Confession
Confession, they say, is good for the soul. Why is that? Why has it gone out of fashion? Does it need to be re-examined, re-imagined for the spiritual?
Glittering Images and Confession
On Sunday, I borrowed a book from the Cathedral informal lending library called Glittering Images, by Susan Howatch. It is the first of 6 books in her Starbridge series.
I have read other books in this series or in spin-off series by this author. One of the characters in these books is an Anglican monk called Jon Darrow who is a spiritual director with psychic gifts he employs in his a powerful and intuitive approach to counselling troubled Anglicans. Jon relies as part of his counselling and spiritual direction on regular confession, asking his directees literally to cling to a physical cross that he provides to them as a means of centring themselves in Presence when stressed, and exorcism of oppressive spirits.
I may have already lost a number of you by now. I mean, who worries about confession these days? And isn’t the Exorcist just a really old and scary movie?
Bear with me, please. I am as usual just trying to think through all this myself. And I am not going to get into the whole exorcism thing here, which is a separate thorny topic.
The word confession may bring to mind. as in the Unsplash image above, a Catholic priest sitting behind a grill waiting for the penitent to metaphorically spill their guts and to provide absolution and penance.
But confession is also part of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, and, surprisingly, the Anglican tradition.
Surprising because Anglicanism falls within Reformation church for which one hallmark is the idea of the priesthood of all believers. Thus no intermediary being is required between a human and God. Not saints, and not priests.
However, confession and absolution by the priest are an integral part of every Communion service, which for devout Anglicans are attended at least once a week. This is done as part of the liturgy, using a general confession, rather than believers alluding to specific faults.
The Anglican Church does not, like the Catholic Church. consider private confession out loud to a priest (auricular confession) as a necessary sacrament for every believer. Richard Hooker famously said of it, “All may, some should, none must.”
But for various reasons, over the past couple of millenia, confession has fallen out of favour in the world. Some of the reasons are good and important, such as the way the seal of confession has been a way to silence victims of abuse, and that an over-emphasis on sin and confession can trap human in toxic shame rather than healing.
The Church has a lot to answer for, in the minds of many who have left and would never consider returning, as well as for those who are still church-goers but clear-eyed on its uneven track record. There are too many ways it has misused its power to oppress rather than free. The threat of hellfire has been used often to control people in the terror of eternal damnation if the precepts of the Church are not followed.
And the concept of sin is a painful one, any way you look at it. At its best, it is about taking personal responsibility for poor moral choices. The difficulty of not having a means of dealing with feeling responsible for those kinds of poor choices is that it can be tough to forgive yourself and truly let it go, so that guilt and shame don’t become an inescapable and intolerable burden.
Confession: Good for the ‘Soul’
You don’t have to be religious or even spiritual in a non-religious sense to know the benefit of confession and forgiveness. Anyone who has seriously messed up a friendship or relationship and admitted failure fully and completely without making excuses or pretending the fault is all on the other person and who has received the understanding and compassion of the other person knows how healing it can be to unburden the mind of a conscious fault. You don’t have to keep carrying that heavy load.
So whether you believe in a soul, or whether it’s just a mental or emotional relief, it makes sense that confession can be a key part of healing.
Is It Safe?
But it is also true that all too often, we open up to the wrong person, who either uses our vulnerability against us, as is a primary strategy in the playbook of an abuser, or indiscreetly shares what we have said in confidence with others, leading to more shame for us.
This is why the seal of the confessional is taken very seriously, even though as linked above, it can be badly misused by abusers to hide from responsibility.
One of the reasons 12 step groups and Being With courses can be such a great source of healing is that within groups like this, people can freely share about anything, including ways they badly messed up their lives, without being judged, in a safe space of acceptance, and in a context where what is shared stays there and is not shared outside.
It’s good to have in your life safe people you can share everything with, and safe spaces you can do the sharing.
However, just being safe and heard isn’t enough. Again, 12 step groups as one example can be helpful because they provide ‘steps’ or a clear process for going beyond just confessing.
Programs can differ but some common steps in the 12-step process include:
Admitting you are not in control (of) your addiction
Recognizing a higher power can give strength
Examining past mistakes
Making amends
Living a new way of life
Helping others
Do I Need Confession?
This came up for me not because I feel consumed with guilt or shame, nor because I feel I have done anything wrong in particular. It came up because after I read Glittering Images, I realised afresh how central to many of Howatch’s books confession is, and I wondered if it was something that I had too easily dismissed out of hand.
For years, after a number of bad experiences, I didn’t attend church, but now I do, and find it deeply healing and supportive. I didn’t have a spiritual director for decades, but now really appreciate mine. I wasn’t journalling. Now I write here every morning. My meditation practice had become inconsistent and I didn’t have a community to support me. Now I meditate every morning without fail, and I delight in being able to meditate with others weekly and be supported in my practice by their presence and insights.
Having successfully integrated or re-integrated these restorative and supportive practices as well as others over the past year and experienced the transformative benefits thereof has made me all the more open to the possibility there are other paths to wholeness I have been missing out on, like therapy. Or confession.
For a long time I thought it was enough to do my best to be honest with myself and with Presence about how I could have done or said something better. But is there a clearer path for me to follow steps without being in a 12 step group?
I feel the need to have another look at this.