All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one’s need.
Acts 2: 44-45
Those of you who recognize my handle might remember me from a previous blog I had, here. And you may find that my thinking has evolved quite a bit, in a short time. You’re not wrong.
Let me explain why this page exists. But for that, you need to know where it comes from, and why I have gone from questioning the validity of organized religion to proudly proclaiming the Truth of Christ and the Church. Call it my own personal mystical transformation, and that is what this website is meant to document.
Contents
- My own backstory
- Why I am writing this
My Own Backstory
I tried to walk away from organized religion years ago. I still prayed and spent time with God, like I always have, but I did it in a way that suited me (keywords: “suited me,” which will come up again and again). My wife hated religion and most of my friends in the activist community made fun of it, but I wasn’t willing to give up my faith… so I hid it (that wasn’t the right thing to do, either, by the way).
I don’t think I could come any closer to sympathizing with Peter when he heard that damn rooster. I never didn’t believe. But I had a huge problem preventing me from really knowing God: I was trying to do things my way, and missing the mark in a big way (which is kind of the literal definition of sin, isn’t it?). I am convinced that He’s been trying to break through that wall for a long, long time.
Once upon a time, I was a 13-year-old kid growing up in Florida who saw, for the first time, what horrors awaited me in the world when two planes crashed into the World Trade Center and I watched it unfold live in my Language Arts class that morning. I was raised to believe in God, by my Episcopalian grandparents, but we didn’t do Church except for baptisms and weddings. God was a personal thing in our house, and I went to a public school, so when September 11th happened, I prayed a lot for comfort, but I thought it was up to us — the people, my generation, whatever — to solve them.
So I became an activist. My first project was rescuing feral cats in our neighborhood from traps that animal control set to catch and euthanize them. They were kittens; every single litter we rescued, we domesticated (“we,” here, being the half a dozen or so of us SPCA volunteers who took them in; I still have scars from that — Hah!). The adults were placed at a cat sanctuary (back then it was “the Cat City” — I don’t know if it’s still around) in Orlando. Then came food not bombs, earth liberation, and so on. Somewhere along the line, I got wrapped up in the punk rock scene.
By the time I hit my early 20s, I didn’t want money or fame or fortune. That was when God really started to prod at me, and I started exploring religion in depth. Eventually, I became a steady parishioner at an Episcopal Church. That was my first taste of liturgical life. I loved it. I ate it up. And I found that it not only meshed with, but validated my feelings about the world and my place in it (note: validated my feelings – this is a trend). I started studying theology, building a personal prayer life, and getting more involved in the parish. Later, I would find that Catholicism was the only theological tradition that that made sense once I got that deep, but that wouldn’t be until my late 20s.
I had a problem during those years: my grandparents had passed away and my parents weren’t religious at all. Outside the social justice ministries, my religious inclinations were mostly a joke to other activists. I internalized this and it became a huge personal struggle. I was basically lying to myself about being happy with any of this conflict (I wanted to live a religious life, even if I didn’t know or want to admit it, yet; but I didn’t want to disappoint my parents and scare off the friends I managed to find). I did not cope with it in the healthiest ways.
Through all this, God endured and, mercifully, pointed me towards the mystics of the Church. That was my first real pull towards Catholicism. I wasn’t entirely sure why, but I felt like I needed to become Catholic; the Anglo-catholicism I had been exploring in the Episcopal Church just didn’t quite fit. I couldn’t explain it, other than the only time I felt right was when I was centering my life around God, and that there couldn’t be a substitute. That should have been the thread I followed, but I didn’t quite get it. I was still trying to find a way to have it my way, and this would be a pattern I would contend with over the next 16 years.
I settled in at the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul in Chattanooga, where I was getting ready to start RCIA when I met my future wife. I actually had no intention of dating her; I had finally started coming to terms with what I really felt inclined to do, and even told the priests there I wanted to discern joining a religious order after my formation. Then I met my future step-son; he was 11, scared and nervous about the world, and I felt like I was looking into the mirror of the past, at myself at that age. I don’t know what I was thinking or why, but I gave in and agreed to go on a date. To my surprise it was nice. We had a lot in common (outside of my religious proclivities, which she didn’t hold back on jabbing at) and I ended up falling hard for her.
The last time I ever went to that Basilica was to pray for what felt like hours… because it was.
There was a little chapel and I poured my heart out to Jesus and Mary. To paraphrase: “I don’t know what I’m doing; I think I can do some and bring a family together, though; if this is a mistake I hope you’ll give me a path back to whatever I’m supposed to be doing; if you let me learn the lessons to fix what’s wrong with me from this, I’ll bear whatever cross I must.”
For the next couple years, I felt like maybe I made the right choice to follow God’s will, after all. We were happy, even though we struggled; we got married, another baby was born, I got a decent job, and eventually we moved to a wonderful small(ish) town with a great community. There were problems but I assumed that was just part of the ride. I would have endured anything; I took my vows seriously because I took them before God and, for all my faults, I never questioned the reality of the Sacraments. You don’t abuse or test them; you just don’t.
Over the years, I’ve tried to bring my wife to Church from time to time. She went grudgingly to an Episcopal Church with me a few times, but she made me feel guilty about it, so I tried to figure out how I could have that relationship with God in a way that suited my situation (again — “suited me in my situation” — see the pattern, yet?). She got real bitter about it after I suggested I wanted to find a spiritual advisor and start discernment. I think she thought I meant to be a priest; I really just wanted to explore my vocation. (For the record, I was terrified of the prospect of being a priest; I’m not a leader, I just wanted to help people, the way Jesus told us to, and not for my benefit but for His — or so I told myself but I’ll eat those words before the end of this).
