Saturday, August 9, 2025
A feeling of guilt is an unease that something is wrong. That you’re doing, saying, or thinking the wrong thing. Guilt is an incongruence, a paranoia requiring memory, a fear of tomorrow, or a feeling of “less than.” It requires a red ass. A bother. A nagging conscience.
I once heard of a curmudgeon priest who years ago, came out of the confessional before mass, red-assed. No-one was going to confession. Head poking out of the iniquitous shoebox, he barked, “What… ya’ll saints today? Nobody’s going to confession?!” Dear Mr. Priest, did you know a murderer and torturer wrote a good chunk of the new testament? “Saint” Paul (aka Saul), a vile human with red blood on his hands, wrote your precious word “of God.”
How can the priest forgive, when you have no guilty conscience? Christians have supposedly been saved, yet they beg for redemption each week. When does it stick?
We have to call to mind our “sins” to trigger guilt, and every Sunday, Christians pull the trigger, wondering why they feel so shitty. You have to have a sticky memory to feel guilty. Looking ahead, things are blinding, the sun in your eyes. Clean and clear.
What is guilt, but a red ass from what cannot be changed – the past? What is self-improvement, but “fixing” the fixed past? Looking into the future, you are as clean as a saint, holier than the holy of holies. Looking into the past, you are a red-assed pillar of salt.
Living presently is saintly. Old-fart priest needs to remind you of your transgression. Perhaps the people were just enjoying the lovely prelude music that Sunday, saintly, clean, and pure of heart.
Red-ass priest, why must you turn the people into red-ass sinners? I suppose there would be no purpose for you if everyone’s ass were clean. I smell shite on the fingers that trace the cross in the air at the end of confession. Enough already. Canonize them all. Let them be saints.