Dear Diary
Once upon a time back in the olden days , getting a diary for xmas or a birthday was such a thrill. We filled it with all our secret thoughts and petty grievance's and that cute boy we had a crush on. Then someone close to us would... find...read... and expose our secret life to the world! or our moms would demand to know the boys name ...how come you never heard of dads reading our diaries?
Fast forward to today and we willingly expose everything on Face Book, no need to write in those diaries.... well maybe it was better in the ‘olden days’? but no less boring I'm sure. My girlfriends diary was coded so everytime she washed her hair in her diary she had done something sinful with her boyfriend (we were catholic) ...she had the cleanest shiniest hair ...but also the blackest soul full of sins...omg . As for myself, I got bored after the first couple weeks because I wouldn’t dare put down my real thoughts and desires ...I had six siblings and no privacy ...are you kidding me, besides I had all those sinful thoughts too ...just sayin.
We used to skip mass which was a sin ...but we would pick up the missive ? ...essentially it was a newsletter about everything happening in the church. These were kept at the entrance so it was easy enough to get a copy without actually attending the service.. If we ran into someone that had been at mass that was a bonus because then we could quiz them on the sermon! See... you could get caught if the adults were suspicious enough they would say “ok what did father Bob talk about in the sermon today?”
All these sins needed to be confessed at some point so we could clear the slate and start over again. Now you think this would be the easy part but it was the toughest for me. The priest could be the same one you had last time so I needed to get increasingly creative without him suspecting me of making up the same ones over and over. I gotta tell ya I had the most boring sins and if I had it to do over again I could make his ears bleed...! We had to recite prayers as penance and that was also torturous. I would sing my favorite songs along with a few ‘hail Marys’ under my breath and then make a clean get away as soon as I figured that who ever was watching me would know I wasn’t cheating.
Those days are long gone I quit going to church in high school and have never really been back, don’t get me wrong , in school (catholic school) I was top dog in religion class , so I knew I was gonna burn in hell... but nobody else suspected ! Organized religion has since ...held no power over me and I have since come to my own understanding of spirituality.
This Good Friday has me looking back and looking forward too.... without our experiences of all our life journeys how would we know what is right and what is wrong? I sure don’t believe in those stupid sins and confessions creative in confession....or maybe when I was on my knees supposedly saying the rosary as my penance , some of that spirituality seeped in when I wasn’t aware.... or maybe it was there all along ......
happy Easter everyone! and my only wish is for everyone to find their own spirituality....
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