A Peek Behind the Door đȘ
To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing â that is enough for one person's life. - T.S. Eliot
Update: Iâve decided to make this piece public, mostly so I donât have to extend more bandwidth to rewriting another version. Comments are only for paying subscribers, though, so if you have something to say, do consider supporting my work! Thanks so much. xoxo, Tsh
This newsletter â and the community of supporters (you guys) that make it happen â are meant to be my safe place to write vulnerable words and ideas. I created it so I could connect with you more personally, without the clanging cymbals of social media or random internet passer-byers that donât know me or have my best interest at heart. I want to honor the purpose of this space today. I want to show my gratitude for your support by sharing with you first, here, something important.
Itâs Ash Wednesday today, the first day of Lent, and Iâve decided to fast from being Protestant.
Yes, this is my ridiculous attempt at humor to bury the lede, so letâs just get to it. Our family has become Catholic. On February 6, we were welcomed into the Church via the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter* in a stunning cathedral in Houston â there were just the five of us in attendance, plus Haley and Daniel Stewart with their oldest son, and our priest, Fr. Jonathan. It was achingly simple and beautiful.
YepâŠÂ after having been raised a non-denominational evangelical my entire life, then becoming Anglican five years ago, we are now fully Catholic.
Depending on how you know me, Iâm guessing your reaction is one of four: youâre either confused about this news and are wondering why Iâve chosen to go to the side full of barnacles and superstition; youâre curious about my decision because while itâs not for you itâs interesting that itâs for me; youâre cheering because your prayers are finally answered; or youâre confused how this is even news because you thought I already was. (Or maybe five â you donât really care because none of this is interesting to you. If this is you, feel free to skip the rest of this essay.)
We left our confirmation earlier this month with a sense of relief more than anything â there wasnât overwhelming jubilation, but there was truly a sense of being home. Iâve read that over and over in other peoplesâ stories of becoming Catholic after a lifetime of being Protestant â that it feels like coming Home â yet I wasnât sure itâd feel that way to me. Lo, it did. We drove home from Houston and we kept saying to each other with goofy grins on our faces, âWeâre âŠCatholic.â I had an insatiable yearning to be in nature; Iâd have given anything to be instantly apparated to the middle of some woods overlooking a lake instead of watching strip centers crawl by on the freeway. Something in me craved a connection with creation as a natural response to what just happened in our life. We settled for a hidden ramshackle rest stop with a babbling brook behind a weedy hill. The only explanation I can think of for my insatiable need for nature is beauty. I needed to be surrounded by some semblance of beauty.
How did we get here?
This was not a rash decision (the coming into the Catholic Church thing, that is â the pulling over to a rest stop decidedly was rash). Iâd been drawn to liturgy and old stone cathedrals and Gregorian chant since my 20s when I finally admitted that those things are, in fact, beautiful. I remember wandering churches in Italy, gaping at all the miraculous art done in the name of Christ and wanting to take off my shoes, followed by gawking at the relics of ancient saintly bodies on display and being freaked out. It all compelled me. What did millions of Christians spanning thousands of years get that I didnât yet?
I can now look back and see that even when I was going through Anglican confirmation a few years ago, deep down I heard a quiet voice whisper, âOne day youâll become Catholic.â I didnât quite know what to do with that whisper at the time, but Iâve kept it in my back pocket all these years, researching and reading, asking my long-suffering Catholic friends so many questions, and quite honestly, praying desperately that I wouldnât be strayed into something that was untrue. This phase lasted about two years. God bless these friends and my eighteen-jillion questions.
Not quite one year ago â about two weeks into the global shutdown, actually â I gingerly asked Kyle one morning, âSince we wonât be going to church for a while anyway⊠Want to maybe explore the Catholic Church with more focus?â He immediately answered, âYes. Letâs do it.â Up to that point, he happily let me explore and learn and was content to let me do most of the research. I was pleasantly surprised by his eagerness.
Our year-long process is best left for a future letter, and Iâll share more specifics if youâre interested (and what a pandemic memory it is for our family!). This little update here is in no way meant to be an exhaustive explanation, nor is it a form of apologetics to convince you to follow my path. There are many little things I donât have space to share here (or canât fully articulate yet, for that matter), and itâs also deeply, deeply personal. This is purely descriptive, not prescriptive, and itâs definitely not to create a dividing line between myself and my Protestant friends and family, whom I love dearly.
Ultimately, I simply want you to know about this leading in my life. I talked with Fr. Jonathan the evening before our confirmation about fear, that even though I typically think of myself as somewhat confident and pragmatic, Iâve been besotted with a strange stronghold of fear about this whole thing for a long while. Fear of what my extended family would think out of confusion, what our friends would think out of bewilderment, what readers and listeners might think out of judgment or quick assumptions. Believe you me, if I were to tell my 16-year-old evangelical youth group self what happened a few weeks ago, Iâd be Very Concerned and would immediately put myself on a prayer list.
For now, letâs just say that the more Iâve come to learn about the Catholic Church, the more Iâve come to realize how misinformed Iâd been most of my life about it. Itâs just what the Venerable Fulton Sheen, a 20th century American archbishop, once said: âThere are not one hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.â This was me to a tee growing up.
Iâll continue to share more if youâre interested, yet thereâs so much to say and also still so much Iâm still quietly listening to. I will say with confidence that it was beauty that finally drew me in and wouldnât let me go.
