Grocery Store Confession

I am standing in the office supply aisle at Meijer looking for a binder. I want something to collect all the papers I am receiving now that I am an elder at my church.

Well, at the time of my writing this, I’m not quite an elder yet. I need to share my faith story first. For the last few weeks, I’ve been studying The Apostles’ Creed, The Book of Order, and considering John Calvin (there are so many JCs in my life), and I need to put all I believe into a story.

Yesterday, I finished reading Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose, and in her last chapter, “Reading for Courage,” she asks two questions: Who can be saved by a terrific sonnet? Whom can we feed with a short story?

I wonder if I am saving anyone with my stories. I know that if it weren’t for Jesse, I would not be able to feed my children with what it is I send out to the world.

I learned that in the Presbyterian Church the confessions are statements of belief, and so what am I confessing when I write? If I believe in stories, what is that belief doing?

I chose a white binder with a gold geometrical pattern on it. It is more expensive than the solid color binders, but I believe in design too, and so I throw it in the cart next to the pumpkin spice Yankee Candle and the cherry red nail polish, neither of which are on my grocery list. This is one of the reasons I try to shop at Trader Joe’s as much as possible so as not to put myself in temptation’s way.

I pick up milk and eggs and cream cheese. I put tomato soup in my cart too, because I feel like that for lunch. I pile cans of pumpkin into my cart along with powdered sugar and yeast, and I wonder about stories and Jesus and teaching and whether what I doubt is the beginning of my faith.

When I decided to write seriously, one of my first mentors told me to stop tying Jesus bows at the end of everything I wrote. I didn’t want to stop, though. I didn’t want to write sorrow or fear or anger because then I’d have to look at it. Because then, I believed, it wouldn’t go away.

“Maybe you can’t write a happy ending,” she told me, “but can you write a beautiful one?”

Can I confess a beauty that won’t go away? Do I believe in a beauty that we can bear, that we will walk around with, that will change us, that will prompt us to act, to heal, to feed, to laugh, to forgive? Can beauty do that?

There are two cashiers, and I chose the woman who is wearing two strings of pearls that fit perfectly in the v-neck of her black polo shirt. She does not say hello or ask me how I am doing, and when I say hello she asks me if I have coupons, bottle slips, or MPerks.

“Not today,” I say, and I think she rolls her eyes. I want to tell her I never have any of these and mostly likely never will because I am a terrible person and lazy grocery shopper but she is all business and this isn’t a confessional. She is not here to listen to me tell her what I believe.

She saves the binder for last, lifting it with both hands and carefully slipping it into its own bag, then stepping around the plexiglass guard that protects us from each other, and hands it to me.

“Thank you,” I say.

“You’re welcome,” she says, and turns to the next person.