‘The stuff it takes to be intimate is authenticity, vulnerability, and a belief that other people are about as good and bad as we are.’*
We tend to think of confession as the admittance of bad things, but what it was about confessing good things? To share the full self of who we are with others in an act of communion and service?
Yesterday, I found myself sharing with the leader of Corrymeela, a community of peace in Northern Ireland, and he was telling me how they use confession positively, and I loved this. It connected with my understanding about how humility, gratitude and faithfulness open up a bigger self and greater life:
Humility and gratitude and faithfulness burn away everything but the generative self, our crystallising intent.
(*From Donald Miller’s Scary Close.)
(Today’s doodle was provoked by this comment from Carlos, who served me my cortado on the Potomac waterfront.)