Flavor of Love

Nervously I fingered the quarter tucked in my pocket as my ten year old brain did a cursory review of the faults I was willing to voice once inside the dark confessional. This weekly Saturday walk down our long street and across the bridge spanning the railroad tracks to St. Monica's Church was always a time of terrible internal quandary. Like most children I found the idea of deliberately confessing anything an ominous situation that would rarely end in my favor. The nuns of St. Monica's lobbied hard for the favorable aspect of confession: a means to grace. This idea did little to soothe my quandary for in my mind sin and grace were like a teeter totter precariously moving up and down, depending upon me to balance the weight between the two. In an attempt to solve this theological dilemma I had devised a basic format of sins: bad words, forgotten prayers, fighting with siblings and disobedience, none of which seemed heavy enough to tip the balance too far in the direction of sin but how was I to balance grace? This idea of keeping the grace side weighted intrigued me greatly but I was unable to grasp how grace had any weight that could equal sin.

What I knew about grace was hearsay from nuns trying to shepherd small unrepentant souls down the narrow path to heaven: grace was necessary to survive the temptations of life; grace was the means to discovering God loved me; grace was available in that dark confessional. I knew about the ritual in the confessional - it began when the priest slid the small wooden door revealing a screen framing his shadowed form. Hearing wood slide on wood, my heart would leap into my mouth and I'd quickly breath my template of faults into a seamless exhale. Holding my breath, I'd wait for the penance that never varied: three Hail Marys and three Our Fathers.

Slipping from the confessional I'd kneel at the altar, whisper my prayers and slowly cross myself ready to intercept this mysterious reward named grace. Nothing seemed to happen. Or at least, on my spiritual teeter totter, grace did not seem to carry a weight equal to my known sins. The only mysterious experience I had was a sensation of a window of my soul closing as the window of the confessional slid shut.After several years of this ritual I concluded that for some reason I was not capable of earning this elusive mystery of grace and my teeter totter remained weighted in favor of sin.

Twenty years later I was putzing around the house mindlessly scrubbing fingerprints of small boys from door jams and musing on the mystery of how deep my love for each boy was despite the work they created, when a strong gust of wind blew open a window of my soul and deposited a poem right smack in the middle of my heart.

Pleasured hands deep

in sudsy water: wet rag

absolving walls. Smudges disappear

like venial sins from a soul.

Venial meant little: tiny acts

serious enough to march

small children into dark

boxes suffocating with

mystery of God.

Awed by dark piety, my terror

of self grew. Fearfully I whispered

shame to the shadowed form of God.

My whispered hope: shame

perfect enough for forgiveness

and perhaps a taste

of love.

Three Hail Marys and three

Our Fathers recited before statues

of perfection were to guarantee

return to love.

Perhaps my shame not perfect

enough to grant salvation, for

my taste of love remained

like cotton candy: melting before

it's flavor known.

Now I skip dark boxes of piety

and statues of perfection: pain

absolved in water greyed with

small boy smudges - absolution

complete as the kitchen drain

obligingly drinks my love.

As the words of the poem lodged in my heart I felt the weight of grace: Peace and serenity illuminated ordinary life and I stood, washrag in hand, awed by mystery. In that moment I knew that grace can neither be earned or captured: grace hangs over life like lace framing a window: a gift bestowed by love.

From where I stood at that moment, it seemed the only action necessary for obtaining grace is love: love that is awake to the wonder and beauty of God's work happening all around us. Maybe the idea of confession came about as a way to wake us up: a means to paying attention to our life. Maybe what is meant by confession is to examine our life not from the perception of omissions and commissions but as a means of tuning our eyes to the real intention of living: asking how I can best actively participate with the Creator of Life. Maybe the questions we're supposed to ask ourselves are more along the line of: what miracles did I witness today? Was I able to accept and be grateful for the miracle? How did I actively participate in the blessing of the miracle? What are the blessings of my life? Who did I bless today? What evidence of God the Creator did I see today in the delight and wonder of the Universe?

Meditating in this way I become acutely aware of how full the grace end of the teeter totter is and how much I desire to sit there rather than on the other side. When I contemplate the wonder of Creation in this way, the shadow of dark piety from my childhood demanding shame is replaced by the experience of God who holds each of us as tenderly and intimately as I held my babies. In these moments of glimpsing what is behind the shrouded veil of life I see the Creator of each seed and soul daily cradling life; leaning over and smelling it's dewy freshness, kissing the still soft spot of newness and humming 'yes this is good, so very, very good.' Hearing those words, my heart knows the flavor of love.