Clark, you having lunch?” asked Stanely , who caught up with his Frisbee teammate.
“Yeh, but a little later. I gotta get some load.” Clark shouldered his knapsack and started walking.
“Hey, dude, store’s that way…?” Stanely pointed to the opposite direction to where Clark was headed.
“I know dude, but load first!” Clark replied adamantly.
“But you’re going to the chapel and that ain’t where the load is, dude.”
“Oh, yeah it’s there all right, Stan. There’s a load of grace I need up there.”
“Not fair! I thought you meant cell load, dude.”
“Pretty much the same thing to me, dude. No grace-load, no textin’ God.”
“How you get that load, Clark?”
“By confessing my sins to the priest, what else?”
“Can’t you confess directly to God, ‘sides the Bible doesn’t say much ‘bout confessin’ to a priest.”
“I know…but don’t they say, when symptoms persist, see your doctor. Guess, there are sins I could confess to God directly. But there are sins that only God can forgive, and that’s what the box is for, Stan.”
“You know I haven’t really been to confession for so long already?”
“Really? How long ago?” they started climbing the stairway towards the confessional area of the parish.
“So long, I don’t even remember. All I recall was that I was linin’ up behind my dad.”
“What more convincing do you need if your dad was lining up then?”
“Well, that was before. He don’t confess anymore. He says that he’s got a direct line to God.”
“Oh, that’s cool. But who’s payin’ for the line? Santa Clause?”
“What do you mean payin’ for the line?”
“Like I said, grace-load can only come from God, sides, even when our phones aren’t totally out of load, aren’t we frantic to load up right away? It’s not just about being without load, but being ready in case more is needed for some emergency.”
“Wow, this place is cooool,” Stan exclaimed when he saw the church and rows of confessionals. “I bet I could study better here than in the library.”
“Dude, I doubt it. You’d sleep and drool here more than at the lib.”
“Come on, I’m serious. This place has vibes like no other.”
“So, can you wait for me and afterwards we can do lunch?” Clark said.
“Super dude! Meanwhile I’ll check out the religious artwork at the front row. They look awesome! They remind me of my first communion.”
After a few minutes, Clark came out of the confessional. He knelt down and did his penance. He surveyed the almost empty chapel for Stan, but he was nowhere in sight.
He stood up and went to the entrance thinking that Stan could be waiting there for him. But he was surprised to see no one there.
“Where in the world could he have gone?” He went down and walked into the cafeteria and didn’t see him there either.
“Clark!” Stan’s familiar voice called out.
“Dude, why’d you leave me? I didn’t even take long.”
“Hey, I should be the one asking you that,” Stan objected.
“Huh…?” Clark was puzzled.
“I came out of the confessional and you just sublimated, dude?”
“You went into the confessional?” Clark’s eyes popped out.
“Yeh, why so surprised?”
“Yo.. yo…you mean you went to confession?”
“Clark, if I wanted to study, the confessional isn’t the most ideal place,” Stan chuckled.
“But what convinced you to go?”
“An old lady approached me for help.”
“What did she want?”
“She was having trouble calling her driver to pick her up. Worse, she didn’t know how to use her smart phone. And even more worse, she didn’t have any load.”
“So what did you do, dude?”
“I looked up her driver’s number in her phone and called him through mine.”
“And confession?”
“Oh, before she left she thanked me and said, ‘Young man, you have such a load of grace in that big heart to share with so many people.’”
“Then what…?” Clark couldn’t believe what he heard.
“But her words struck me in another way. I thought about what you said earlier about the load, and I realized that I couldn’t give what I didn’t have in the first place.”
“And…?”
“I decided to hit the box and found a patient and compassionate priest waiting inside!”
“Wow! That’s really a load of conversion, Stan!”
“Yup, and by the way Clark,” Stan added, “thanks for sharing your load with me in the first place, to get me back on the road.”