(UNDATED) Many people leave religion and never turn back.

For them, leaving religion is a permanent condition to be celebrated.

But what do you do when you leave your religion, but your religion hasn’t left you?

This question occurred to me as I read about Irish writer Colm Toibin’s visit to a Catholic church in downtown Brooklyn when he first moved back to New York.

New York Times writer Alex Witchel tells of Toibin’s visit: “The spare beauty of this Catholic church and the unanticipated solace of hearing the words from his childhood made such an impression on Toibin, a former altar boy from County Wexford, that he used it as a landmark in his newest novel, `Brooklyn.’

“As he watched the line form for Communion, Colm Toibin kept his seat. `I’ve got sin on my soul,’ he whispered, because he hadn’t been to confession in years. We pressed our knees sideways so the people in our pew could get by. Was he sure he didn’t want to get in line? He nodded. `Funny,’ he said of the religion he grew up with. `You still wouldn’t mess with it.”‘

People’s departure from religion is often like a lover’s quarrel, with all the anger, disappointment and pain that accompanies a falling-out. Yet, oftentimes, some intense connection lingers within.

During an interview with National Book Award winner Robert Stone, I mentioned reading that when he abandoned the Catholicism of his youth he felt liberated, only to wake up 20 years later feeling like “half his head was missing.”

His reply was telling.

“I think it happens to a lot of people,” he told me. “You leave religion with a tremendous sense of liberation and then years later you discover that something really important is missing … and you either start all over again and go back and try to reclaim it, or else you substitute something else for it.”

You make do in small ways, he told me. “One way or other you’ve got to fill that space somehow.”

Today it’s popular to talk about being on a “spiritual” journey and not a “religious” one, but for some, that path is turning out to be a dead end. Writer Rick Moody said he returned to the Episcopal Church of his youth, because he needed community and found the spiritual journey outside of religion was “too squishy,” lacking shape and substance.

For most people who left their religion, but whose religion hasn’t left them, the return to organized religion is a slow, sloping path back to faith through a vibrant, healthy local community. Just ask my friend Jenny.

Jenny’s a violinist who gives lessons to some of the children in the local community church. Someone discovered that she knew the great hymns of the faith, and she was invited to play in a worship service, billed as a special guest musician. She was nervous about accepting the invitation, but after attending just once, the ice was broken and she and her biker husband began showing up pretty regularly.

A few months later, as Easter approached, she stuck her toe in a bit deeper, suggesting the worship band tackle her rather complicated arrangement of a contemporary Easter classic. Her faith was stirring, though not yet rekindled.

This past Sunday, the sermon focused on the story from Jesus’ life where he seemed intent on winnowing out the curious from the committed. He explained the severity of the commitment to follow him and urged the listeners to count the cost.

Immediately after the service, Jenny and her husband called the pastor, saying they needed a few hours with him to “kick back” and process their hurts and doubts. Like so many others, theirs is a story of an emotional battering from a previous church led by abusive, authoritarian leaders.

They explained their hesitancy about attending church, but then described that “unanticipated solace” of hearing afresh the words from their childhood. They described a hunger for God that would not go away.

Jenny and her husband left religion, but religion never left them. Now, they are cautiously finding their way back to God.

(Dick Staub is the author of “The Culturally Savvy Christian” and the host of The Kindlings Muse (http://www.thekindlings.com). His blog can be read at http://www.dickstaub.com)