Reconciliation service tonight–aka drive-through confession.

Until I was about eight, I lived in a very Catholic community–I went to the same Catholic elementary school as most of my friends, lived down the street from the church, CCD, prayer at dinner and bedtime, the works. After we moved to Richmond, and especially when I started going to Model in seventh grade, that world got bumped around a little. I started realizing that not only were most people not Catholic, but that a few of them believed some pretty absurd things about what I’d grown up with.

So I’ve been explaining (or trying to explain) stuff like reconciliation and communion for what seems like a long time. I think I let my own self-deprecation bleed into it too much, actually, so it’s kind of a surprise how good I feel after something like this. It wasn’t a real confession, talking straight to the priest (no, you don’t have to have a screen) and getting stuff out in the air… but it was something.

Before we got started, everybody in church (sixtysomething sinners and a couple of priests) got together in the middle of the pews, held hands and said the Our Father. There was something about the sound and the timbre of all those people saying the same thing, so close together–I could feel it humming, reverberating in my lungs. It was palpable. I forget sometimes how much simple human power and trust there is in ritual.

Explanations aside, I don’t talk about my beliefs much. But the fact is that I take a very deep and quiet joy in being Catholic.