When I found out she was having an affair, which wasn’t long after that, it broke me for a while. I retreated to the activist community with the free time I did have. I was the primary caretaker for the kids, so I decided to try my hand at writing and putting my philosophy studies to work.
I wanted to address the division between individualists and collectivists in the greater anarchist community, because I didn’t understand why — if they believed so much in diversity-in-solidarity — that it was so hard to put into practice. It was pragmatically and ideologically incongruent. Most of them mean well, but they all think they know the answer.
And I thought I knew the answer, too: mine was Proudhon’s mutualism, voluntaryism, and localism. I also loved Emma Goldman’s work, and that brought me to Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement in the middle of Advent 2025. Dorothy Day turned out to be a bigger inspiration than all of the rest, in a way I was completely unable to fathom at the time.
Meanwhile, I was still trying to deny my religious persuasions, outwardly (even though, internally, I was screaming for God’s presence). I didn’t like institutions and organizations, because I thought they were all inherently corrupt. However, while I was trying to “philosophize” the whole anarchist and activist community, I accidentally ended up philosophizing myself.
I starting reflecting on the Garden of Eden, and the meaning of the Fall, and assessing myself in this light. Most of what I was doing was as much about venting my own frustrations and convincing myself of ideas I couldn’t really believe in. It did not work.
Instead, it quickly became apparent was that I had been wrong about a lot of my perceptions — not just in the moment, but through my whole life. The only thing, it seems, that I was right about was my faith — the faith I had always been so afraid to share with the world outside the Church — and which is summed up in the words of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. This is where I have to chalk some of this up to a mystical experience.
Suddenly, for the first time in my life, I didn’t care what anyone else thought, because we were all wrong.
And me most of all.
I had not ever assessed myself, once, in all of this. I just assumed I was already right because I thought I understood — I thought I knew something; I had plucked a fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. The more I worked through all of this, the more I kept seeing how I was making a particular mistake, over and over (wait for it…).
Through this process, I came to understand the — well, a — point of the Confiteor: “mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!” and I developed a new love for the Sacrament of Reconciliation. I can’t imagine I’ve had a chance to ever really experience it; in the Anglican tradition, it’s not taken very seriously, so when I finally do finish Catholic formation, I intend to pour my heart out.
But, I digress… it’s not about self-deprecation (despite what the protestants want people to believe). On the contrary: it’s an opportunity for accepting my limitations as imperfect and overcoming them enough to put God’s will — not mine — first.
It didn’t matter what I thought, anymore. I just wanted to know the Truth — not a “truth” that sounded good or had the right aesthetic, or that legitimized and validated my opinions, because that always turned out to be wrong and get me into more trouble — somebody, somewhere will find a problem in “a truth.” I wanted the Truth… and I finally got a real glimpse of it.
It hurt… a lot.
On the Feast of the Annunciation, 2006, for the first time in years, I really prayed.
And prayed. And prayed. All night. Through every emotion I bottled up for the last 10 years. By morning I was exhausted. My body hurt and I was crying and laughing at the same time but I felt better than I ever have before. That’s when I connected the dots and understood the point of what the mystics have been trying to say.
I thought about The Dark Night of the Soul, which describes an experience that I’m not sure I’m entirely out of, yet, but I’m so thankful to have a guiding light to find my way, now. The Ascent of Mount Carmel is actually on my desk right now. But I digress.
God was giving me the path back that I prayed for ten years before. Obviously, circumstances aren’t the same and my vocational path will reflect that, but I mean that I was on the path to figure this out — my big fault. I made a mistake that drew me away, Satan’s temptations, maybe, but I made the choice and I’m so glad God is willing to rework His plan a little for my sake. I don’t deserve it. I’ve been so unbelievably selfish in all this.
Eternal God, Heavenly Father, I offer you the precious body and blood, soul and divinity of your dearly beloved Son, our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, in atonement for my sins – and those of the whole world.
In a way, God played a joke on me. It just took me a decade to get to the punchline.
I finally figured it out. It was never about me and no matter how much good I wanted to do, my shame about doing it for God meant I was still making it about me, even if I didn’t realize it.
That meant I wasn’t really trying to listen to God and hear His truth; I was trying to make Him fit the truth I wanted. With that one realization, thanks to my “philosophizing” myself, God not only destroyed my ego, but filled the space with the kind of unconditional love I always knew Jesus had and wanted to share with us. That’s the gift of the Holy Spirit.
This new site is a public record of what God can do if you’re willing to allow Him to do it. A little faith will go a long way, and it can liberate even the most oppressed souls. I hope you’ll follow along to watch this unfold.
When I finally finish getting my own house in order, I intend to do whatever the Church needs to continue the mission Jesus gave her: not on my terms, not what I think needs to be done, but whatever I’m asked to do. And whatever it is, I’ll do with joy and happiness.
Why I’m writing this all down
I’m not under any illusions that I’m some kind of “special case” — I’m a disaster, incarnate, full of my own faults and shortcomings. There are millions of people who are both far better than I, and much worse. I’m not “saintly” or even well versed in theology, despite my love for studying it. But I also know there are other people out there who might sympathize with my brokenness, and I hope they will find comfort in knowing that they aren’t alone, and perhaps the inspiration to seek after the same liberation I have found myself working towards.