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Wednesday, March 23, 2005
I started writing a comments-novel and decided to just turn it into a post. In response to anon's comment to the previous post (why do so many people with that name post comments on blogs?):
as far as i'm concerned, THIS is one of the major problems of christianity. the gigantic self-hate-fests that it creates. count me out.
Actually, I think my particular brand of self-loathing has more to do with the twenty-plus years of messed-up secular life I lived before coming to faith. It's not really rooted in the life I have now, it's more old...stuff.
The reason that I'm dealing with it so acutely right now is that, for the first time, I have the opportunity to not live this way, and it's scaring the shit out of me. I have vast layers of protective covering, and while I have worn a lot of them away over the past few years, lately I seem to have hit some that are made out of whatever the black box in airplanes is made out of. So I'm in this really icky place where I can see just how destructive and isolating my little facade is, but I'm not able to actually drop it right now.
Jesus doesn't cause the self-hate; Jesus is a way out of the self-hate, but the only way out is through. Forgiveness is not just a bitch to give, it's a bitch to accept.
I've been thinking about confession a lot lately. I may end up seeking out a confessor at some point for the rite of reconciliation. I know that, technically, I do not need to do that, that the general confession in the liturgy is sufficient. But there's something appealing about a specific absolution, an absolution which cannot be rationalized away. Maybe my brain needs an extra whack with the forgiveness stick in order to really understand, because I do not live like a person whose sins are forgiven.
The title of the post is from the amazing song Forgiveness by Patty Griffin.We are swimming with the snakes at the bottom of the well
So silent and peaceful in the darkness where we fell
But we are not snakes and what's more we never will be
And if we stay swimming here forever we will never be free
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