No Signal

Seeking God But Never Finding Him Is a Complicated Quest

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I was 17 when my cousin Jimmy was born, and that was the age I left home in Upstate New York to finish high school with the Legionaries of Christ in Texas.

As a consequence, I never knew Jimmy as a kid. I remember seeing him a few times when he was 3 or 4, probably during breaks from college. I have this one memory fragment of him as a little boy, standing outside his home in the Town of Binghamton, staring at me in silence. He was a cute kid, but I was busy with my young adult life, so I can’t say I ever really knew him.

Fast forward to 2015 or so, and Jimmy, now an adult himself and attending Franciscan University of Steubenville, my own alma mater, began to make contact. Although we didn’t have an existing relationship, I was family, and he’s extremely extroverted, so he didn’t hesitate to comment on my articles about Catholicism. He would message me on Facebook to agree with or challenge me on certain things I’d written.

Sometime in mid-to-late 2017, he told me he was moving to Phoenix, where we had also just relocated the previous year. He was discerning the priesthood with a religious order there, and was excited about the new adventure.

Again, he was family, so we invited him to come and spend Christmas with us, since we knew he wasn’t going home and didn’t have anyone in town. He played NERF with my kids and ate like a horse and talked to me about big ideas. What began as an act of polite hospitality turned quickly to friendship, and Jimmy became a regular cast member at our place. For several years, our home was his second home. He was there for almost every holiday, and lots of other occasions besides. Despite our age difference, and a lifetime spent as strangers, we became close. We got together regularly to smoke cigars and talk about philosophy and religion and politics and the like. Jimmy pushed me to read Jordan Peterson even before Kale Zelden did. When I lost my faith, he remained steadfast, despite his own deep religious convictions. He was going through his own struggles, and he was one of the only friends I had at the time who I felt really understood what I was going through. He didn’t let it affect our relationship.

When we left Phoenix for New Hampshire in 2021, Jimmy was, in the parlance of our Upstate New York/Lower New England family, “wicked bummed.” He told me he felt that he had no good reason to stay in Arizona with us gone. But as someone who had spent a lot of time in Boston growing up, he had zero interest in following us there. Instead, he decided to move to Nashville, where some of his college buddies lived. There was a solid and growing Catholic community there he could be a part of, and he had decided at that point that the priesthood was not for him after all. He was ready to find a wife and settle down.

New Hampshire turned out to be a mistake for us, and less than a year later, we were back in Phoenix. But it’s a good thing we went, because he Jimmy might never have left if we hadn’t. His absence was palpable for the final two years we stayed there, but he was so happy in Tennessee that I couldn’t help being happy for him.

Nashville turned out very much not to be a mistake for Jimmy. He got a good job, fell in with this great community of young men, and although it took a while, he actually did find himself the girl of his dreams.

When we met his lovely future bride back in August, he asked me to be a groomsman. I was honored to accept the invitation. This past Saturday, Jimmy got married. I was by far the oldest member of the wedding party, a grandfather with more white hair than brown, drinking and laughing and hanging out with guys many years my junior — some of whom are the same age as my oldest daughter. It took me no time at all to see the treasure that Jimmy had found. These men immediately treated me as a friend, and I had the best time hanging out with them that I can remember having since the days I lived in a house with my own college buddies back in the early 2000s. A number of Jimmy’s friends were recently married with young children themselves, and just starting out their lives. It was a beautiful thing to see and experience.

If I’m being brutally honest, though, at first I was dragging my heels about going. Here’s why:

Being broke, looking for the right job or business idea to get out of this mess, trying to scrape together every dollar I can, I was worried about making the trip. But also, I’m ashamed of where I am in my life, starting over at 47, struggling to get by, trying to navigate a number of very complex and demoralizing challenges I won’t get into here. I dreaded the idea of meeting new people who would ask me what I do, or of seeing people I’ve known for a long time and being asked how things are going. I didn’t want to answer those questions. I didn’t want to have to try to create a version of the truth that felt less embarrassing than the reality is. And I certainly didn’t want to rain on Jimmy’s parade.

I feel like a complete and total failure.

