"It's a journey" ... or so I've been told.

Becoming a Catholic started at Melleray Monastery in County Waterford, Ireland (pictured above) during the summer of 2018. Like any other liberal atheist, I was happy to accompany my friend and her children to hear Compline being sung by the Cistercian monks at Melleray one evening in May. The monks sang, I stared up at the light streaming through the windows. To my great surprise I felt a deep homesickness for the experience of being in church. I remembered all that I had loved about being in Mass when I had lived in West Cork. The faith, the reverence, the commitment that whole families make to something they can’t see or touch, but they know loves them.  I wanted it back in my life having rejected it about three decades previously. So on my return to UK, I wandered into St Joseph's in Bracknell and plonked myself down in a pew. It was lovely, calm and cool. The second time I went in, I tried a little prayer and it was answered immediately. This was a problem for an atheist, even a wobbly one like me. I realised that it could not be a little bit true. It was either all true, or all untrue no matter how well meant.

So started my experience of moving ever closer to God, an experience that will never end. It does not feel like a "journey". I think that that is a lazy description, a short-hand for something far more fundamental.

It was also the start of my struggle to become part of the utterly baffling, always wonderful, deeply frustrating and ineffably beautiful Catholic Church.