Fencing Bear at Prayer

I think I overdid it a little bit on the blog posts this weekend, thanks to my demon PapaFreeak's calling me such lovely names.  But it is a good thing (I said he was my friend !-- ahem ): it has helped me clarify a number of things that have been rattling around in my head these past several months as the work on my book has proceeded apace .  I really meant it when I said this morning that I have now confessed all of my deepest, pettiest, most envious thoughts.  My therapist and I have been working on the biggest, scariest ones over the past couple of years, including several that are still (and will remain) TMI for such a public confession (ha! Take that PapaFreeak--I'm even worse than you think!), and I find myself suddenly at something of a loose end having told you yesterday about the oldest, deepest, and ugliest of my sins, my envy of my sister's physical beauty .  I rather suspect I am not yet done with that one, but of the others that I have been working o...

And that's it, I've told you everything.  All of my deepest, pettiest, most envious thoughts.  All of my weaknesses, all of my sins.  And you, Lord, have washed me clean.  Even in my darkest moments, you have been there, whether I believed it or not.  Guiding me, loving me, making manifest "the uncertain and hidden things of thy wisdom." Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy, and according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my iniquity. Wash me yet more from my iniquity,  and cleanse me from my sin,  for I know my iniquity  and my sin is always before me. Truly, you have been here with me, in ways I could never have dreamed five years ago when I began this blog.  Then, I was but a little bear, still so full of fear and anxiety.  Now I am an older bear, older but thanks to you wiser.  You have guided my footsteps into the desert and been with me as I wrestled with my demons, making me...

I blame Augustine .  If it wasn't for his writing his Confessions way back when, none of us (including me and Elizabeth Gilbert ) would ever have had the idea that it was a worthwhile, perhaps even healing thing to confess our sins publicly before our fellow human beings and God. I can just hear Augustine's original readers: "Who does he think he is, this professor of rhetoric, complaining about how he feels guilty for stealing a couple of pears?  It's embarrassing, doesn't he realize how privileged he is, what with his education and prestigious career?  And all those details about doubting himself and his inability to stay chaste!  You'd think he'd have better things to do than to whine about why it took him so long to find God.  And blaming the Manichees for misleading him, that was just uncalled for." It couldn't have been easy reading then, just as for many it still isn't now, and I'm not talking about having to read through all te...