessions-Las-Vegas-Running-Out-of-Time-1000x669@2x candy chang

Candy Chang’s traveling project invited people to post anonymous confessions as an opportunity for “catharsis and consolation” http://candychang.com/work/confessions/

To whom and to what end do we confess?

What do we gain and what does it cost us to accept a confession?

What do any of us do with it once it is out there?

It is at once a comfort and a challenge to remember how much we all stand in the need of grace. 

Late Results

We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.
—Milosz

 

And the few willing to listen demanded that we confess on television.
So we kept our sins to ourselves, and they became less troubling.
The halt and the lame arranged to have their hips replaced.
Lepers coated their sores with a neutral foundation, avoided strong light.
The hungry ate at grand buffets and grew huge, though they remained hungry.
Prisoners became indistinguishable from the few who visited them.
Widows remarried and became strangers to their kin.
The orphans finally grew up and learned to fend for themselves.
Even the prophets suspected they were mad, and kept their mouths shut.
Only the poor—who are with us always—only they continued in the hope.

— Scott Cairns

 

Miss Vera Speaks

 

They ask how she grin through that face with that life.

I say I’s never shielded from nothing

‘Cept dying young.

 

People deep bruised by something

Talk like the world should end.

Won’t catch me dying every day like that.

 

‘Cause I seen them once

Just once – the cracks in the universe –

Thought I’d fall right through.

 

‘Stead I laughed – said some kind of God

Put up with a tattered-old place as here

Gotta have some grace for me.

 

– Jenn Cavanaugh

originally published in America, August 13, 2007

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Brennan Manning on Grace and the Importance of Telling the Whole Story

Brennan Manning on Grace and the Importance of Telling the Whole Story

Brennan Manning on Grace and the Importance of Telling the Whole Story

“…Grace calls out, ‘You are not just a disillusioned old man who may die soon, a middle-aged woman stuck in a job and desperately wanting to get out, a young person feeling the fire in the belly begin to grow cold. You may be insecure, inadequate, mistaken or potbellied. Death, panic, depression, and disillusionment may be near you. But you are not just that. You are accepted.’ Never confuse your perception of yourself with the mystery that you really are accepted.”  [The Ragamuffin Gospel]

“The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians: who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” [intro track to War of Ages album Fire from the Tomb]

“In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift.  If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others.” [Abba’s Child]

“When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.
To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God’s grace means. As Thomas Merton put it, ‘A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.’
The gospel of grace nullifies our adulation of televangelists, charismatic superstars, and local church heroes. It obliterates the two-class citizenship theory operative in many American churches. For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift.” [The Ragamuffin Gospel]

“All is Grace” [memoir title]

– Brennan Manning (April 27, 1934 – April 12, 2013)