Saturday, January 14, 2006

Dirty Little Secrets

Last weekend I went to the most amazing art exhibit I have seen in a long time called "PostSecret." Frank Warren started this project in 2001 by handing out postcards in public places like Metro stations and coffee shops and leaving little cards in library books, inviting people to write down a secret that they have never told anyone before and send it to him to post on a blog. In the old Staples store in Georgetown there were hundreds of beautiful, creative and moving postcards displayed.The secrets ranged from funny (on a Starbucks cup: "I give decaf to customers who are rude"), to the hearbreaking (see above).

I think that Frank Warren has tapped into a pervasive need that people have to release their secrets. We used to call it confessing our sins in my line of work. But for some reason people feel more comfortable sending a postcard to a safe stranger than coming to their pastor or church or God. Is it because the church has become irrelevant to so many people? Is it because we have so clearly defined "sin" as particular behaviors (that other people do, of course) and not as a human condition of brokeness that we all share? Is it because people feel like the church doesn't care about their depression or self-loathing or broken heart? Is is because we have spent so much time pointing fingers at "sinners" and condemning people for their sin and pretending that we in the church don't have any of our own that we have forgotten that Jesus came to seek and save the lost? Is it all of the above??

One of the most powerful parts of the exhibit was a display of emails from people telling how writing their secret on a postcard and dropping it in the mail had transformed them. One person wrote that she had sent her postcard in but that it hadn't made it onto the blog. She said that at first she was disappointed, but then she decided to write her confession on lots of cards and leave them on tables at the mall. She stood back and watched as people read the cards, and one person even took the card and put it in her purse. She said it made her feel so good to give her secert away and to see that someone cared enough to take her secret.

Warren said that he still gets 300-400 postcards each week. And I am so glad that people have found PostSecret and are liberating themselves from their secrets. I have said a lot of prayers as I look at these postcards--for the people writing them, for those who are still carrying around big burdensome secrets and are afraid to let them go, and for the church, that we will can learn from these secrets, learn to be a place of healing and compassion and mutual vulnerability.

Check out the PostSecret blog: http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

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