The Odysseus Within Me

yet they still did not understand how it continued to influence their decisions, their relationships, and how

The Odysseus Within Me.
A Pilgrimage Toward the Soul, Others, and the Earth.
R. Esteban Montilla, Ph.D.

Rereading the Odyssey
I read The Odyssey for the first time to fulfill a requirement for my high school class, taught by an extraordinary and inspiring teacher named Nicomedes Hernández. It was one of those works considered essential to an education aimed at understanding literature and exploring the human condition. Under his guidance, I followed Odysseus’s adventures, his shipwrecks, his encounters with strange beings, his cunning, and his persistent desire to return to Ithaca.

At the time, I completed the assignment, learned what I needed to participate in class and answer my teacher’s questions, and then moved on. That reading, however, did not disappear. It remained stored somewhere in my memory, waiting for the journeys, the griefs, the questions, and life itself to allow me to return to it from a deeper place.

Many years later, I return to Homer’s work from a different perspective. I no longer read it to pass a class. I return to it after studying Greek, traveling across countries and continents, and exploring Greece on several educational trips with my students. On those journeys, we crossed the country, visited places steeped in history, and reconnected with the thought of the great Greek philosophers, in a cultural and literary world deeply shaped by Homer and the Odyssey.

I also return after studying agriculture, theology, psychotherapy, and the neurosciences, and after listening for decades to the stories of so many people. Throughout that long journey, I’ve also had to learn to listen to my own story. That’s why the Odyssey speaks to me today in a way I couldn’t have anticipated when I was a high school student. I no longer view it merely as a classic work I was supposed to know, but as a text that engages with my travels, my questions, my losses, my returns, and my quest to understand what it means to be human.

The work attributed to Homer recounts Odysseus’s long journey home after the Trojan War. His journey to Ithaca lasts ten years and takes him through islands, seas, palaces, caves, shipwrecks, temptations, and realms inhabited by the dead. The most difficult distance, however, is not the one separating Troy from Ithaca. Odysseus must also traverse the distance between the warrior who set out and the human being who is trying to return (Homer, 1982, Books I–XXIV).

The external journey becomes an exploration of the soul. In every encounter, his intelligence and pride, his capacity to love, his desire for recognition, his fear, his violence, and his nostalgia surface. He does not return intact. Nor does he find an unchanging Ithaca, preserved exactly as he left it. The traveler and the land have lived separate lives during their separation. We, humans, give continuity to our identity by narrating and renarrating life through the lens of present-day questions; the narrative preserves something of what has been lived and, at the same time, changes with us (McAdams & McLean, 2013).

Now I read the Odyssey to bring it into dialogue with my own life. It allows me to reflect on my departures and returns, the places that became home, the losses, the lessons learned, and the contradictions that have shaped me. That is why I recognize the Odysseus who dwells within me. I do not do so as a confession of heroism. Odysseus is neither a saint nor a model to be imitated in all his actions. His intelligence coexists with arrogance; his perseverance does not erase his violence, and his love for Ithaca does not undo the suffering caused during the war or the deaths of those who did not return with him.

The hermeneutics of love and justice allow me to approach his story without glorifying the victor or condemning him, as if his darkness had no connection to me. I no longer ask myself only how he managed to return. I also want to know what kind of human being returned, what he learned along the way, who paid the price for his survival, and what he did with power once he regained his place.

The Return to the Land
Now I am once again among my cows, my chickens, the cornfields, the soursop trees, and the coffee and cacao plantations. As I wander this land, I reconnect with an ancient part of my history. I recognize tasks I learned as a child and ways of relating to life that began long before I could explain them.

I grew up in the countryside working in agriculture and livestock farming. Before I studied philosophy, biblical languages, theology, psychotherapy, or neuroscience, animals, crops, and the seasons were already teaching me. The land was my first school. There I learned that life has rhythms that are not entirely subject to human will. You can prepare the soil, choose the seed, plant, and tend the crop, but there comes a time when you have to wait. The rain may be late. A plant may get sick. An animal may need care that does not produce the desired result. Work is essential, though it does not guarantee that everything will happen as we plan.

Farming taught me to live within the tension between responsibility and limitation. We do what we are supposed to do, but we do not control the whole of life. We prepare the soil without being able to force the seed to sprout; we protect the crop without ordering the clouds to produce rain; we care for an animal knowing that we cannot prevent every illness or death.
Job expresses a wisdom that I had begun to receive long before I understood the text: “But ask the animals, and they will teach you; ask the birds of the sky, and they will tell you; speak to the earth, and it will teach you” (Job 12:7–8, NIV). The cows taught me constant attentiveness. The chickens introduced me to the daily rhythms of feeding, shelter, and care. The corn showed that the seed disappears underground before rising toward the light, and the fruit trees reminded me that no fruit ripens because of the impatience of those who await it.

