{"id":11221,"date":"2025-06-14T13:01:24","date_gmt":"2025-06-14T13:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=11221"},"modified":"2025-09-23T19:15:27","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T19:15:27","slug":"on-finding-the-home-you-never-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/14\/on-finding-the-home-you-never-left\/","title":{"rendered":"On Finding the Home You Never Left"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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On Finding the Home You Never Left <\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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I left the church many years ago. This past spring I thought I came back, but it turns out I never really left.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By Colm O\u2019Shea<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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I was baptized as a baby, but this spring, at the age of 47, I became a Christian.<\/p>

This is putting it too neatly. I cannot begin to trace the long trail of breadcrumbs in the woods that, against all odds, led me back here, to this strangely familiar place. But the key change happened this year. A mysterious word, pointing to a more mysterious reality, shone like a beacon: metanoia. <\/em>As soon as I encountered it, I knew it must be followed, trusted.\u00a0 All my life\u2019s explorations had led to metanoia,<\/em> and all future journeys would be guided by its inner compass, wherever it might point. Metanoia is typically translated as \u201crepentance,\u201d but a better sense of it comes from \u201cconversion\u201d or \u201creorientation\u201d: to \u201cturn around\u201d in your life, moving away from error, aligning yourself with a higher truth. Whatever the cause of my conversion, the effect was paradoxical in every respect, feeling both gradual and sudden\u2014surprising and inevitable.
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<\/strong>My wife\u2019s story is different. She would say she experienced metanoia, too, in the sense of discovering for herself the Christian faith she was baptized in, but for her it happened on the cusp of adolescence. Through the two-plus decades of our lives together, she has recognized Christ, and the Church, as home. I emphatically did not. Only now do I grasp how I had been living in a divided home with her all these years. Whatever mysterious process is transforming every aspect of my life, one particular revelation is my sense of what our marriage\u2014and by extension, our family and our home\u2014really is: a microcosm of the Church. What is being unveiled (to my ongoing astonishment and delight) is a layer of \u201chome\u201d I didn\u2019t know before. I find myself dislocated, thrown out of the world I thought I knew. But I am also overwhelmed by a sense of coming home.<\/p>

What was our home before this change? Was it \u201cdivided\u201d? I have always loved my wife, and our young family is so close-knit that I feel in danger of smugness, or outright boasting, whenever I talk about them. Yet I suppose our home was divided in the sense that I<\/em> was divided against myself. For instance, through childhood and youth I was burdened by the sense that I can\u2019t repay my parents for all the ways they helped me. The same summer I got married, I was stunned when a prominent university hired me to teach its talented students; like my relationship with my wife and parents, it seemed so much more than I deserved. For several years, I had a recurring nightmare of always being late to class, unprepared, deeply unready to help those who might depend on me. Even in the low-stakes world of adult friendship, I\u2019m always a bit thrown, even wary, when people want to be my friend. I\u2019ve had a small but dedicated circle of close friends for decades, and yet I\u2019m always surprised by it.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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I kept well hidden, often from even myself, just how cut off from the core of being I felt since adolescence.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Simply put: I have always suspected that I\u2019m not worthy of love. But I didn\u2019t say any of this to myself. My official position was: of course. Of course <\/em>I\u2019m married, with children, a career, and some friends. It\u2019s no big deal. Millions of people have these things.<\/p>

I kept well hidden, often from even myself, just how cut off from the core of being I felt since adolescence. I recall my grandmother, a devout Catholic, learning that I had become a teenage atheist. She was stunned, and while I don\u2019t remember her exact words, she was pleading with me: Couldn\u2019t I understand I was loved by something greater than I could imagine. <\/em>But I couldn\u2019t imagine\u2014nor could I accept it.\u00a0<\/p>

I turned my back on the warmth of love, and sought out cooler wisdom. Academic training in philosophy yielded a fascination with Buddhism and yoga, with their focus on attention and detachment. They provided systematic methods. I liked the disciplined frameworks; my mind was a lab, and they offered something like a scientific method to explore myself. By contrast, there seemed something unstable, even dangerous, about Christianity. I grasp now what it was. As the mythologist (and Christian convert) Martin Shaw says: \u201cChrist is wild, but not feral.\u201d I recoiled from Christ, as one might a madness. The study of comparative religion and mysticism has informed much of my scholarship, but my deep heart\u2019s core remained divided, homeless, always searching for\u2026 something.<\/p>

