2025-02-25
I do no want to think nor do I want to classify that it is a fact that if I started the month on the wrong foot, that it will dictate how the rest of it will go: an uphill battle. However, the data from my logs this month somehow tells that story so I'll roll with it for now. At least I have evidence for a timeframe of one of its occurrences. I would like to test it immediately as we only have a few days left before my birth month ends.
In the same context, this has been a nagging theme in my logs currently but I am actually feeling a sense of lightheadedness as we approach this month's ending. Somehow, it feels like a space suddenly grew, or emptied itself out for my recent study about Christianity. Since yesterday, I have tried to start doing some exegetical research about the religion to make sense of the tradition and practices. Watching Conclave last Sunday felt like the start of my return to study the faith more rigorously as I have been trying to make sense of it outside of its own doctrine. I have been approaching faith through philosophy [1] [2] [3] [4] in the past so perhaps I can also start going into theology with the current framework I have in my mind right now.
I believe that there is no other better timing than now because of how much access to resources that I have to texts and other required readings and with my own personal experiences. Although, this decision is also brought by the fact that Fatima and I decided to have a Christian marriage, it has also become urgent for me to clarify my own involvement with the faith. That is still considering that I am entering this aspect of my life in my own terms and in my own way of understanding it.
I may still consider that my loose Catholic upbringing may still be a huge influence with this decision because with what I know so far about the differing belief systems and practices under the Christian doctrine, I am coming from a more technical, ritual-based kind of practice of the faith. However, I am being led by my own intellectual curiosity to learn more about Christianity through mysticism (as I have labeled my spiritual position to be apart from Spinozism) and reason. I am well aware that by saying that I am letting myself be guided by "reason" already limits my own experience of the divine on Christian terms but I would like to commit to reason in such a way that it is a glass that I want to fill. Only when the glass of reason is filled is when I can determine when the actual practice of spiritual faith starts for me. I will permit myself to map out the territory of faith based on the writings available to me before I allow myself to walk on the soil that I was told of.
In a sense, it may be counterintuitive against the practice of faith but for me, it is how I show commitment to Truth itself, whereas I want to know the value that is being held by the Christian faith against aletheia or "truth" as it was described by Heidegger.
I am expecting something that I will not disclose here yet because I do not want to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy to define my goal in understanding Christianity. I want it to be revealed to me as its own thing; to see God as He is and not as I see myself.