The farmer works with processes that began before their arrival and will continue after their departure. They receive seeds cultivated by previous generations and pass on to those who come after them the consequences of how they chose to treat the soil. The earth preserves the memory of our care and also the traces of our greed.
When I was young, I saw the land primarily as a place of work and production. Now I recognize it as a living community to which I belong. I am not outside of it, managing resources from a distance. My existence depends on its waters, its microorganisms, its animals, its cycles, and the labor of many people whose names rarely appear in the narratives of progress. I have returned to the earth, but I am not the same person who left it. Nor do I see it the same way.
The curiosity that led me to leave

When I entered college in Venezuela, I decided to study agricultural technology and agronomy. I wanted to understand plants, their diseases, their growth processes, and the conditions that favored their development. As I progressed in my studies, another curiosity began to grow. It was no longer enough for me to study plant life. I wanted to understand human beings.
I wondered about their transcendence, their spirituality, and their need to find meaning. I wanted to know why a person loves, fears, destroys, forgives, hopes, prays, or despairs. Plants had taught me how life seeks the light, but they could not explain why a human being might close their eyes to another’s suffering or risk their own safety to protect them.

At certain moments in life, we hear a voice inviting us to step outside the familiar. We cannot always explain precisely where it comes from or where it will lead us. Sometimes we barely realize that we can no longer remain in the same place. The story of Abraham begins with a departure: “Leave your country, your relatives, and your father’s house, and go to the land I will show you” (Genesis 12:1, NIV). The promise does not eliminate the uncertainty. Abraham must set out before he can clearly see the place he is heading toward.

Something similar happened on my own journey. One question led to another. Each answer opened up a territory I had not anticipated. Setting out did not mean rejecting the land of my origin. My restlessness had been born precisely there, among the crops, animals, family, and communities that had shaped my initial way of seeing the world.
The questions that arose during my agricultural studies led me to theological seminary. For four years, I studied philosophy, biblical languages, and theology. I engaged with texts written by peoples who had sought to understand God amid migrations, wars, captivity, celebrations, injustices, deserts, and hopes.

Much of the Bible was written by peoples on the move. Abraham leaves his homeland; Jacob flees and returns; Joseph is taken to Egypt; Moses learns to live amid various identities; Israel crosses the desert; Ruth leaves Moab, and Naomi returns to Bethlehem, carrying her grief with her. The exiles dream of Jerusalem; Jesus travels through villages and along roads; Paul crosses borders and seas; and Cleopas walks toward Emmaus, trying to understand a hope he believes has been destroyed.

I entered the seminary seeking answers and left with deeper questions. I had a better understanding of the traditions, the sacred texts, and the history of the faith, but I realized more clearly just how much I still did not know about the human person. Theology did not put an end to my questions. It led them into the mystery.

The Journey into the Soul
I wanted to understand what it means to be human and to live in relationship with others. I was interested in exploring the depths of the soul—that place where the fears we hide, the longings that guide our steps, the memories that continue to influence our decisions, and the hopes that help us rise again after difficult times all reside.

That search took me from the south to the north of the Americas. The journey began long before I had mastered English and continued as I learned to live in different cultural contexts. I first lived in the state of Maine, then in the city of Boston, and finally in Texas, where I completed my doctoral studies.

Each place broadened my understanding of what it means to be human. Learning English also meant listening to other ways of talking about family, faith, pain, identity, and hope. Some experiences could be translated with relative ease; others seemed to lose something in the transition from one language to another. Words are not neutral or empty vessels. They carry a history, a culture, and a particular way of organizing experience.

During that journey, I was able to delve into the study of the psyche, a Greek word often translated as “soul” or “inner life.” Psychotherapy brought me into a realm that books could only take me so far. Theories offered valuable maps, but people revealed the true complexity of the path.

For many years, I have listened in my office to people who came with stories that were difficult to tell. Some experiences had remained unspoken for a long time. Others were beginning to find the words. Some people could describe precisely what had happened, but they still did not understand how it continued to influence their decisions, their relationships, and the way they saw themselves.

As I listened to them, I realized that entering another person’s soul requires respect, patience, and humility. Every story has depths that no concept can fully encompass. A person never fits entirely into a diagnosis, a doctrine, or a psychological theory. Proverbs puts it this way: “The human heart is like deep waters; the wise will discover it” (Proverbs 20:5, NIV). You do not enter those waters in a hurry. We can live for years without understanding certain decisions and remain strangers to certain desires. Sometimes we need to hear our own story in the presence of another person to recognize what had always been there.

