The Rev. Jana Milhon-Martin believes confession is a great way to unburden the soul – she just doesn’t think it always has to happen inside a church.

So Martin, director of the diocesan Center for Lay Chaplaincy (CLC), has created a pop-up “Confessions for All Humanity” experience, located, at least until the week of March 23, in San Gabriel, where the Blossom Market Hall donated space for a month.

The experience includes a confessional resembling a voting booth, Wednesday lunch and dinnertime listening stations, and a painted plywood wall. Whimsically or seriously, penitents may step inside the booth, commit their sins to CLC post-its, and fix them to the wall.

Some have already sought reconciliation: “Sometimes I treat my cat better than my husband.”

Or, “I miss my toxic friends.”

“I eat too much ice cream.”

The “Chaplaincy Now” pop-up confessional grew out of a larger initiative to make the ministry of listening, and the training for it, more widely available to the general public, Martin said. The center, funded through the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles and Trinity Church Wall Street Philanthropies, makes clinical pastoral education, formerly reserved for clergy, available to the laity.

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