Confirmation Class

I may have mentioned before that I am a confirmation sponsor for one of my cousins. Part of the responsibility of a sponsor is to attend as many confirmation classes with my candidate as possible. Being a short while away from Vancouver, one would think it would be easy enough for me to travel from Portland to attend all of the classes. Unfortunately, I am still a college student without a car and have had to resort to public transportation.

Fortunately, Portland to Vancouver transportation is easily maneuvered and I finally made it to mass and confirmation class with my cousins. It was great! I enjoyed spending time with my family and experiencing confirmation class with my cousins.

The class focused on human dignity - a topic I constantly think about in nursing school. It was refreshing to not only be able to talk about it openly from a religious standpoint, but also hear the thoughts of the candidates on the topic. The coordinator had prepared an activity to stimulate our interpretation of human dignity. The exercise consisted of a number of hypothetical situations with the option to make the information about the situations public or private with subsequent reasoning. Ultimately it came down to the individual's perceptions of publicity, privacy, and human dignity.

Dealing with the hypothetical is never easy for me, because I consider several possibilities at once which eventually results in indecisiveness. The candidates, on the other hand, seemed to have specific situations in mind and acted in response to them. I found it interesting from an anthropological perspective that their lived experiences varied little from each other and greatly from mine. For instance, there was a situation about a friend having a same-sex significant other. Some of the candidates thought it should be made public because they wanted to show their support. The phrase "be proud of who you are" was thrown around frequently in the discussion.

As much as I was trying to hang back and not become too involved in the discussion (in order to let the candidates flourish on their own), I spoke up on this particular occasion to play the devil's advocate. I spoke to homophoebia and bullying because I thought it was important to remind the candidates that realistically it is not quite as simple as "being proud of who you are." I am grateful no one seemed to take offense to my input as the candidates continued their discussion.

I truly enjoyed the experience of talking with young adults and sharing our faith. Confirmation class was similar to a refresher course for me and I find I cannot wait until next week!