The inner journey requires courage. In the soul we find the goodness that sustains us and also the impulses capable of hurting us or harming others. The psalmist dares to ask: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxieties. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23–24, NIV). This is not a prayer born of self-contempt, but of the desire to live with greater truth.

Knowing ourselves does not mean condemning ourselves. Nor does it mean justifying everything we find within ourselves. The exploration of the soul seeks to recognize what fosters life and what needs to be limited. It allows us to look at our strengths without idealizing ourselves and to acknowledge our weaknesses without reducing our entire identity to them.

The Light and the Darkness
During his journey, Odysseus discovers that many dangers do not come solely from the outside world. Some arise from within him. Facing Polyphemus, he demonstrates intelligence; he introduces himself as “Nobody,” deceives the cyclops, and escapes with his companions. Once he is safe, he cannot bear to remain anonymous. He needs to proclaim his name and publicly claim victory. Cunning sets him free, but arrogance prolongs his suffering. The danger was not only the Cyclops. It was also Odysseus’s need to be recognized (Homer, 1982, Book IX).

That tension is part of the human condition. We want our name to be known. We want our efforts, abilities, and achievements to be recognized. That desire can be legitimate, especially for those who have lived in silence or have been treated as if they had no name. Dignity requires being able to say who one is.

The problem arises when the affirmation of our identity depends on diminishing others. I can celebrate my people without declaring another people inferior, love my language without silencing the language of others, and value my religious tradition without turning it into an instrument of domination. I can also acknowledge my achievements without forgetting those who made my journey possible.

Genesis 4 presents Cain with a similar danger. Resentment turns a brother into a rival. God asks him about his anger before the murder and about Abel after his death. Both questions seek to awaken a sense of responsibility. Sin appears linked to behavior that lurks within and seeks to dominate him, not to the essence of his being.
Darkness need not be denied, though neither should it be allowed to rule our lives. Integration does not mean granting equal authority to every desire. It means recognizing what lives within us, understanding its history, and preventing that which can destroy us from becoming the master of our decisions.

The Sirens and the Boundaries That Protect
The sirens sing what Odysseus wants to hear. They offer him nothing that is completely foreign. Their power lies in tapping into a desire that already lives within him; they promise knowledge, pleasure, recognition, and an experience that seems impossible to refuse. Odysseus knows that willpower alone will not suffice. He asks to be tied to the mast while his companions cover their ears. The clear-headed Odysseus establishes a structure to protect the Odysseus who will be seduced (Homer, 1982, Book XII).

The scene helps us understand that not all limits are enemies of freedom. There are chains imposed to dominate, but there are also freely assumed commitments to protect life. A promise, an ethical norm, a responsible community, a financial limit, a care routine, or a barrier between a person and that which could destroy them can all serve the function of the mast.

The Torah offers similar structures. The Sabbath halts exploitation and reminds us that individuals, families, workers, foreigners, and animals all need rest. The laws regarding land, debt, and the harvest limit accumulation and the ability of the powerful to turn their freedom into the oppression of others.

Freedom does not consist in doing everything we desire. It requires discerning which desires foster life and which can turn us into enslaved people. Paul acknowledges this struggle when he admits that he does what he hates (Romans 7:15). He does not describe two separate beings, but rather a whole person shaped by habits, convictions, impulses, memories, and contradictions. The mast does not destroy desire; it prevents desire from becoming a tyrant.

Freedom and Nostalgia for the Familiar
Human beings yearn for freedom, but freedom brings uncertainty. The familiar can be painful, and yet it may seem safer than an unpredictable future. Some contemporary research describes the brain as a system that anticipates what might happen and adjusts its predictions based on experience. Familiarity reduces some uncertainty; the new requires learning and reorganization. That is why a person may desire change and, at the same time, resist letting go of what they know (Friston, 2010).

This tension appears in the story of the Exodus. The people leave slavery behind, but in the desert they long for the food of Egypt. They do not necessarily long for oppression. They long for predictability. In Egypt, they knew what to expect, even if what they expected was exploitation. In the desert, they possess freedom, but they must still learn to live it.

Leaving Egypt does not mean that Egypt has vanished from the imagination. Political liberation does not immediately erase the habits learned under domination. A person may leave a destructive relationship and continue to interpret others through the lens of fear. A community may emerge from an oppressive regime and reproduce its hierarchies. The empire may withdraw from the territory as long as it remains within the institutions, the bonds of affection, and the expectations.

The lotus-eaters represent another form of captivity. Those who eat the lotus cease to long for a return. Relief is achieved through forgetting; the traveler no longer remembers who they are, where they came from, or where they were headed (Homer, 1982, Book IX). Forgetting may temporarily shield us from pain, but when relief requires erasing one’s identity, it becomes another prison. Memory can wound and, at the same time, sustain our capacity to act. It allows us to acknowledge what we have experienced, to name injustices, and to decide what we do not want to repeat.

