Pagan confession
Confession turns up in a number of spiritual traditions – it’s most strongly associated with the Catholics, but there are Jewish practices around confessing and seeking forgiveness as well. Asking forgiveness from God/s comes up often enough in different faiths and implies an act of confession as well. We don’t really have a Pagan tradition of confession, at the moment, although I have no doubt one of you, more erudite readers will be able to point me at something historical. Looking at modern practice, there’s plenty to see online though.
The facebook confessional is popular with people of all and no faith as far as I can see. Rare is the day when someone doesn’t air a shortcoming, failure or ‘sin’. One of the things that makes this work, is that other people will then admit to the same, or put it in a less alarming perspective. We all have moments when we feel like we’ve failed, and keeping sight of the essentially human nature of these failures is important. None of us is perfect, and by sharing our shortcomings, we are also sharing our humanity.
Confession can easily be the prelude to a pledge to try and do better. Not one of Yoda’s do or do not moments, but an act of trying, that brings every possibility of adding another failure to the heap. For the addict trying to quit, or the parent who needs to learn patience, for the person learning to manage anger, or working out how not to self destruct, it’s always a learning curve. You might want to change, but the odds are there will be false starts, hiccups, relapses along the way. Confessing them, recognising them, we become stronger, not weaker.
I’ve tended to attract confessions. I’ve heard some heavy and challenging ones down the years, as well. As far as I can make out, I landed with an ability to listen compassionately, and people who need to confess have always sought me out. I believe that whatever a person has done, when they get to the point of being able to own it, recognise what was awful about it, and think about trying to do better and making amends, they’ve turned a corner. Even though this can be the first contact you have with the horrors in a person’s past, this is the critical moment not to reject them, and to give them a chance to move on. The person who voluntarily says ‘I have messed up, really badly’ is the person who probably wouldn’t do exactly the same thing again. Much of what underpins the worst kinds of behaviour is a belief that it was justified, or there was entitlement. Once that belief is let go of, a person has grown and changed, even if they aren’t totally sorted yet.
I am pondering what I’m going to be doing with myself in the longer term. One of the things I’m wondering is whether actively setting up as a confessor would be productive. Not to tell people they are forgiven, or to dish out Hail Odin’s or anything daft like that, but to listen. I don’t think it’s my job to forgive anyone or to tell anyone that gods, spirits or victims would forgive them, but to help people figure out what would take them forward, what would enable them to earn forgiveness where it is needed, and to help people forgive themselves – that might be a line of work to explore. I’d be interested to hear what everyone thinks, for or against.
