• “For I know my transgressions/My sin is ever before me”: Jim Forest’s
  Confession: Doorway to Forgiveness

-April Renee Lynch

Author, lecturer and peace worker Jim Forest’s many accomplishments are impressive. He was a friend of Dorothy Day; Thomas Merton was Forest’s confessor during the last seven years of Merton’s life. Forest assisted Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese monk and poet, as a part of that man’s work with the Fellowship of Reconciliation in the 1960s. Forest was received into the Russian Orthodox Church in 1988; in 1989 he received the Peacemaker Award from the Institute for International Peace Studies of Notre Dame University. I was aware of all this when I went to the author’s talk at Saint Agnes this last October on “Reconciliation and Forgiveness,” and so I suppose I expected something akin to a pep talk, as it were,regarding spiritual growth.

I realized, quickly, that this night would not be devoted to my expectation. Jim Forest would reveal something of himself, and elicit from the audience something of who we were as individuals, by reading excerpts from his latest book Confession: Doorway to Forgiveness, then engage us in discussion. At the time, my opinion was not so sanguine. I thought, “Omigawd, here we go. This is just another ‘Meet-the-author-hawking-his-book’ night.” Of course, I was mistaken. Jim Forest is not “full of himself”: He does not view his audience as people with whom he would “trade” his opinions.

The book Confession is to the point, prayerfully conceived. It is executed with the idea that the sacrament of confession ranks near bottom in a world in which sin is a “three-letter word” and wrongdoing is either some one/thing else’s fault or, at worst, relative: “There have been thousands of essays and books in recent decades which have dealt with human failings under various labels without once using the one-syllable, three-letter word that has more bite than any of its synonyms:sin. Actions traditionally regarded as sinful have instead been seen as natural stages in the process of growing up, a result of bad parenting, a consequence of mental illness, an inevitable response to unjust social conditions. . .or even as ‘experiments in being.’ Sin, we’ve also been told, is an invention of repressed, hypocritical clerics who want to keep the rest of us in bondage—‘priests in black robes binding with briars our joys and desires,’ in the chiming syllables of William Blake” (p. 2).

These are harsh words to encounter, especially at the beginning of what could be thought of by some as a challenging reading experience. But they are mitigated by the author’s warmth, his subtle sense of humor, a knowledge of history, and his wisdom about the desires and needs of the humankind with whom he has come in contact in his worship, correspondence, reading, and travels.

Confession teaches about the role and history of the sacrament. (And it is a sacrament, make no mistake, the author warns. It is not a substitute for psychological counseling.) It is itself also a confession. Forest uses Renaissance art and the traditional Church imagery of the icon, “true confessions” from the personal experience of priests and laity, and passages from literature to convey the certain knowledge that the sacrament of reconciliation, a meeting with God through priestly means, is a transformative, mysterious, and intensely human experience.

I could not put this book down: It was engaging from beginning to end. Though I am currently praying the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises with my spiritual director, though I pray daily, though I attend Mass and devote as much of my time and gifts to the Church as earning my livelihood will allow, Jim Forest’s book has made me aware of the ways in which my spiritual life is lacking. I am stubborn and willful; I am irresponsible with money. I have not confessed myself in years; I have assumed that good works alone would do the deed. I realize all the ways I can rationalize these behaviors, making them seem insignificant. Confession has made me realize that, to quote the author quoting Bishop Kallistos Ware There are no entirely private sins. All sins are sins against my neighbor, as well as against God and against myself. Even my most secret thoughts are, in fact, making it more difficult for those around me to follow Christ.[1]

Even what I consider my most secret sins are, in fact, sins against all humankind. The old saying goes, “An injury to one [even one’s self] is an injury to all.”

Jim Forest is a man for these times: One who stands for the unpopular idea of personal responsibility for thought, word, and action. But his work is not that of a curmudgeon. His is gentle guidance, the voice of a friend, and much needed advice for a religious experience that is sadly unfamiliar for too many Christians.

[1] Bishop Kallistos Ware, in a talk “Approaching Christ the Physician: The True Meaning of Confession and Anointing” at an Orthodox Peace Fellowship retreat in Vézelay, France, in April 1999; the full text is posted here.

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April Lynch recently received her M.A. in Art History from U.C. Irvine: she hopes soon to enjoy a career as an art historian. She has been a member of St. Agnes since 1990.