The Bible does not present freedom as the absolute absence of limits. It links it to memory, responsibility, and justice. The Exodus does not end when Israel crosses the sea. That is where the difficult learning process begins—to live without Pharaoh and to prevent the liberated people from reproducing among themselves the very logic that oppressed them.

Existence as an Elliptical Movement
Our lives do not move in a straight line. Nor do they move in a circle that brings us back to the same point. The person who returns is no longer identical to the one who left, and the place to which they return has not remained intact either. The ellipse offers an image that more closely resembles existence. It has two foci. One can represent the past that shaped us, and the other, the future that calls to us. The present is the living trajectory that moves under the influence of both.

At times we draw closer to memory. At others, the hope of tomorrow gains greater strength. Sometimes the past weighs so heavily that it seems to determine everything. Other times, the future seduces us so completely that we cease to inhabit the life before us. We are teleological beings because we orient ourselves toward goals and possibilities that do not yet exist. We study, work, migrate, love, create, and resist because we can imagine a different tomorrow. The promise of some possible Ithaca keeps us rowing.

We are also archaeological beings. We excavate our history to understand the layers that continue to influence us. Beneath certain fears, decisions, and desires, we find words heard during childhood; in other layers, we encounter griefs that had not disappeared, even though they had remained silent. Narrative identity brings these experiences together without turning them into a fixed story: we revisit what we have lived through from the place we occupy today (McAdams & McLean, 2013). We walk toward the future with materials from yesterday.

Memory without hope can paralyze us. Hope without memory can turn us into conquerors who march forward without acknowledging the lives and lands upon which we walk. To inhabit existence elliptically requires maintaining both perspectives. We remember so as not to repeat oppression, and we hope so as not to accept that present injustice is definitive.

Forty Years of Pilgrimage
Nearly forty years have passed since my pilgrimage began. To undertake it, I crossed countries and continents. I experienced goodbyes, uncertainties, and new beginnings that required me to relearn. This story cannot be told solely through academic degrees or professional achievements. It also contains exhaustion, mistakes, doubts, encounters, grief, celebrations, and the people who sustained me when the path became difficult.

Deuteronomy contains an invitation that resonates with my own story: “Remember that for forty years the Lord your God led you through the wilderness” (Deuteronomy 8:2, NIV). Biblical memory does not select only moments of victory. It remembers hunger, fear, conflicts, and the desire to turn back. It also preserves the food received, the sources found, and the presence of those who helped sustain life.

When I look back on my journey, I do not see an orderly sequence of decisions that inevitably led to a destination. I see questions that have given rise to others. I see paths I had not anticipated. I recognize people whose presence changed my course. I remember moments when I did not clearly know what would come next.

I also reflect on my griefs. Some people who shaped my story have died, and their absence transformed my relationship with time, faith, hope, and mortality. They were not left out of my journey. They remain present—in a different way—in my memories, values, decisions, and ways of loving.

The Descent into the World of the Dead
Odysseus cannot return to Ithaca without first descending into the world of the dead. There he finds his mother, listens to Tiresias, and converses with those who died in the war. The past is not left behind; the dead are part of the journey home (Homer, 1982, Book XI). The relational rupture caused by death transforms life, but it does not destroy the relationship. Those who have died remain present in the words, gestures, memories, teachings, and decisions of those who are still alive.

Mourning does not consist of expelling the dead from our history. It consists of integrating the transformed relationship into one’s life story. The Hebrew Bible does not hide the descent into grief. Jacob refuses to be comforted upon Joseph’s supposed death. Job protests while sitting among the ashes. Naomi returns to Bethlehem carrying with her the deaths she suffered in Moab. The Psalms of lament allow for the uncensored expression of grief. Lamentations wanders through the ruins of Jerusalem and refuses to call destruction “peace.” Nor do the Canonical Christian Writings present faith as an escape from grief. Jesus weeps at Lazarus’s tomb. The women walk toward Jesus’s tomb. Cleopas and his companion make their way to Emmaus, recounting a hope they consider destroyed.

The world of the dead teaches Odysseus that he cannot return as merely a warrior. He must listen to the voices that war silenced and recognize that his story is bound up with that of those who could not continue the journey. Tiresias announces that even his arrival in Ithaca will not bring his journey to an end. Odysseus will have to embark on another voyage, carrying an oar into the heart of the earth, until he finds people who do not know what object he is carrying on his shoulder. There he must plant it (Homer, 1982, Book XI).

