Growing Up Amish - Ira Wagler [86]
Bishop Henry and the preachers would see to it that I walked through fire and groveled in the dust, that there was no remaining shred of rebellion in me. They would hector me until I was witless, half-mad with stress. And I would submit, utterly, basely, to their satisfaction before they would restore my membership and lift the excommunication. I was trapped, completely at their mercy.
Even so, I was welcomed that first Sunday morning as we stood around outside before the service. People shook my hand and smiled. I walked inside and sat with my peers in my normal spot. Feeling a bit like a lamb walking to slaughter, I got up during the first song and followed the preachers to their Obrote, or conference, as I had done years before during baptismal classes. But this time I was the only one. There was no baptismal class. Just me. I followed the preachers into the side room and shut the door.
Outside the room, the congregation roared joyfully the ancient hymns of my childhood. I took a seat facing all the preachers. Quite a lineup that morning, including a few from the north district. Maybe they’d heard I was returning and had come over to join the action. Get their digs in. I sat silently. A brief moment passed. Bishop Henry cleared his throat.
This time, he addressed me directly. Broad, vacant bromides would flow soon enough, but first, the rules must be established. Bishop Henry opened with a short welcome. He was so glad—he claimed with a frozen smile—to see that I had changed my attitude and now was willing to seek redemption and forgiveness from God and the church. All the other preachers nodded in assent but remained silent. I said nothing. I wasn’t expected to say anything.
Then Bishop Henry looked right at me. “To seek forgiveness from sin, one must first confess those sins,” he intoned. “We now request that you confess all your specific sins, here to us in this room. As best you can remember.”
So that was how it went. I didn’t know. I’d never done this before. Now I was expected to speak. Directed to speak. To confess my sins. All the bad stuff I’d done. Oh boy. They had me. Did they ever have me. I sat in that somber room and looked at them. Faced them all. They leaned toward me, restrained but eager. It might have been my imagination in the stress of that moment, but their eyes seemed to shine hungrily. At least the eyes of some of them. Whether or not that actually was the case, one fact cannot be disputed. I was surrounded and alone.
This, then, is what the mad bishop of Ligonier had wrought by his rigid refusal to reinstate me in his church. It would have been so much easier to confess my sins to strangers. To preachers who knew little of my past, preachers who had seen it all before. Now, before these men, all of whom were quite familiar with my history, I was expected to confess the sins I had committed. To speak of them, recite them in minute detail. It was a harsh and bitter thing.
I swallowed. Stuttered a bit. And then, speaking in a halting monotone, pausing now and then as I tried to remember specifics, I told them all my sins, all the things I had done on my latest flight. All the bad stuff I’d done over the past year. How I had drunk. Got stoned. Run around with English women. All the things one did when one stepped outside the box. I didn’t even bother to mention the obvious things like driving and owning a pickup truck. They already knew that. They wanted the juicier details, and I didn’t let them down. Surprisingly, it didn’t take that long. When I finished, Bishop Henry and all the preachers looked properly and officially grieved. Actually, they seemed a little stunned. I don’t know what they were expecting.
After regaining his composure, Bishop Henry claimed to be very glad at my honesty.