One of the most memorable (and retrospectively entertaining) aspects of my Confirmation process was that we were expected to make confession. We had been handed a book to study that was geared to adult confessions, and it contained literal checklists of every possible sin under the sun. As I have now discovered (and you, dear readers, have kindly held my hand through this rather traumatic process), I had a deep underlying sense of nonexistence and exile, which must have made me vulnerable to genuinely believing I was capable of any and all evil to boot. I was so terrified of not owning up to this fact on this important occasion that I knelt in front of the rector and confessed to several heinous adult sins whose names I didn't understand, including adultery. (I threw in that I had taken a piece of my brother's candy, although I am pretty sure I hadn't done that either.) The rector broke into a spasm of uncontrollable coughing (to mask laughter, perhaps?) and I was told to go out to one of the church pews and say the Lord's Prayer a few times. I don't remember confession being included in the process two years later when my next brother was confirmed; Confirmation itself is now geared to teenagers and adults who can make a "mature commitment" to the church.
There's a picture of me somewhere, a serious and solemn nine-year old, with brown, chin-length hair parted in the middle, white barrettes, white linen short-sleeved dress made by my grandmother, white ankle socks and white shoes, holding my brand new white 1928 Book of Common Prayer (at that time, still in use) demurely in front of me. At the service, the Bishop had put his hands on my head, saying: "Defend, O Lord, this thy Child with thy heavenly grace; that she may continue thine for ever; and daily increase in thy Holy Spirit more and more, until she come unto thy everlasting kingdom. Amen." Indeed, "consecrated to God" is essentially what my name, Elizabeth, means, and through some miracle, a sense of the eternal truth of belonging to the Divine has stayed with me.
But within a year or so, as I've mentioned in a previous blog, I shocked my mother by announcing that I was a good Episcopalian but not a Christian. I just couldn't understand why God would have only one child, a son. Weren't we all His children? I also found the focus on a violent death on the cross extremely strange and distressing. Ultimately, I am not sure I ever really got on board theologically. But liturgically, the music and the glorious Tudor-era words tuned me to a wavelength of beauty and majesty that absolutely continues to be my home to this day. I am Episcopalian/Church of England through and through, despite, well, technically believing too few of the articles of faith to make that statement credible. Perhaps only the Goddess is wise enough to embrace all these paradoxes of my life. Perhaps we are all just doing our best to tune to a loving truth beyond all limited human expression.
