“In confession, one promises, before God, never to turn away again … Speaking itself seals the future, testifies against myself—binding me to not return to sin.” This articulation of Gibbs’s reminds me of the often misquoted words of another philosopher, George Santayana, who wrote that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Perhaps it can also be said that those who cannot speak (or write) of the past are condemned to regret it.