Youâve probably heard me write and speak quite a bit about the classic trifecta of truth, goodness, and beauty. For centuries, these have been the amalgamated priority of the best thinkers, artists, writers, and theologians; everyone from St. Augustine to Bob Dylan to Flannery OâConnor has used their talents to create work that points to beauty, which then points to goodness, which then points to truth. Iâve been captivated by this process and this posture for many years. It makes complete sense to me, then, that it was the Churchâs display of beauty that finally drew me in, which then, in turn, drew me to its goodness, which then finally drew me to its truth.
This isnât to say the Catholic Church isnât led by and full of fallible humans â it absolutely is, which means itâs an imperfect Church with an imperfect history. But the Church has placed a sizable amount of emphasis on the idea that beauty matters and this simple idea kept me listening.
What beauty, exactly?
Consider the beauty of the natural world and how God hints at heaven with wild blackberry bushes and spiral-horned kudu and Japanese maples so red you swear Godâs just showing off. The very planet where we dwell is a cathedral, and yet itâs seen as good and right that we humans should also join in the work of creation with our own manmade cathedrals. God leads with beauty. Our modern human sensibilities merely relegate it to the sidelines as a convenient extra in life, and in doing so we also make truth unintelligible and goodness undesirable. These three ideas work in tandem, but take beauty away as the core enticement used by God to draw humans closer to their original humanity, and weâre left with a wobbly, two-legged footstool. Beauty is the one true thing God keeps using to keep me from running away and vainly venturing to build my own shoddy excuse for a cathedral. By definition, beauty has to be something bigger than myself.
Consider the beauty of the liturgy. Pope Benedict XVI noted in Sacramentum Caritatis that the very existence of the Churchâs liturgy is to reflect the beauty of God, that âlike the rest of Christian revelation, the liturgy is inherently linked to beauty [âŠand] is a radiant expression of the paschal mysteryâ and that âthe beauty of the liturgy is part of the sublime expression of God's glory and a glimpse of heaven on earth.â Our liturgy â âthe work of the peopleâ in its purest definition â is doing what itâs meant to do when it leads with beauty. Medieval theologian St. Bonaventure says that in Jesus, we contemplate beauty and splendor at their source. Thatâs what the liturgy does. Beauty is why itâs even there in the weekly Masses: because it contemplates Jesus, the very source of beauty. Thatâs astounding to me.
Consider the beauty of its emphasis on unity within the Body to the point that its very existence rides on the idea that Christ actually commissioned one Church to exist on earth as one entity, not as thousands of factions with different ideas. There is a holy beauty found in submission to Christâs idea that we live as one universal Church and bring with us our various cultures, languages, customs, and backgrounds to the table while still agreeing with core doctrine.
Consider the beauty of Eucharistic theology and its emphatic trust that the Eucharist really is what Jesus said it was to his apostles â his actual body and blood â and that to partake of it regularly is the source and summit of communion with him. Thereâs sacred beauty in the trust that this mystery makes absolutely no sense, and yet neither does following a poor Jewish man from a nothing town who walked on water and claims to be the Son of God. Thereâs consecrated beauty in the trust.
Consider the Churchâs emphasis that beauty is not an extra idea, itâs actually at the very crux of who God is and how he loves us. Unlike my American evangelical upbringing, which (and I know this is a broad brushstroke, but itâs been my experience) largely treated beauty as a convenient bonus at best and a pointless excess as norm, the Catholic Church sees both natural and manmade beauty as the supreme paintbrush God uses to compel us to want to make our lives as beautiful as the beauty around us.
And yes, there is absolutely beauty found outside the Catholic Church, as well as goodness and truth, so I wonât argue I found the one and only source of it all. Michelangeloâs Pieta is exquisite, but so is the Great Barrier Reef, sipping a glass of Brunello di Montalcino while overlooking a Tuscan sunset, the creak of a screen door, and the first time a baby giggles. Yet Iâm thankful that the Catholic Church historically doesnât deny these works of beauty, and in fact defends them as core mediums God uses and are therefore necessary for the fullness of the faith.
There is more than just the beauty of it all â after all, it was beauty that then led me to goodness that then led me to truth. Iâll share these thoughts âŠeventually.
For now, Iâm glad you know about this. Iâm so glad to be Catholic, even though I donât fully understand it (nor ever will, letâs be honest). Iâm so glad God has found a spiritual home for me and my family this side of heaven. Iâm so glad to be among a giant, diverse, peculiar family of believers around the globe.
I do plan to share more publicly soon when I have the clarity about how to better cross my Ts and dot my Is. Seth and I both plan to share our âconversionâ stories on the podcast sometime this year. Iâm grateful for the eventual opportunity to power through my fear and trust in the goodness of God and of other people.
Some of you asked about my janky, ongoing doc full of links that Iâve bookmarked during this season of exploration â here you go. Iâm warning you, itâs kind of a mess. Hopefully you find something helpful in it, though.
Grateful for each of you,
Tsh
* This is a unique diocese originally created to welcome entire Anglican parishes into the Catholic Church, but now also serves the body by providing a path for Anglican individuals and families to be welcomed. There are currently only three Ordinariates around the world â one is for the U.K., one for Australia, and one for North America. The North American one just so happens to be based in Houston, about a three-hour drive from our home. Here it is if youâre curious.
Thank you so much for sharing this journey, Tsh! Iâm inspired and intrigued, and most of all full of love for you and your family. Sending you big hugs, and looking forward to hearing more. â€ïž
Welcome home! Thank you for sharing--I will love to read more about whatever you want to share about your conversion.