The flipside of insecurity is pride: I was defiant and free. Alienated, sure\u2014but free! It became normal to feel spiritually homeless; on some level, I even pitied those who had a church or a traditional religious practice. They seemed credulous\u2014and maybe overly domesticated by their comforting stories about having a loving home with a cosmic father. And this is patronizing in the extreme, but maybe I saw Marie\u2019s having lost her own father at a young age as being a simple (simplistic) explanation for her being drawn to an eternal one.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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I felt I could trust her<\/em>, even if I couldn\u2019t trust what she did.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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I met Marie in Dublin. We were both in our mid-20s; she was working as a program assistant for Trinity College\u2019s English department, where I was profoundly entangled in a dissertation on non-dual metaphysics in James Joyce\u2019s Finnegans Wake, <\/em>a project that was slowly but surely driving me insane. In retrospect, I see how supremely adrift I was at that point in my life. A Cork man can never feel more of an interloper than he does in Dublin. And Trinity, traditionally a place for polished Anglo-Irish landed gentry, made me feel even more out of place. I mostly avoided my fellow English PhD students, but one autumn evening I decided to attend a department reception for the free booze. Marie was unlike anyone else at the party, but not ill at ease as I was. I liked her immediately. We agreed to meet again.<\/p>

When I finally saw the inside of her shoebox-sized apartment, I did a double-take at her crucifix and Bible in plain view on a side table. I imagine a vampiric recoiling on my part, but I shook it off because I was so enchanted by her. I\u2019d overlook this (presumably harmless) eccentricity. If anything, I saw it as almost counter-cultural in college-educated Dublin circles: This was someone who openly professed faith in something that our urbane peers had dismissed as uncool. I felt I could trust her<\/em>, even if I couldn\u2019t trust what she did.<\/p>

We got married at St. Finbarr\u2019s Oratory. It\u2019s a small church built on a 6th<\/sup> century monastic site, a tiny island at the source of the River Lee. My father took my mother there when they were falling in love many years ago. It\u2019s a place of true beauty, but it\u2019s also a religious setting through and through, and we were being wed in the eyes of the Catholic Church. I felt like an imposter. All my documents were in order, sure\u2014 but terms like \u201cGod\u201d meant little to me, and Jesus even less. During the marriage ceremony, we lit our candles together to form one flame, and I recall nearly fainting at the enormity of what was happening. This was a solemn union. And I wasn\u2019t worthy of it. And yet, oddly, it was intoning the actual vows that calmed me. Perhaps this was a kind of foreshadowing, even if I didn\u2019t recognize it as such at the time.<\/p>

Our lives together since that day have been fun, creative, and loving. But secretly my wife\u2019s prayer life perplexed me, as did her weekly Mass attendance. When she dutifully enrolled our children in Sunday School, my misgivings worsened. Wasn\u2019t I tacitly endorsing their exposure to Christian pedagogy by not objecting to it? Did this amount to a lie of omission on my part? By temperament as well as training in philosophy, it\u2019s my reflexive belief that no amount of comforting fictions or good intentions can compete with the capital T truth. Nevertheless, belonging to the wishy-washy agnostic <\/em>strain of atheist, I sensed that my disbelief lacked the conviction to overrule my wife\u2019s desire to raise our kids in the faith. Besides, I assumed that the general secular bent of our world would draw them away from the church on its own. Did I want this outcome, or dread it? It seems the bizarre answer was: both. In retrospect, this strange conflictedness about my children\u2019s faith should have alerted me to my own inner turmoil about Christian belief. To \u201cbelieve\u201d meant to be credulous <\/em>(in the gullible sense), but not to believe meant\u2026 what? To be adrift in a sea of contemporary sound and fury, signifying nothing.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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I was hemmed in on all sides by Christ, and after a while all I could do was try to escape.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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To clarify, at no point did I vilify the Church, or see it as bad. <\/em>For me it was simply a well-intentioned but outdated institution for generating social cohesion, left behind by a world that had outgrown its primitive stories about what we are, and why we do what we do. If the kids\u2014who eventually became altar servers\u2014<\/strong>wanted to dress up in robes and carry candles or a crucifix behind a priest, so be it. But count me out. In many other ways we were all on the same page. Just not these specific things. What harm could that be?<\/p>

There is a unique challenge faced by those who were raised in a nominally Christian culture as I was. It is a species of fake knowledge\u2014a sense that we know already<\/em> what Christian reality is. This is perhaps especially true for those of us who grew up in late 20th<\/sup>-century Ireland, where decades of blanket submission to Church authority were just giving way to something else. As a child I could rattle off prayers in both Irish and English, was regularly quizzed on the catechism and knew the correct answers. The church infused my rural community in many ways; poorly timed visits to a neighbor\u2019s house risked interrupting that family reciting the rosary together. People also held stations in their homes. (This practice in rural Ireland dates back to the Penal Laws of the 17th century, when Catholics were prohibited by British law from observing mass. Secret masses were held in people\u2019s homes instead, and the practice continues to this day, with the priest and neighbors celebrating the Eucharist in a local house, usually followed by socializing and eating.) This is unfair, but at the time all these rituals felt to me like superstition. My neighborhood seemed to be in the grip of a kind of religious OCD. In short, I was hemmed in on all sides by Christ, and after a while all I could do was try to escape.<\/p>