And that feeling extends beyond work and finances to the fact that I knew I would be entering an intensely Catholic space, where conversations and events would include more religious immersion than I’ve experienced in quite some time. I did not want to answer the inevitable questions about what happened, why I left the Church, and so on. As I’ve written about before, my extended family is extremely Catholic, and it is the fundamental marker of their identity. My late grandmother, who would have been 100 years old the day of Jimmy’s wedding, was a devout and loving woman whose adopted Catholicism (she converted after meeting my grandfather) was unquestionably the most important thing in her life. And under her example, and those of her children and their spouses, it became mine.

Until it didn’t work for me anymore.

But I love Jimmy, sometimes like a brother and sometimes like a son, and I was honored to be a part of this day that came as the fruit of so much of his own personal development and effort. There’s no other way to say it: I was incredibly proud of his hero’s journey, and how hard he’s worked to become the man he is today. And so, as much as I was catastrophizing around the event, I couldn’t allow myself not to be there with him for his big day.

I’m so glad I did, for many reasons, not the least of which is that I feel I’ve gained a bunch of new friends - which I find incredibly difficult to do.

But the trip was not without its challenges.

I’ve only set foot inside a Catholic Church once in the past three years, and that was for the funeral of a close friend’s grandmother. As I arrived for the rehearsal on Thursday night, I found myself uncertain of the appropriate conduct for a man who knows every symbol and gesture and ritual, but no longer believes in the meaning behind them. I would never go up for Communion, but what about the smaller things? Should I use the holy water? Make the sign of the cross? Genuflect as I pass the tabernacle? How could I show the appropriate respect for the beliefs of those around me while retaining the distance of my own theological reservations? Should I simply follow, “When in Rome…”, or observe a discreet recusal from what I was but no longer am?

It was a very strange thing to navigate.

I told God, upon entering the church, that if he was willing to talk to me, it’d probably be a good time to do it. I signaled my openness, but nothing came of it. We finished the rehearsal uneventfully and headed out for a great dinner.

On Friday, there was an all-day bachelor party. It started with breakfast at Jimmy’s house, followed by an excursion to a gun range, where they offered a package that allowed each participant to shoot one magazine each in a Browning M240 machine gun, a Barrett .50 Caliber sniper rifle, and an automatic rifle of your choice — we went with the AK-47. Here are my (very brief) range videos. I had never shot an automatic weapon before, and it was a really cool experience:

Browning M240:

AK-47:

Barrett .50:

The brass from that Barrett was yuge. As you can see from the videos, I’m a big man, but look at this thing in my hand. The power of that weapon is insane.

But after the range, it was back to the house, where another cousin of mine, a traditionalist Catholic priest, offered a Traditional Latin Mass in Jimmy’s kitchen.

If I’m being honest, I felt kind of trapped.

My wife and all the kids came out with me for the wedding, since we’re all close to Jimmy. But that meant I got dropped off so Jamie could use the one vehicle we drove there with. I was stranded. If I’d had access to a car, I probably would have left for a bit and come back. But since that was not an option, I stayed.

My priest-cousin, Fr. Dan, offered the Mass for my wedding 21 years ago, when I was the first of the more than 30 grandchildren on my mother’s side to get married. He was, in fact, the guy who got me into traditionalism in the first place. With a roughly similar age gap as Jimmy and I have, Fr. Dan and I used to be pretty tight, but our communication had broken down as my faith began disintegrating and he didn’t know the right thing to say, and I was feeling cornered and reactive.

(One thing I’ll say about my big extended family is that they know how to love, and Fr. Dan did not leave me with any question about that. I got more bear hugs from that guy over the weekend than I’ve ever gotten from anyone. Message received.)

Now, here I was, back in very familiar liturgical territory, feeling completely unsure about how to handle it.

As the Mass got started, it was almost as though muscle memory kicked in. 17 years of regular attendance at TLMs meant I knew reflexively when to stand and when to sit and when to kneel. I found myself once again struggling with whether I should go through these motions or not. I placed myself in the back of the room so that whatever I chose, it would not be a distraction.