I find this image deeply meaningful. The sailor must carry the sea to a land he does not know. The tool used during the journey must take on a different meaning. At some point, the oar must be planted. Those who have spent years enduring must learn to rest. The warrior must learn to live outside of war. The survivor must discover that survival, in and of itself, does not constitute a fulfilling life.

The Journey Toward Others
The stories I heard in my practice were part of my education. They taught me that the journey inward cannot be separated from the journey toward others. We can explore our souls and yet remain closed off within ourselves. Inner knowledge achieves an ethical purpose when it helps us better recognize the humanity of another person. Knowing ourselves should expand our capacity to listen, to heal, to set fair boundaries, and to respond to the suffering we encounter along the way.

The story of Emmaus has influenced the way I listen. “As they were talking and discussing these things, Jesus himself came near and began to walk with them” (Luke 24:15, NIV). He approaches Cleopas and his companion without revealing his identity or interrupting them to correct their interpretation. First, he listens to what happened from the perspective of two people who have seen their hopes dashed.

The transformation begins as they walk. Questions, memory, interpretation, and recognition come together in a relationship that unfolds step by step. Entering into another human being’s story requires something similar. One must approach without immediately taking center stage. One must listen before explaining. Questions should create a space for the person to recount what happened in their own words.

The parable of the Good Samaritan adds another dimension: But a Samaritan who was on a journey came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion” (Luke 10:33, NASB). The suffering of others interrupts his journey. Every ethical pilgrimage contains interruptions. We may have legitimate goals and still need to pause when we encounter someone who is suffering. The wounded person is not an obstacle preventing us from moving forward; their presence reveals what kind of travelers we are becoming.

Psychotherapy took me deep into the soul, but the stories I heard there brought me back to social life. Suffering does not always stem from individual processes. It can be related to poverty, discrimination, violence, displacement, exploitation, and familial, cultural, or religious silences.

A decolonial reading resists reducing all suffering to a private problem. It asks what structures produce fear, shame, exclusion, or despair, and who benefits when a person learns to blame themselves for pain that has social roots. Pablo sums up a simple yet demanding communal practice: “Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15, NIV). We need to learn both: to celebrate without envy and to receive tears without rushing those who are grieving or turning their pain into a lesson.

Living in Diverse Worlds
Living in several countries and putting down roots in two of them has allowed me to understand that a person can learn to inhabit different worlds without having to give up one to belong to the other. Each place offers a unique way of understanding life, relationships, faith, work, memory, and the future. Over time, these ways of seeing the world begin to engage in dialogue with one another within us.

When I was far away, I missed the land I had left behind. Upon returning, I also felt nostalgia for the place where I had lived, studied, worked, and forged meaningful relationships. At first, this experience might have seemed like a division. Later, I realized that I was not forced to choose one sense of belonging and deny the other.

Over time, I realized that I was not obliged to choose one sense of belonging and deny the other. I freely borrow here an expression from Jesus: “You should have practiced this without neglecting that” (Matthew 23:23, NIV). In its context, Jesus is speaking of justice, mercy, faithfulness, and religious practices. The phrase also helps me articulate a personal possibility; honoring my roots without closing the door to what I have learned elsewhere, and integrating into another culture without erasing the history that shaped me.

Hybridity is neither a deficiency nor an incomplete identity. It can become a strength, though it should not be romanticized, because living between worlds involves tensions, losses, and unequal power relations. Those who learn to inhabit different cultural spaces can develop the ability to translate, connect perspectives, and challenge the claim that any single culture exhausts the possibilities of what it means to be human. Hybridity opens up a space for negotiation and creation that is not reducible to any of the worlds that made it possible (Anzaldúa, 1987; Bhabha, 1994).

Pentecost offers an image of communion without homogenization (Acts 2:5–11). The Spirit does not eliminate languages nor does it force everyone to speak the language of the dominant group. Each person hears in their own language. Unity does not require erasing difference.

My identity does not need to be uniform to remain coherent. I can carry within me more than one language, more than one cultural memory, and more than one way of interpreting reality. That inner diversity need not lead to fragmentation. It can broaden my sensitivity and foster encounters with others who also live amid borders, histories, and affiliations.
My roots are not confined to a single territory. Some remain in the land where I was born. Others took root in the places where my story continued. I do not need to diminish one to affirm the other. I am someone who lives here while continuing to carry a part of there with me.

The Decolonial Return
The Odyssey begins after the destruction of Troy. Odysseus does not return from an innocent journey but from a war of conquest. While he longs to be reunited with Penelope and reclaim his home, countless Trojan families mourn those who will never return. While he remembers Ithaca, other homes have been set ablaze. Anti-colonial and postcolonial reinterpretations of the work have shown that return, identity, and home take on new meaning when viewed from the perspective of peoples marked by slavery, displacement, and imperialism (Greenwood, 2007; McConnell, 2013).

