First, he confessed his sin. Second, he confessed God's glory. Third, he asks God to give him words, and then he uses words and ideas he has learned in Scripture and uttered in prayer to speak back to God and for his readers.
This last type of confession "is a creative process", Boulding says. Just as the Holy Spirit "prays in us" when we don't have words (see Romans 8:6), so we co-create ourselves along with God as we make his creative word part of our spoken and written thoughts.
"Words... are essentially signs; and they reach their fullest meaning as servants of self-transcendence."
This has important implications for journaling as a spiritual exercise, which I have been learning to practice for the past two years I've been part of a men's group called Intercept.
Journaling lets us capture and process our floating thoughts, and rein and run with our angry, driving ones. In a sense it is a conversation between ourselves and God, through which we create meaning out of the sense impressions running past our ears and eyes and tongues and fingertips. Through which we turn ideas over and under until they fit into the shape of our life, and in very special cases, fill and expand and reshape that life.
Confessing didn't calm every one of Augustine's storms, but the process made him a more interesting person, and the writing of it brought that process to us so we could join the chorus, from whatever little cell we might be in.
(All quotes are from Maria Boulding, Introduction in Augustine, The Confessions, 2nd edition. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, pp.24-25.)
