my postsecret crush

a confession:

sometimes i get crushes on other people's creative ideas

as of late, there are two artistic crushes i have: one can be seen at the website www.postsecret.com , and the other is on the new aqualung album Memory Man.

postsecret, a community art project started by frank warren, began as frank sent postcards out to anonymous people and asked them to anonymously submit their secrets to him on postcards...hoping to make them into a collage and exhibit in their area. he began getting cards from people in the area, then people outside of the area, and now from people all over the world. go to the site and read some of them. i'm still trying to pin down what i find so profound about the project: perhaps the (perceived) honesty on some of the cards, or the idea of being confessional to a group of people. i don't think it's odd for that to be attractive to me; confession is supposedly a part of both my faith and my community of faith. i note supposedly because i don't know if it always is, and especially in the later of the two. i'm fairly comfortable being confessional with God, at least most of the time. but being confessional with the body of Christ? why does that feel so odd...

perhaps thats my confession #2: i don't feel comfortable confessing to the body...

but i do...but i still don't. it's weird. i like the concept of confession, and i agree that its essential to our faith. confessing is agreeing with the truth of God about the reality of our actions. it's owning our wrongs and their consequences. it's exposing our flaws, failures, and faults, in the hopes of not returning to them. and i agree with derek webb, who thinks the best thing that could ever happen to any of us is that everything we've ever done be projected on a screen for everyone to see; it would make us be honest with everyone else and with ourselves. and the one thing i think postsecret doesn't accomplish is healing and restoration from the junk we do keep inside; we need the Lord's truth and other's encouragement and correction (and accountability).

but still...one thing i've always been told, perhaps to my detriment, is that i, as a leader (or as a church staff member, or paid clergy, or whatever other distinction one makes between lay leaders and pastoral professionals...geez, it all sounds so horribly professional), am not supposed to be all too confessional with the body. that confessing creates doubts in leadership, that it would be costly to the ministry as a whole. i know it contradicts itself, but it seems like socially those of us in ministry as a profession are taught to hide our stuff--and yet, ironically, thats what leads to all the big church scandals and whatnot...people hiding their struggles and those eventually eating them up, along with those around them. i just wonder where the balance is--you know, like how open can i be with the body? is it with just certain people, but not with everyone? how do you draw those lines? is it just with the socially acceptable struggles (or vague ones) like pride, lust, or lack of discipline, or can it be more that that? and how can i expect a community of people i'm a part of to become honest, open, and confessional if i'm not truly allowed to be that among them?

so i'm a little frustrated. my first reaction to warren's project (aside from "how brilliant--i hate him") was "if only the church could be like this..." and i honestly feel like its socially impossible for me to be a part of a community like that for someone in my profession, or at least impossible without anonymity. is that weird?

enough rambling for now...check out aqualung on your own...