A decolonial reading prevents us from viewing the return solely from the victor’s perspective. It asks about the people whose names were erased from the heroic narrative, remembers the companions who rowed, fought, and died. At the same time, Odysseus pressed on and listened to the women treated as spoils of war and the enslaved people whose lives are subordinated to the hero’s glory.

Odysseus survives time and again because others die. A reading focused solely on his heroism may present those deaths as necessary incidents for the story to move forward. The hermeneutics of love and justice also asks about their families, their dreams, and their right to return.

All leadership must confront this question: Has my Ithaca been built upon the shipwreck of those who rowed with me? It must also acknowledge whether it celebrates its arrival while concealing the exhaustion of those who made the journey possible. No achievement can be explained solely by one person’s ability. Odysseus depends on his companions, the Phaeacians, Telemachus, Eurycleia, Eumaeus, and Penelope. Identity is unique, but it is formed through relationships.

A decolonial reading also examines how women are portrayed. Circe, Calypso, the sirens, and Penelope cannot be reduced to mere obstacles or temptations on the man’s journey. They have their own stories, desires, and sufferings. The danger lies not in the woman who seduces, but in the human desire to possess, to dominate, to remain eternally admired, or to escape responsibility. The hermeneutics of love and justice asks who has a voice, who can return, who owns the home, and who pays the cost of restoring it.

Penelope and the Home She Recognizes
Odysseus arrives in Ithaca in disguise. Being physically on the island does not mean he has fully returned. He needs to be recognized by those who are part of his story. Argos recognizes him; Eurycleia identifies his scar; Telemachus discovers his father. Penelope, after years of rumors and deceit, demands more than just the mere assertion of the man who claims to be her husband (Homer, 1982, Book XXIII).

The decisive test involves the marriage bed built around a living olive tree. Odysseus knows it cannot be moved because he himself knows how it was made. Penelope recognizes him through a shared, intimate, and relational knowledge. The warrior can demonstrate his strength with the bow; the husband reveals who he is by recalling the place where the relationship is sustained (Homer, 1982, Book XXIII).

Home is not made up solely of walls or territory. It is built through shared memories, recognition, care, and reciprocity. Ithaca may be a land, but it is also a language, a table, a relationship, a community, or a way of naming God. Returning does not always involve a geographical move. It can mean reclaiming a silenced voice, reconciling with one’s own history, or restoring bonds that violence sought to destroy.

The story in Luke 15 presents another kind of return. The son decides to return when he comes to his senses. His return begins before he even reaches his father’s estate. It begins within him when he acknowledges what has happened and decides to set out on the journey. However, the home is not fully restored upon his arrival. The older brother remains outside. All of Ithaca contains unresolved conflicts. One person’s return does not guarantee the community’s reconciliation. The household needs to listen to the one who returns and also to those who stayed behind, waited, worked, endured, and suffered during his absence.
When justice becomes revenge

Odysseus’s return culminates in violence that cannot be ignored. The suitors have abused his hospitality, consumed the household’s resources, and threatened Telemachus. Their actions demand a response, but justice turns into a bloodbath. Violence also affects those with far less power: twelve enslaved women are forced to clean the hall and are then hanged on Telemachus’s orders. Their stories go unheard, and the narrative barely examines the coercive relationships in which they lived (Homer, 1982, Book XXII).

It is not enough to celebrate that the hero reclaimed his home. We must ask what kind of home was restored and upon whose corpses his authority was reestablished. Justice loses its way when it reproduces the very dehumanization it sought to correct. The Bible recognizes this tension. The prophets denounce violence even when the people themselves perpetrate it, because divine election does not authorize impunity. Micah expresses this clearly: “To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8, NIV).

Something similar can be recognized in the story of Cain and Abel. Cain interprets the Creator’s response as a favor granted to his brother and a rejection of himself. The text does not explain the reason for the difference between the offerings, nor does it state that Cain sought justice; that is one possible interpretation of his experience of grievance. From his perspective, Abel occupies the place of the one who is recognized and protected. Instead of directing his protest to God or expressing the pain he feels, he holds his brother responsible for the preference he attributes to the Creator.

Cain attempts to correct, through violence, a situation he perceives as unjust. He seeks to eliminate the favored one and, in doing so, turns his demand for justice into murder. Abel had not created the difference between the offerings nor did he have any power over God’s response, yet he ended up paying with his life for his brother’s resentment. Cain’s act reveals how the desire for justice can become corrupted when it fails to recognize the humanity of the other and turns a person into a symbol of everything that hurts us.

