On Confession

(What a pretty pass we have come to. Imagine if all over the world great lamentations took place. for the burning of the fire. On the grassland.)

Before you confessed you were given to study little booklets. You'd go into the classroom and sit at desks in silence, the leaflets having been distributed. They were very old, frayed, on greenish card like parchment. Their function was to list the sins to which it was proper or appropriate to confess. The range of sins one could confess to was surprisingly wide and varied. It sometimes seemed to me that almost anything, thought, word, or deed, could be considered a kind of transgression.

We'd sit there in the classroom, each in silent contemplation of his leaflet. I'd try and pick a few things from the leaflet, something not too bad or fairly neutral-sounding, to repeat in the confessional box. I'd admit to "selfishness" a lot, a non-specific transgression but one which I had surely indulged in over the previous months. The alleged selfishness and greed would be more effective if mentioned in relation to one's siblings. One could confess to bad language with a fairly clear conscience.

I often had to wrack my brains to think of something to confess to. It would seem churlish and ungrateful to roll into the confessional box and claim complete innocence. The process was completely artificial. I felt silly, embarrassed, perplexed.