Elroy in the Confessional

Where I work there is a startling variety of people, considering its (small) size--rednecks, semi-reformed gangstas, semi-reformed hippies, Lutherans; ladies' men, mens' ladies, grandmothers, mamas' boys; world-weary types, old musicians, young musicians, and oh, I could go on...black, white, straight, gay. Many a priest of that modern day deity, "Diversity," has sacrificed many a church and school on his master's slab in hopes of founding such a temple, has been confounded when his god is deaf and dumb as wood and stone, and watched his older, better houses crumble to skeletons and dust. It works where I work, precisely because we do not serve this god, and it is not our temple. We're all just trying to make a living, and "diversity" as a thought (let alone an aim) is so peripheral that its lodge in the mind is usually somewhere between apathy and oblivion. Obviously I've thought about it, but I think too much. And even at that, I've exhausted the subject.

I could easily keep a blog on the daily interactions I have with these people, but there are other things. Today, however, I've been thinking about one of our regular customers, whom we jokingly call Elroy, because he looks like a fortysomething Elroy Jetson.

He even wears a baseball cap, though it doesn't have those little "I'm-Jewish-living-in-the-future" embellishments. He doesn't have footied overalls or golden upside-down dinnerplate neckwear, either, but nobody blames him, because they haven't started making those yet.

One day, our Elroy pulled up to the store. He doesn't know we call him Elroy, so we had to stop humming the Jetsons theme when he opened the door. Elroy talks a lot. Prattles, really. My friend once counted the seconds of continuous silence from Elroy when he came in the store, and I think it never got higher than three. But though he talks a lot, I can't remember a thing he's said, except one. On this day, Elroy bought a drink from our soda machine. I went away to get him something he needed, and upon returning, I discovered, much to my annoyance, that he had spilled the sticky stuff all over our floor. It's a hard floor, so the sticky lingers, and he could leave (please do!), but we had to clean it up. Well, he was smiling child-guilty and bumbling out apologies and shifting himself and shifting things, and somewhere in the midst of his ceaseless, pointless verbal activity, I marked the words, "blah blah blah...sorry, but it's okay, though, you know, because everybody makes mistakes...blah blah..." Well, I nearly fell out laughing, but I didn't. Managed to hold it together that time. It sounded like something chanted into him by dear ol' Mom, coming up now as a matter of course, like baby sick: "Ga ga g-blech!" Now wipe me and feed me again. I ain'tcher momma, son. But really! Here's the logic: mistakes are made, therefore is this my mistake okay. Of course, for some mistakes the penalty is imprisonment or death or even eternal perdition. Obviously I'm not putting his mistake on level with those kinds of mistakes...actually, if anyone was doing that, he was...in a way. I just want everyone to know that I understand that spilling a soft drink is not mortal...even if it is most grievous.

But the next day I could not stop thinking about and connecting that ridiculous statement from a truly ridiculous character with myself in Confession. See, it didn't matter to me at all that he was sorry or embarrassed, as far as the mistake was concerned. The thing was done, and I had to deal with it. To Elroy, though, it meant everything, literally everything. The man absolved himself with it. "Sorry" and "it's okay" both came from his mouth, connected flimsily by the most childish manner and the worst logic. And I thought, "Why is contrition necessary for absolution? It doesn't do God any good. Nothing does God any good, because He is Good. He doesn't need any good done to Him or for Him, and He has to deal (and has dealt) with every mistake made by Man. Even if He damned us all, that's still dealing with it. Contrition might be prerequisite, but it cannot be payment, cannot be the toll, cannot do anything to ease the labors of Him that has no need of ease, and even if He did have such need (absurd thought!), the contrition would have nothing to do with His labors anyway..." Thus I thought, really too long. Then I remembered that contrition, like the Sacrament of Confession, like absolution, like salvation, was a gift of grace. Even if it is something that feels as if it wells up from within, it is God feeds the well. We receive one gift to wrap our sin up in before it is buried, like the body of our Lord, wrapped in layers of spices. Sweet it is. But He does not need it; He has done His work; He will not decay; He has confronted the real stench. But we need only confront the horror a moment--if we lived our entire life in sorrow for our own evil, it would still be as the fleetingest moment compared with Christ's suffering, and even so, we need all the help we can get. Contrition is needful for us, and so it is given to us, just like everything else we have really needed.

So...sorry, Elroy. I fear that, to God, many times I must have sounded like you did to me. We must both do better, I think.