When Sin is Not

After Hazel made her confession, we sat and talked a while over tea about sin. I said I thought that some matters serious Christians often felt worried about were not so much sins as normal features of the spiritual life and possibly needn't be confessed so much as talked through, although the confessional was perhaps one occasion for doing so. Distractions during prayer frequently comes up; I tend to feel that concentrated prayer is such an unnatural habit and requires so much effort that distraction is only to be expected and although it may arise from the sinful nature it probably should not be treated in this way. Particular and persistent distractions may reveal important matters of the soul that need dealing with, but that leads into the field of spiritual direction. 

Then there's a whole category of faults and failings which begin with the words 'I have been insufficiently ...' this or that. These are usually free-floating expressions of self-dissatisfaction which are very unhelpful unless they can be tied down to some definite, concrete thought or act. We are all insufficient, especially if we measure ourselves against an unrealistic ideal. Then again, I remember the caution we all received at theological college that if we ever found ourselves hearing the confessions of members of religious orders we might be subjected to all sorts of stuff which we might not think was important in any way, and in those circumstances we should just take it as offered and treat it as the work of the Holy Spirit in that soul: consequently I don't want unreflectively to knock such thoughts down as irrelevant or neurotic. 

In fact I'd entirely forgotten why I was visiting Hazel at all, so that's something to remember when I come to make my own Lenten confession ...