Without effort, I found myself mouthing the words of the Latin prayers. I was surprised how much I remembered. But it was rote. Empty. I wasn’t angry, or bitter, or anxious, or anything. I felt perfectly calm, just…totally ambivalent. I asked God, if he was there and listening, to help me out. I wanted to know if he could help make something connect with me. My family is notorious for getting choked up about religious stuff, and I was never an exception. But it just wouldn’t click. Seeing the reverence and devotion of the others, even though I knew it was completely sincere, felt like I was witnessing people convicted of something noble but made up.

I was disturbed by that feeling.

They weren’t the problem. I was the odd man out.

In fact, after spending so much time with these guys in just a few short days, I am reminded why I’d still rather have my friends be Catholic than not. Guys who can pivot from gay jokes to prayer, who throw back old fashioneds while arguing about the best way to make a dry-aged steak but would never even consider bringing a stripper to a bachelor party (even if they think it’s funny to suggest it) are the kind of men I prefer to hang out with. Men of character and self-respect, who put family first but friends a close second.

I wouldn’t trade that vibe for a crowd of doubters like me. These are still my people.

But as I watched this liturgy unfold, the one I had spent so many years of my life not just devoted to, but defending and promoting as passionately and eloquently as I could, I felt bizarrely displaced.

I texted Kale, who is my go-to for this kind of thing, because he gets me.

“I just feel so far away from it all,” I wrote. “They have theological discussions and I have to bite my tongue. It’s so weird to know it inside and out but not believe it.”

“It feels like exile,” I continued. “You once belonged and now you don’t. It’s very strange. This is the first TLM I’ve been to in 3 years. I feel no connection to it at all. I can recite the prayers from memory but they just feel like words.”

“I don’t really know how to process this experience.”

He talked me through it, but mostly just let me vent. I didn’t know how to navigate any of it.

After Mass, we were on to making those aforementioned steaks and drinking the aforementioned whiskey. The house quickly filled with friends and family — all men — and the discussions ranged the gamut of what dudes talked about. I dispensed what advice I could to the young guys trying to figure out the dating and marriage scene. I talked about raising kids. I went on too long about UAPs and The Telepathy Tapes and other weird stuff I find fascinating. But I mostly steered clear of religion.

The whole weekend, I tried to keep my interior door cracked open for some unexpected and miraculous numinous experience. I kept nudging the space where God is supposed to be, looking for him to throw me a bone. I used to fit in to this world like a fish in water, and now I felt like an outsider.

But per usual, I got not so much as a whisper or an inclination.

There ain’t no silent treatment like the divine silent treatment.

As the groomsmen gathered in a classroom at the church in anticipation of the bride’s arrival, Jimmy pulled out a rosary and started praying. The guys all joined in. Once again, I found myself unsure of what to do. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, so yet again, I mouthed the words of prayers I’ve prayed thousands of times. Once again, I wondered if any of it is real.

Once again, I can see that to them, it is. How does one man reconcile his feeling of absence and doubt with another man’s absolute moral conviction?

The wedding went off without a hitch. The bride looked lovely, and the two of them looked so incredibly happy together. The homily, given by Father Dan, talked about how marital love is perfected through self-sacrifice. My mind wandered to the way my own maladaptive trauma behaviors and the habit of always being lost in my thoughts made me selfish and harmed my relationships. I resolved to try to turn that around and put my wife and kids first as often as possible, even as I worried that I would just fall back into old habits.

As I processed out, my eyes fell on my own bride, and I have to tell you, she was even more beautiful than when we first met. She smiled back at me with her dazzling smile, and even though we’ve been going through so much, and she’s been so frustrated and fed up with my crap, it felt entirely genuine. My eyes moved to my 7 children, looking sharp in their dresses and suits. My girls were beautiful. My boys were handsome and getting so big. In that one pew, I had so, so much to be grateful for. I just wished I hadn’t fallen so far short of what they all deserved.

At the reception, one of Jimmy’s older brothers asked me about leaving Catholicism. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he said. I appreciated that. He was the first person to address it directly, and he’s a guy I’ve always loved. In fact, all of Jimmy’s brothers feel as though they could be my own. I love hanging out with them. They’re smart, funny, and talk a lot of shit. But they’re my people, and I never doubt for a second that they’d have my back in a heartbeat if I needed them.

“I’m not opposed to talking about it,” I half-yelled over the blaring music. “But it’s probably not the right venue.” I gave him a very brief summary. He nodded and said it made sense.

