"Confession was not an experience of self-inflation or egotism, nor (once the initial shock of declaration was absorbed) was it an exercise in humiliation. It was, rather, a moment of personal liberation: to emerge from the time-out-of-time darkness of the little box, overwhelmed with gratitude, and in possession of a wondrous discovery -- that we are creatures born for radiance. Our natural state is to be light, free, ready for the next thing.

"[T]he old-style confession, the kind that still fires the popular imagination and has fascinated and marked writers in the supposedly non-religious (even anti-religious) passing century -- Joyce, Mary McCarthy come to mind -- thus was, finally, a sacramental act. If by "sacramental" we mean an authentic, if mysterious, change wrought within the human heart by ritual gestures and words, murmurs and the absolving movement of an anonymous hand posed above a bowed head."