I am among those who watch the Super Bowl primarily for a) the commercials (wow, were they weird! Like, “did a German robot write these?” weird) and b) the halftime performance. While my Usher fandom mostly consists of singing “These are my confessions,” every time I hear the word “confession(s),” I was still pumped. In his halftime performance, a nostalgic gift to millennials everywhere, Usher sang “Confessions Part II,” which is where the story really begins. In this song, we learn that what Usher told us in Part I isn’t the half of it. Not only has he been cheating on his girlfriend, but the woman he’s been cheating with is pregnant and plans to keep the baby. Usher describes his admissions of guilt almost like a solution to a problem: “Man I’m thrown and I don’t know what to do / I guess I gotta give part 2 of my confessions.” It’s as if this is not really a choice; he has to give us part 2.
Usher feels a heavy burden, one that must be told if it is to be lightened.
A few months ago, I lugged my sluggish intestines, creaky neck, and wobbly spine over to an osteopath in Maryland, who, like me, had grown up in the Church of Christ. Through conversation, I learned that he was still a Church of Christ attendee but that he had been recently dabbling in Catholicism. This intrigued me, since I’d felt a similar instinct in my youth to veer towards a denomination with a longstanding tradition, hierarchy, rules, and richness. My osteopath explained that his pull towards Catholicism was in part because of its emphasis on confession, saying something like: “We don’t confess nearly enough.” I relate to some degree: I also like to get “things” (confessions) off my body and mind and out in the world, where they are welcome to figuratively run away on the back of a literal scapegoat (see Leviticus 16). The penance associated with confession in the Catholic tradition is not without difficulties, but sometimes (as Usher sings), confession costs.
By confessing, we open ourselves — to God, or often, to another person — in a way that can incite shame. In her essay on confession, or “clearing,” (!) at the Clown Palace, Cali Yee describes how “disclosing pain, shame, or sin can feel weird, unnerving, or arduous.” Truth. I imagine a giant, bicycle-like machine groaning, gnawing its way out of my chest like a hungry stomach, into the world, and riding itself away as I silently stagger.
There is something transformative about confession; transformation can cause pain, but transformation can also make way for repair and newness of life. It’s almost as if, by speaking something out of one’s own body and into the world, it (the thought) changes. Helena Dea Bala articulates this in her book Craigslist Confessional: “Even thoughts are transformed, filtered, when they’re thought for an audience.”
I am reminded of a scene in Season Two of Fleabag. After a schism between “Priest” and the titular “Fleabag” (as they are named in the script), Fleabag shows up at Priest’s church. The two are at a relational crossroads. Priest is at first befuddled (he is also drunk), but then attempts to disrupt the impasse by inviting Fleabag into the confessional, although he is the one who had, earlier that day, said a hurtful thing to her. Fleabag is hesitant to enter the confessional at first, but agrees (the script reads: “She accepts the challenge”).
Eventually, she monologues: “I lied … I’ve stolen things … There’s been … a bit of violence and of course the endless fucking blasphemy …” Her confession rolls on but eventually softens, as she shifts towards saying fewer words at once: “Frightened … of forgetting. Things. People.” She ends emphatically: “I just think I want someone to tell me how to live my life, Father, because so far, I think I’ve been getting it wrong. … Just fucking tell me what to do, Father.” The longer she talks, the closer she comes to honesty.
Of course, this is not a show about proper Catholicism. This is a love story (see Fleabag Season 2: Episode 1). But something about Fleabag’s confession re-levels the playing field between her and Priest, leading to one of the steamiest make out scenes of the “Peak TV” era, as both characters are literally brought to their knees. (If a romantic relationship between a parishioner and her Catholic priest who took a vow of celibacy is not something that interests you, or, in fact, disturbs you, I 1000% get that.)
I relate to Fleabag’s inability to stop confessing once she’s begun — and also the difficulty in discerning who should bear witness to a confession and where the line between oversharing and confessing begins and ends. I don’t know the answer — only that, sometimes, when I tread this line lightly, and when I tread it with another, a beautiful thing can happen, as I make myself known and come to know another person.
Confession makes our secret thoughts known — to God and to, well, everyone, or anyone who might glimmer a bit through the recognition of a mutual experience. We want to be seen, and known, and after all of that, still be loved (“these are my confessions”). C.S. Lewis says it so well in The Four Loves:
Friendship arises out of mere companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening friendship would be something like, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.”
Confession becomes more slippery when it doesn’t have a clear object or end: perhaps we have wronged ourselves, or the person we’ve wronged will not forgive us. We need some way to get the confession of sin out of ourselves, and the liturgy offers this. I find it almost strange how explicit the liturgy is about the relieving drink of water at the end of the confessional road: “Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent.” This explicitness makes me think that I’m not the only person who needs to hear it said so straight.
Today, my brain often feels an anxiety-induced need to walk through some of my past choices in great detail with a friend (I do not necessarily recommend this). It is very important to me that, at the end of my confession, my friend tells me that my choices do not make me a bad person. (To give myself some grace, I am upfront about this, asking, in the words of the Reddit forum, some version of “am I the asshole? To be clear, it’s really important that I am not an asshole.”). Even when I confess some of the actually sinful things I’ve done, my loving friends are able to say: it’s okay; this still doesn’t make you a bad person. (Are you sure? / Yes. Ad infinitum: yes).
One of my friends surprised me one day by saying something like: “Honestly, nothing that you’ve told me is really all that bad.” My questions often go on: “But are you sure? Did I tell it right?” My therapist (and Jesus?) might prefer I arrive at this conclusion on my own, but the answer never changes, and I imagine it is something like this: “You are beloved, yesterday, tomorrow, and today. Yes, even now. Yes, now. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, and on and on and on and on.”
