The Princess at confession

The Princess (my 14-year-old daughter Kasia, a candid photo of whom is appended) and I were talking the other evening to Veta Berry, youth director at our former church back in Austin. Kasia had recently attended a youth Eucharist at a church here in town that is nominally Episcopalian but that appears to include the liturgical elements of the service only because the Bishop makes them. (Though the music -- which they genuinely care about -- is first-rate.) Because of scheduling constraints, the priest had run in to hand out the bread and wine first thing in the service, and then he scooted back out and the youth proceeded on with the rest of the liturgy -- most of which, of course, is meant to help you prepare for the Eucharist. (I'll do a post sometime on the role and purpose of liturgy in worship, but all you really need to understand for this story is that in a liturgical service each part is fitted together very carefully, and doing the bread-and-wine bit first completely blasts the liturgical sense of the service to smithereens.)

Kasia is telling Veta this, and it's obvious from what she's saying that she understands how the liturgy fits together (which is unusual in a teenager), and Veta breaks in to say, "Kasia, you are just so amazing -- I can't believe you understand so much about the liturgy at your age!"

The Princess gives Veta a crooked smile and looks over at me out of the corners of her eyes. "Well, it's because of Dad," she says wryly. "Every week when I was six or seven years old, I can remember so clearly how he always made me stop coloring and kneel when we got to the General Confession -- even though nobody was saying anything and it was totally boring. And he would always whisper, 'This is the part where we tell God we're sorry for anything we've done wrong this week; so if there's anything you need to tell God you're sorry for, tell him now.' So I remember I always had to start off with, 'Okay, God, I'm really sorry that I'm so mad at Daddy right now...'"