A friend recently played me a song and said if there was ever a set of lyrics that he thought were written for me, it was these. I urge you to listen to 'Note to Self' by the gorgeous Jake Bugg. As I gratefully cried my way through the second listening, the line that struck me was, 'Don't cover your wounds with salt'. It blew me away. I spend a lot of time, and I mean a lot of time covering my wounds with salt but I hadn't really realised it until I heard that line. Now, don't get me wrong, this wasn't a complete revelation - I am a cradle Catholic so I have learnt and perfected the art of self recrimination and loathing all in the name of the greater good. It's as much a part of me as my right hand. Something about the sweetness of this song made me realise I had taken the 'payment for my sins' to a whole new level in recent years.
It got me thinking about how other people deal with the aftermath of doing something wrong; we all have a set of patterns depending on the nature of the wrong doing. One friend said he feels bad straight away so finds something kind to do for the person he has wronged and then he forgets it ever happened. Another friend talked about her penance in similar terms to carbon emissions - you take a flight, you plant a tree. She commits a wrong, she does a good deed - the latter doesn't have to relate to the former, she just restores the balance of one good for one bad. For me it's more like twenty thousand good deeds are needed to offset one bad and you aren't ever allowed to forget it. I'm starting to wonder whether I've got it a bit wrong..
I went to a talk recently where the speaker made reference to the way sins were dealt with by the whole community in the fourth and fifth centuries. If you committed a wrong, you were required to confess this wrong in front of the entire gathered community and then spend between seven and nine years excommunicated before you were deemed 'clean' and able to rejoin society. Heaven help you if you committed another wrong within that seven years. As time moved on, it was thought more appropriate for our confessions to be done in private to a priest who would listen to our list of misdemeanours and then decide on an appropriate a penance for us to set things straight. This could be a set of prayers or a good deed. In this way, my friends - not religious friends I hasten to add - are following a very similar pattern. Why have I decided to extend my penance back to the seven-nine year sentence I wonder?
This all becomes much more complicated when you are faced with teaching your own kids how to deal with wrongdoing. I merrily tell my two year old to say sorry and give a cuddle to his brother if he hits him/steals his toy. This seems to be working out fine. I get more confused with my nine year old as the last thing I want to do is promote my own brand of seven-year - self-beating yet I know this is what I'm modelling for him. Luckily, he reads. When he came home telling me how he had spoken during a minute's silence by mistake, he promptly cleared a section of his toy box and donated it to a charity shop and then apologised to his teacher. He then forgot about it. Apparently this is what Harry Potter would have done.
Of course, I know I am not alone in my penance pattern. There have been two moments of artistic clarity when I learned I was amongst friends. The first being Travis singing 'Why does it always rain on me? Is it because I lied when I was seventeen?' Classic Catholic thinking - ten years on but the punishments still come. The second was the gorgeous poet, Mary Oliver in her fabulous poem 'Wild Geese'. Read it - regardless of where you are on the penance spectrum this will give you a word hug. Her opening lines: 'You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.' blew me away. Still do.
I am really keen to hear about alternative steps to take post-screw-up in order to put things right with yourself and the world. Moving forward, I think the fog is clearing on the message that I need to adjust my penance patterns. I need to give myself a break. Tune in to my inner Harry Potter not my inner bible, reduce my sentence by about eight years, read my 'Note to Self' more often.