Outside, later, in the cold December air, I held an old-fashion in hand and wished I had a cigar. As we stood over an old whiskey barrel, Fr. Dan finally got a chance to talk to me a little. I’d forgotten that he’d dealt with some of his own childhood trauma not so long ago, and finally felt freed from it. I told him what was going on with me. Said I was just deconstructing everything and trying to sort out the religious and emotional baggage from childhood and figure out what I actually believe. I explained that I had been Catholic out of obligation and fear more than as the fruit of personal conviction, and my work looking closely at the Church had raised contradictions I didn’t know how to resolve.

“As long as you’re looking for the truth, you’ll get there.” He reassured me, with his characteristic grin.

I hoped he was right.

The next morning, before we left town, I had a conversation with a young man whose identity I’ll keep confidential. We talked as I drank my coffee. He’d had his own issues with belief, but explained to me that he’d begun having strange spiritual experiences. He comes from a family where this kind of thing has been known to happen to some of the other members. He said he’d been seeing ghosts on occasion at home, and that at the church during the wedding Mass, he saw what he could only describe as angels, which was the first time that had ever happened to him. He didn’t know what to make of it, but it was making him reconsider his position on religion.

I keep running into this kind of thing. The woo stuff. The weird. The unexplained. Sometimes I feel like it’s pursuing me, perhaps with some purpose. I absolutely believed what this young man was telling me. I know him well. But this is not my experience, and I don’t know what to make of it. It’s one thing for someone to tell you about it; it’s quite another when it happens to you directly.

On the way home to North Carolina, in the big family van, we listened to more of The Telepathy Tapes. After three episodes, I felt like my brain was going to explode. Ideas and realizations and connections were bouncing around like ping-pong balls, but I was driving and had no way to write them down. Somehow, a progressive, lesbian, social justice activist documentary filmmaker has found herself leading the most notable modern battle in the fight against atheistic, scientistic materialism, and she is doing a hell of a job of it. It’s the most mind-blowing set of true stories I’ve ever heard. The human mind, and the world we live in, simply do not work the way our enlightenment, empiricist paradigm want us to believe. We are not “buffered selves.” We are far more “porous” than we think.

And not everything can be weighed and measured.

I don’t want to presume anything, but if there is a design and purpose to the universe, an intelligence or consciousness that governs our cosmos, perhaps I am being reconfigured and refined for a reason. I don’t yet know what that is. I found myself wondering if my epistemology had to be re-oriented in part so that I could better explore this stuff on the fringes. The synchronicities keep piling up.

But I still have many obstacles to overcome. I am open to the idea of God, but I do not understand why does not seem open to me. I have huge intellectual issues with the fundamental stories my former religion teaches. And the problem of nonresistant nonbelief — “the philosophical argument that if a loving and all-powerful God exists, there should be no people who are open to believing in God but remain unconvinced due to a lack of sufficient evidence” — remains one of my greatest intellectual obstacles to faith.

Why, when I keep asking God for belief and relationship, does he choose not to give it to me?

I know I can’t shortcut the line. My old foundation was not built to code, and the structural failure was inevitable. I will not rush again to try to build a theological edifice on anything less than solid ground. I think often these days about the dragonflies of last summer, and the kind of torturous metamorphosis their unusual presence seems to have served as a portent for.

I want to believe all this suffering is for a reason. If it isn’t, I just don’t know what to do with it. These past months have dragged me through some of the most painful moments of my life.

But time is never on our side. As Catholics love to say, “we know not the day nor the hour.” I am not a young man. I have children who need to be led. If I can’t do it with honesty and integrity, and I turn out to have been wrong, they may be lost. I do not relish the idea of having some Damascus Moment far too late to hit the brakes, only to spend the rest of my life fervently pleading for my children’s return to the faith I lost and could not model for them.

But I cannot simply pretend.

There is a quote attributed to Immanuel Kant that grows larger in my mind as I approach these vexing problems:

“There are many things that I believe that I shall never say. But I shall never say the things that I do not believe.”

I do not believe, but I will not refuse belief if it returns.

For now, however, it’s like a television tuned to a dead channel. The power is on, and the viewer is ready to receive, but the screen still reads, “No Signal.”