Of the Wooden Confessional Box

Treat me nice,
Treat me good,
Treat me like you really should,
Cause i'm not made of wood,
And i don't have a woodenheart...

- Elvis Presley/Lizard's Convention "Woodenheart" -

During my third year in uni, we were required to take up an elective. Of the small range, we chose Comparative Religion cuz we found it interesting..(plus it seems the easiest to score! hehehe..) it was very interesting and definitely informative. We learnt a lot about the other mainstream religions plus a few cults...bit of info, there was this cult in the US whose members were found dead of suicidal cause in an abandoned warehouse, all wearing brand-new Nikes!! hmm...kinda makes you wonder how strong the marketing strategy for Nike is to actually equip a bunch of lost cultist in search for their supposed nirvana...hmm...anyways, we had this munchkin for a teacher..very cute with such a huge tudung...anyways, she was entertaining as well as she had too many stories to tell us but too little time cuz it was during the fasting month, and our class was in the evening, and she felt obliged to let us go of early (woohoo! ) not that it would make much difference, but we definitely welcome the early break..heheheh...

so, as always, a paper is required of us..we were to do a project paper on another religion other than our own...my friends and i chose to do a paper on the Confession of the Christian Church...mainly because we've seen too many telly shows with confession sessions and the all-important but intriguing wooden confessional box....i had this Christian friend of mine to introduc me to a priest from this church in PJ...so, we were all excited laa..mainly because we have never seen a confessional box up close before and had visions of ourselves sliding the panel in between, hehehehe...so, one fine Saturday morning we drove up to the church to conduct an interview with the priest..Father O.C. Lim...now, one of my groupmate is a tech freak...while most of us were just gazing at palmtop adverts in the maagazines (and wondering how to use it...hey it was in the early 2000), she was already using it in class to take down notes..so, we assigned her to bring the camera and tape recorder for the interview...when we arrive at her place to pick her up...aiikss? assall melenggang je...?? she had nothing in her hands and no backpack...apparently, both equipment was of the digital kind, and fit into the back pockets of her jeans...fuyyooo.....jakun, jakun....

the interview went well...Father Lim was very helpful..told us all about the history and methods, and everything...dutifully, we took it all down and asked the right questions...when at the back of our minds, we were shouting, where is the confessional box??!!!!...hehhehe...after the interview, we discreetly, hehehe, asked him to give us a tour of the church (sebenarnye nak tengok the darn confession box) and kononnye wanted to take pics of the box to be included in the paper...to our dismay, we found that there were no box only a room where to confession-er meet face to face with the priest for those confessions...the priest explained that it was a relativly new church and that if we wanted to see the real one, there is one such box in an old church right smack-daddy in the middle of KL....

oklaaa...excited kan...so, made the appointment to see him at the church...it was a hot afternoon the day we set off to see him..i was aware that my fuel is running low, but, hey, i thought, i can make it to the petronas by the highway...so all 5 of us (4 groupmates and another excited friend who's just there for the ride) vrroomed our way to KL...along the way, my car jerked a few times...so, we switched off the air-cond and the radio (haha, classic thing to do to conserve fuel..) then the engine died...uh-oh...managed to start it up again...mentally urging the car to make it to the gas station which was less than 2 kilometres away...thank god it started to move again...

ok, only a kilometre away..nearer, nearer...and i could see the signboard for Petronas coming up...about 500 metres away...then...it stopped!! dead!! and no amount of turning the ignition could get it to start!! aarrgghhh!!!! we were already late for the appointment, so we had it cancelled..darn..my poor friends had to walk 500 metres to the gas station (and some) to get some petrol...you could see, their faces grimacing in the hot sun as they walked up to the car to isi minyak...*whoops* alamak!! tak cukup!! by this time i was too busy apologizing to them and promising them lunch at McDs amidst wolf whistles from the traffic...luckily, this passerby in a kancil helped us out...whew....

a week later, we made our way to the church, yet again..haha..this time we weren't disappointed..it was there in its wooden splendour...hhehehe...took pictures inside, outside, slide the panels a few times, while a friend pretended to confess...memang takde keje...as parting gift, Father Lim gave us a book he wrote on the Journey of the Catholic Church in Malaysia...

hmm...the results we got for the paper was not as high as we expected...but the picture of us grinning in front of the condession box? priceless...made me realise even more of the greatness of Islam that doesn't require any intermediary to communicate, confess and repent to God..just the pureness of heart and intention...