PostSecret and Church

Just a break from my Theology in a Post-Cartesian World series.

Are you aware of the PostSecret phenomenon?

PostSecret was started by Frank Warren in 2004 when he sent off 3,000 self-addressed stamped postcards asking people to reveal a secret, anonymously, and mail it back to him. Further, the postcard was to be “decorated” in a self-expressive or thematic manner. Warren received hundreds of responses which formed the basis of a community art project.

However, since that time PostSecret has become one of the biggest web sensations. Every Sunday Warren posts some of the secrets that have been mailed to him. Some of the more interesting secrets Warren held back from the website publishing them in three books, PostSecret, My Secret, and The Secret Lives of Men and Women.

To participate in PostSecret you must do the following (from the PostSecret website):

You are invited to anonymously contribute your secrets to PostSecret. Each secret can be a regret, hope, funny experience, unseen kindness, fantasy, belief, fear, betrayal, erotic desire, feeling, confession, or childhood humiliation. Reveal anything - as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before.

Create your 4-by-6-inch postcards out of any mailable material. If you want to share two or more secrets, use multiple postcards. Put your complete secret and image on one side of the postcard.

Tips:
Be brief - the fewer words used the better.
Be legible - use big, clear and bold lettering.
Be creative - let the postcard be your canvas.

Mail your secrets, or other correspondence, to:

PostSecret
13345 Copper Ridge Road
Germantown, Maryland
USA 20874-3454

Please consider sharing a follow-up story about how mailing in a secret, or reading someone else's, made a difference in your life.

Since its inception PostSecret has acquired a wide cult following. As a psychologist I’m fascinated by the dynamics of it all. I also think PostSecret poses some spiritual questions.

Here are some random reflections:

Clearly, a lot of the PostSecret phenomenon is voyeuristic and exhibitionistic. But, apparently, lots of people are being powerful affected as both participants and consumers of PostSecret. The participants report powerful cathartic effects from selecting, designing, and mailing in their secret. Many consumers of the website and books also report healing effects. Many of us feel deeply alien, strange, and deviant. Reading through the secrets seems to attenuate those feelings. Readers feel more “normal,” more “at home” in the human species.

So, it seems pretty clear that PostSecret is meeting some deep need in people. A need to somehow reconcile with the skeletons in our closets. But, from a psychospiritual vantage, what are we to think of this?

On the one hand, the anonymous and vicarious nature of PostSecret is worrisome, psychospiritually speaking. Any healing that is experienced is individualistic. It’s not a communal process. Thus, PostSecret seems devoid of spiritual benefit.

But on the other hand, the secrets, if you read them, are very raw. Very raw. Which makes me wonder if the church will ever be a place where true transparency, confession, acceptance, and healing are to be found. Stated bluntly, the church, as she currently exists, cannot handle real, raw, festering secrets. And if this is the case, isn’t PostSecret standing in the gap? Meeting a need?

In short, rather than spiritually critiquing PostSecret’s failings, might we also consider the possibility that PostSecret is critiquing the failings of the church?