The story does not deny Cain’s experience of grievance. God himself approaches him and asks about his anger. However, God also does not allow that anger to justify Abel’s destruction. The divine question seeks to create a space between emotion and behavior, between the pain felt and the harm that can still be averted. Cain could have acknowledged his anger without turning it into murder. He could have questioned what had happened without eliminating the one he considered to have been favored.
After the murder, “The Lord asked Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ ‘I do not know,’ he replied. ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’” (Genesis 4:9, NIV). The question brings justice back into the realm of the relationship. Cain cannot speak of his own grievance without being accountable for Abel’s life. His reply expresses the rupture that the story denounces: the life of the other also concerns us.

Odysseus faces a similar danger when his return home turns into a massacre. Like Cain, he may believe that the offense he has suffered justifies an unlimited response. In both stories, violence seeks to repair a wounded order but ends up creating a greater injustice. A home reclaimed through the dehumanization of the other ceases to be a just home. Justice that requires corpses to demonstrate its power has lost its way.

The end of the Odyssey acknowledges that the slaughter of the suitors threatens to unleash another war. Their relatives seek revenge, and peace demands that the chain of retaliation be stopped (Homer, 1982, Book XXIV). Fulfillment does not come when we defeat all those we consider enemies, but when we no longer need enemies to know who we are.

Ithaca as an Open Home
Hospitality occupies a central place in the Odyssey. The way a home receives a stranger reveals its moral compass. The guest may be protected or treated as a threat. The home can become a refuge or a closed fortress.

The Torah commands us to love the stranger because Israel knew what it was like to be a stranger (Deuteronomy 10:18–19). Ruth, a Moabite, enters the history of Israel; Elijah receives food from a foreign widow; Jesus’ family seeks refuge in Egypt. Hebrews summarizes this memory in an exhortation: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2, NIV).

A closed-off Ithaca ends up resembling an empire. Love for one’s homeland becomes idolatrous when it requires dehumanizing those who come from outside. Security that depends on denying the humanity of the foreigner has already destroyed something essential to the home. A home needs roots and doors. Roots preserve memory and a sense of belonging. Doors allow us to welcome, share, learn, and be transformed.

Celebrating what is ours does not require degrading what is foreign. We can love our homeland without imagining that barbarians, enemies, or monsters inhabit others; we can speak our name with dignity without silencing that of others, and affirm our culture, our language, and our customs without turning them into the absolute measure of what it means to be human.

The same is true of faith. A religious conviction does not need to feed on contempt for other people’s beliefs. When it can only sustain itself by portraying other traditions as inferior, it reveals more insecurity than conviction. The depth of faith is recognized in the way one lives, treats others, seeks justice, and respects the conscience of others. Nor do our achievements require the humiliation of those who have taken different paths. Every personal accomplishment bears the imprint of the people, opportunities, and circumstances that made that journey possible.

This ethic also extends to the way we speak about relationships. We can express gratitude for a new relationship without belittling the person with whom we shared a previous chapter. There is no need to undermine the value of what we experienced to acknowledge that a relationship ended, changed, or became unsustainable. Turning the past into a narrative of contempt to justify the present can be a form of narrative violence.

A mature affirmation of one’s own identity does not depend on humiliating comparisons. I can love my homeland without disparaging yours, celebrate my faith without attacking yours, acknowledge my achievements without diminishing yours, and appreciate a new relationship without turning the previous partner into an enemy. Identity becomes firm when it can be expressed freely and leaves room for the other to exist with the same dignity.

Returning Is Not Repeating
Now, as I return to my cows, my chickens, and my crops, I understand differently what I went so far to seek. Agriculture, theology, psychotherapy, and neuroscience no longer seem like separate worlds to me. In each, I have sought to understand life, the processes that sustain it, the forces that can undermine it, and the relationships that foster its development.

Through farm work, I learned to prepare the soil without trying to control the seed. Psychotherapy taught me to listen without appropriating another person’s story. Theology brought me closer to mystery without allowing me to confine it to a doctrine, and neuroscience broadened my understanding of certain processes without reducing the human being to brain activity.

The earth is teaching me once again. A field reveals the effects of years of care and the traces of neglect. Animals depend on human decisions that can either protect them or harm them. The soil can nourish for generations, but it can also become depleted when it is forced to produce without rest.

Returning to the countryside through a hermeneutic of love and justice transforms my relationship with agriculture. The earth is not an object with unlimited resources. Caring for it requires reaping its fruits without destroying its capacity to continue giving life. It requires treating animals as living beings under our care and remembering that human well-being cannot be built at the expense of the deterioration of that which sustains existence.

The land I encounter is not a preserved relic of the past. It, too, has gone through seasons, changes, periods of care, and neglect. Some plants grew. Others disappeared. Landscapes continue to transform while we are away. The encounter takes place between a transformed land and a man who, too, has not remained static.

