Last Sunday�I heard a sermon by Verne Arens that got me thinking even more than usual. The gist of Verne’s message was that when we reveal our inner flaws and scars to others, we create a basis for real human interaction. Only when a person is willing to share some secret (deep or not so deep)�can one feel that one really knows that other person.
This got me to thinking about my own secrets. No, I don’t think I’m going to reveal them here. The blogosphere is too public. There are (or could be) people reading this with whom I’m just unwilling to do that kind of sharing.
But there are facts in my personal history that, for some reason or other, I haven’t necessarily chosen to reveal even to the people closest to me. Nothing dramatic. I wasn’t imprisoned for dealing drugs at an early age. I’m not secretly gay or bi-sexual. I don’t have information the CIA would like me to hold onto. Just little things. Things that might embarrass me if I recalled them.
Okay, here’s one. It’s the only one I’m letting go today, and you all get to read it: I was about seven or eight when I was in the third grade, since I was born in October and skipped the first grade. One day in third grade I wet my pants in class, just�sitting right there in my seat in school. My teacher was a mean old witch. She had made it�clear to all of us kids that we would not be allowed out to the restroom, and I really had to go, and finally I just couldn’t hold it any more. It was one of the worst moments I can remember from my childhood. I had failed utterly to control my body.
It’s the only time this has ever happened to me, but it remains, 45 years later, one of the most embarrassing moments of my life.
We all have them, these nagging little secrets. There are a lot of reasons we don’t want to give them up. They might be simply embarrassing, or take us back to a moment of embarrassment from long ago. They might cause us to be perceived as something other than the way the people closest to us see us.
Or there might actually be professional consequences. When Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA agent by Dick Cheney or Scooter Libby or whomever, with the knowledge of Karl Rove or George Bush or whomever, it ended her career.
In today’s Washington Post there’s a story about the Rev. James Moran, a priest who was sexually abused as a young man. When he tried to talk about this openly during Holy Week, when he tried to share this secret and thereby share his humanity, the Catholic Church first reprimanded him, then removed him from his position as a hospital chaplain.
That’s a real loving church, eh? That’s a great way to show Christ’s love for the shunned. Push one of your own onto the street for even remembering and talking about what happened. Keep the secret, above all else.
I had a similar experience, when I was a bit older, maybe 9, and the teacher in question was a nun. I still blush furiously and feel terrible inside when I think of it, although intellectually I understand it was not my fault. I will note that the nun in question began allowing bathroom breaks after the incident, and that my parents moved me to a public school soon thereafter, though I think for financial reasons.
I think that there are reasons other than embarassment that we neglect to share these things, one is that when you share some things, you kind of unilaterally force level of intimacy that you may not be sure, in any relationship, that the other is truly comfortable with. One does not want to turn one’s friendships, or even partnership, into a therapy session.
And to some extent it is cultural. We, especially men in our society, just don’t talk about those things, right?
Well, I’m ready to share any secrets here. Maybe another time.
You mentioned that priest who sexually abused a young man. I don’t understand why you don’t support the Chruch’s actions. If he was guilty of a crime, he needs to be put to justice. What if someone came up to you and admitted that they killed someone. That’s horrific! You would HAVE to tell someone. By law.
Not anymore, Julie. Men do talk about things these days. Me and my friends do and I’m pretty sure none of us is gay. I do have a friend, who’s gay and we do chat about stuff, but I guess that’s more normal, right?
“You mentioned that priest who sexually abused a young man. I don’t understand why you don’t support the Chruch’s actions. If he was guilty of a crime, he needs to be put to justice.”
No, no, he himself WAS abused by a priest when HE was a young man. That’s the point. He announced this secret during Holy Week.
And the church fired him for sharing that secret, for telling people that a priest had abused HIM. The church fathers did not want a priest talking about other priest’s having abused him.
That’s what’s so heinous: that the church punished this guy for simply talking about his own bad experience with another priest when he was young. There’s no suggestion in the article that he himself ever did anything wrong.
Simran,
The issue about the priest is that he, the priest was sexually abused as a young man, not that the priest abused anyone. He was the victim, but when he talked about it he was taken out of his post.
I am not sure that I understand what the issue is. The article makes it sound like it was a very intense, negative sermon, and without being there I cannot judge what happened, and whether it was indeed inappropriate. My gut feeling is to agree with Dave, but I am just not sure.
And I do think younger people are more open than older ones. Goodness I remember in college long involved talks in the car about all the terrible things in our pasts. In fact, at one point in college I wondered if I was the only person I knew who came from a loving, functional family.
In the context of middle age, though , we definitely hide our wounds. Or at least I know I do.
Julie