This is My Confession

a few thoughts to unburden my heart, and a practice

“It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on a battlefield.” — W. B. Yeats

It has been more than two days now I’ve been trying to get to this. Writing. Putting my heart down on the page. Sifting through all of the frenzied confusion and anxiety, of which there is at the moment an ample supply. It’s like the cloying accumulation of mud on my boots hiking through a swampy bog. Eventually I can’t even feel the earth beneath my feet at all anymore; just the slip-slimy carapace of rain soaked clay clinging to the treads of my soles.

I feel numb, distant from the world, like a foreigner in my own home. Nothing looks right, the way I picture it in my head. I feel this hopeless impotence rising up inside me. The world is changing, has changed, really, and I don’t know how to move through it anymore. I’ve got no traction here. Even if I did, I wouldn’t know where to go.

All I can do now is come to this altar: this paper … this pen … this magnificent silence — which still waits, unmoved by my noisy, garish, grandiose fears, ever at peace in its own wild realms of mystery — and write it all down.

This is my confession. My cry for mercy. My lament.

How frail I am … I see my pen write. How weak and incapable of saving myself. How desperately in need am I of an unreasonable grace, a stubborn and relentless deliverer, a love that will not give up on me no matter how often or how deeply I give up on myself. For though I am weak, there is something within me, perhaps the truest part of whatever it is I am, that is bright as a sun and precious beyond telling. I know this, somehow. The silence knows this, too. Perhaps it is the mirror in which I see it.

What is true for me, I know, is true for all of us, and true for the world. We are weak, self-betraying creatures, so driven by fear we will gouge out our own eyes to keep from looking at a truth we don’t want to see. I think Auden said it best:

“We would rather be ruined than changed;
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.”
— W. H. Auden

But, not all of us are like this. Some of us are willing. Not many. Just a few. But enough. Maybe. Maybe enough to hold back the darkness. Maybe enough to bring back the light.

So I lay my life down on the paper in lines of black and white. I take up the sword I have been given by the grace of the Divine and rather than gouge out my eyes I beg the Silence to open them, and use the blade to scrape the mud from my boots, to make a careful record of my missteps and my wounds, and to lay down even these, if it were possible, as an offering, as a prayer, as an act of defiance against the dark, and of hope for the future, for the possibility of redemption.

I am not what I ought to be. But my story is not yet finished. I may yet become the bright sun I see in the mirror of the Silence, if only I keep my eyes wide open to my own astounding need for mercy, and my heart wide open to the woundedness of the world.

A Few Quotes:

“Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.” — Erich Fromm

“Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go, Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is in you.” — L.R. Knost

“If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God have pity on you. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and cleanse not only your sins but the sins of others.” — M. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

A Simple Practice:

Gather a stack of index cards and a pen. Get someplace quiet and alone. In a time of reflection, consider all the burdens you are carrying at the moment, both large and small. Write out each one on a separate index card. Leave nothing unwritten, however minor you may judge it to be. Just get it all off your shoulders and onto the cards. Once everything is written, spread them all out on a table. One at a time, surrender them to God. It doesn’t matter if you do it perfectly, or if you don’t feel like you can let some of them go. Just do the best you can. As you lay each one down, ask God for what you need or want related to that burden, then move on to the next. That’s it. This is a beautiful practice, and I recommend repeating it at least once a week, as a way to strengthen your capacity for surrender and to let go the burdens you are not meant to carry.