Returning does not recreate my childhood; it opens a new relationship with it. I can acknowledge my roots without pretending that the years have not passed, and honor the young man who left without forcing the man who returns to live as if he had never left. I have returned with the stories I heard in my office, the books I have read, the questions that arose in the seminary, what I have learned from studying the brain, and the memories of the countries where I continued my education. I also return with my grief and my celebrations. All of that comes with me into the countryside.

Planting the Oar
After so many years of searching, the image of the oar helps me understand what it means to return. Tiresias foretells that Odysseus must journey inland with the oar on his shoulder until he reaches a village that does not recognize it as an instrument of the sea. There he must plant it in the ground (Homer, 1982, Book XI).

The oar, which for years made the journey possible, ceases to serve solely for navigation and takes on a new function. Something similar happens with what I have learned throughout my pilgrimage. It is not a matter of abandoning the path or assuming that all my questions have been answered. It is about allowing agriculture, theology, psychotherapy, neuroscience, and the stories I have heard over so many years to return with me to the earth, to engage in dialogue with my own story, and to bear fruit in the service of others.

I continue to inhabit diverse worlds. While I am here, I miss the life I built there. When I am there, nostalgia for this land resurfaces. I no longer experience this as a deficiency in my identity. My hybridity allows me to carry within me more than one memory, more than one language, and more than one way of viewing reality.

I look back with reverence, sadness, and gratitude. There are the people who shaped me, the experiences that made my journey possible, and those who are no longer with us in the same way. I look forward with hope and also with fear, because the future is uncertain and we will not be able to travel every path.

The psalmist prays: “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12, NIV). The awareness of mortality need not lead us to despair. It can teach us to recognize the value of relationships, decisions, and everyday tasks, and remind us that it is not wise to put off love, reconciliation, justice, and gratitude indefinitely.
The present is where yesterday and tomorrow meet. That is where memories arrive, and from there, we imagine what may yet come. Living it to the fullest does not require forgetting pain or maintaining constant joy. Fullness allows both sorrows and celebrations to take their place within a broader story.

The Odysseus Within Me
I recognize the Odysseus who dwells within me when I set out and yet long to return; when I walk toward tomorrow while yesterday continues to move me; when I seek freedom and feel the temptation to stay within the familiar. I recognize him when my intelligence helps me and my pride complicates the path; when I hear sirens and must admit that willpower is not always enough; and when I descend into the world of the dead and realize that I cannot build the future by erasing those who are part of my story.
I also recognize myself in him when I long to live fully while learning to accept illness, aging, and death. A prolonged life would lose its fullness if it were separated from love, history, and a sense of belonging.

However, I do not just identify with Odysseus. There is something of Penelope in the waiting, the discernment, and the resistance to accepting assertions without evidence. I encounter Telemachus as I search for a story that began before I did. I know the experience of the foreigner who arrives on an unknown shore and that of the one considered a stranger for speaking with a different accent. I am also the companion who rows and longs to return, and the relative of the one who died while the others continued the journey.

I cannot speak of the Odysseus who dwells within me without acknowledging that my story is intertwined with the lives of those who taught, cared for, listened to, waited for, and sustained my pilgrimage. Fulfillment does not lie in arriving alone, but in arriving without erasing those who made the journey possible, reclaiming the home without turning it into a fortress, setting down the oar when the storm has passed, and learning anew to cultivate.

We do not return to become who we were before we left. We return to integrate what we have experienced. Nor do we move forward to escape our history; we walk to engage with it in a freer, more responsible, and more compassionate way. I have returned to my cows, my chickens, my corn, my soursop, my coffee, and my cacao. I recognize them, but I see them through different eyes. They connect me to my history and remind me that no story remains static. I am not the same, nor do I see my land the same way. The Odysseus who still lives within me continues on his journey.

 

References
Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books.
Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The Location of Culture. Routledge.
Friston, K. (2010). The free-energy principle: A unified brain theory? *Nature Reviews Neuroscience*, 11(2), 127–138. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2787
Greenwood, E. (2007). Arriving backwards: The return of the Odyssey in the English-speaking Caribbean. In L. Hardwick & C. Gillespie (Eds.), Classics in post-colonial worlds (pp. 192–210). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199296101.003.0012
Homer. (1982). The Odyssey (trans. J. M. Pabón; intro. M. Fernández-Galiano). Gredos.
McAdams, D. P., & McLean, K. C. (2013). Narrative identity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(3), 233–238. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413475622
McConnell, J. (2013). Black Odysseys: The Homeric Odyssey in the African Diaspora since 1939. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199605002.001.0001
Bible quotations were taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version® (NIV®). Copyright © 1999, 2015, 2022 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.