I see now how strange an \u201cescape\u201d attempt it was: Why marry a Christian? Why stand by and let her lead our children into the Church? If I had been divided against my inner Christian, perhaps I had been building a bulwark against my inner atheist also, and this tension had held since childhood. So what catalyzed this recent metanoia? I could point to some possible candidates. For one, my job is teaching writing to college students. This vocation is under threat (or at least extreme transformation) from A.I., and it has made me increasingly reflective about what it means to be human. That in turn made me take stock of what purpose our universities, and perhaps more specifically the arts and humanities, serve. Why do we have myths, novels, or histories? Why do we write anything? We seek meaning, <\/em>but the opacity of that word has confronted me now, profound and unignorable. For reasons I do not understand\u2014hopefully it is not vainglorious to ascribe it to grace\u2014C.S. Lewis\u2019s apologetics came to my attention. Suddenly I was devouring Surprised By Joy<\/em>, his spiritual autobiography, and then The Pilgrim\u2019s Regress,<\/em> his satirical allegory of contemporary culture\u2019s spiritual bankruptcy paired with hints on how to find a more real world. Then it was on to Mere Christianity<\/em>, adapted from radio talks he gave to the British public during the nightmare of WWII, when it must have seemed as if the world (or at least democracy) might end. Although there are some vague parallels with the chaos of our own political moment, still I couldn\u2019t explain why these ideas were setting me on fire now.<\/em> Nevertheless, the effect was undeniable. Carol and Philip Zaleski\u2019s intellectual history of the Inklings (Lewis and Tolkien\u2019s Oxford writing group) followed, and their description of Tolkien\u2019s devotion to the Eucharist spoke to me deeply, again in ways I cannot explain.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Perhaps, since I am professionally obliged to explain all the time, it is precisely my inability<\/em> to explain the source of this joy, or this fascination, that has coaxed the inner Christian to finally assert himself.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Perhaps, since I am professionally obliged to explain all the time, it is precisely my inability<\/em> to explain the source of this joy, or this fascination, that has coaxed the inner Christian to finally assert himself. Everything is subtly but significantly transformed. I seek prayer, confession, and the Eucharist. They feed me now, as they never did before.<\/p>

Also\u2014and I can\u2019t be sure whether metanoia opened the door to this, or vice versa\u2014I perceive evil all around me, as I never did before, and reject it. G.K. Chesterton aptly describes my journey to the church, in spite of my having been officially inducted into that home so many years ago: \u201cThe mark of the Faith is not tradition; it is conversion. It is the miracle by which men find truth in spite of tradition.\u201d When I went to confession recently, toward the end of Lent, the first thing I told the priest was that it was at least 30 years since my last confession. He said \u201cWelcome home,\u201d and I wept, overwhelmed with gratitude.<\/p>

I must note here that Marie edits everything I write, including this essay. She tells me upon reading it that throughout our relationship, when I would refer to her as \u201cthe believer,\u201d she felt like an imposter. Perhaps all who dare to walk this difficult path sense such a tension\u2014of being divided against themselves. But since I joined her on this path, she too feels something that was subtly disjointed has become whole, or come into alignment, in herself as well as between us.<\/p>

When we lived in a three-room apartment in Queens, Marie used to have recurring dreams of finding secret troves of space within it\u2014doors that opened onto staircases; hidden chambers. Since my conversion, I feel like I have found just such a secret space, except it wasn\u2019t hidden: It was in plain sight all along. The living room, the dining room, have not changed their physical dimensions. But they have taken on that mysterious quality that Chesterton remarks on when he claims that the church \u201cis larger on the inside than it is on the outside.\u201d Our family was already large. We already loved each other. But since I pulled down that dividing wall, and came closer to them, I have come closer to my true self. Love is a boundlessly creative architect. You may only need to knock down one flimsy little wall in your cluttered head to find yourself living in God\u2019s palace\u2014right where you had been all along.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Illustrations by Sarah Clark, from photos by Annie Spratt on Unsplash<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Colm O\u2019Shea<\/strong>\u00a0teaches writing at NYU\u2019s Tisch School of\u00a0the\u00a0Arts. His work has been anthologized in\u00a0Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for\u00a0the\u00a021st\u00a0Century\u00a0<\/em>(Bloodaxe Books) and\u00a0Initiate: An Oxford Anthology of New Writing<\/em>\u00a0(Blackwell). His recent books include\u00a0James Joyce\u2019s Mandala (<\/em>Routledge),\u00a0<\/em>and the sci-fi novel\u00a0Claiming De Wayke\u00a0<\/em>(Crossroad Press). He was also a\u00a0finalist<\/a>\u00a0in Singapore University\u2019s sci-fi flash fiction competition run by the Center for Quantum Computing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I left the church many years ago. This past spring I thought I came back, but it turns out I never really left. By Colm 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