I’ve never felt the need to subscribe to a singular religious ideology.
I felt so distant from the Catholic religion, tall pillars towered over me in the church and carried its secrets so high I would simply look up and be left grounded in confusion.
I recalled the daunting stained glass on the walls of my home church with the ominous smell of oils and lavender and the wallpaper of Jesus’s impending doom as each tile displayed compelling scenes of him dying on the cross.
It all seemed so frightening. The choir’s songs riled up all the penance and sins within me. I never understood why I always felt so guilty and shameful attending church. Despite feeling confident in my decision to not go to Catholic school, I felt alienated and cold in the church pews.
People would rise after mass, line by line filing out from each pew awaiting their daily bread.
I felt so desolate and alone when I walked up to the front of the aisles, not knowing what to do.
I would turn and see my father standing behind me using his fingers to stretch out his smile into a goofy face that would make 10-year-old me giggle. I always loved my father for turning things that seemed so serious and important into something fun and enjoyable.
I would happily step up to the priest and cross my arms over my chest to receive a blessing and then walk back to my father standing next to the holy water.
He used to make jokes about filling up a spray bottle and spraying each person in the church until we found out who was a demon.
We made bets of who in the crowd could possibly be a demon as my mother shushed us to have her prayer in peace.
I grew up a mixed race child, with a white father who identifies as agnostic and my Filipino mother, a devout Catholic.
I learned about fossils and the theory of evolution from my father who studies and works as a geologist. I watched my mom clutch her rosary close to her chest and cast her Hail Marys before family dinner during holidays.
My mother and father have a loving relationship, a marriage built on 35 years of trust, compassion and respect for each other. Despite this, I still struggled with my religious identity.
When I was old enough to attend classes for Catechism, my parents offered me a choice. I could either attend Sunday school every week just like my older sister and brother did or I can learn about faith on my own if I choose to pursue it.
I decided on the latter.
My father told me “There’s value in every book, every story and every person. You can learn from everything.”
He grew up in a Mormon household in Hawthorne, California, but went to multiple churches growing up with a diverse set of friends. He would attend Lutheran churches, Western Protestant churches, congregations, and temples of multiple religions.
He believed they all have similarities and core values and there was something important to learn from each.
I was raised in a home with a foundation that prided in academics even when there were two distinct and dueling identities. I was taught that education was my greatest weapon because no matter what, my intellect would never be taken from me.
My mother was excommunicated from her original church after she divorced her first husband, but still held onto her faith. My father had abandoned his ideals when he went to work every day as an environmentalist working for a gas refinery. However, my education, my experience, my knowledge was something highly valuable that I will always get to keep.
I realized many of my friends and even my siblings were forced to take on the philosophies of their parents, and swallow whatever text that was given to them wholeheartedly without really analyzing what they believe.
I was given a gift to have my own autonomy over my religious beliefs, I had the freedom to select what ideologies were significant to me and adopt my own faith.
I’ve read from multiple religious texts throughout my education, and even though I never considered my virtues to be pious, I would learn lessons from each text and select what I wanted to practice.
My faith became a mosaic of virtues from every religion I casted my eyes upon.
I started to dive deep into various religious texts when I started my college journey at San José State University. I took a humanities honors course and was assigned multiple religious readings and l learned so much from each of them.
I read “The Book of Siddhartha” and became fascinated with Buddha’s story. I adopted many Buddhist virtues into my own personal philosophy, such as the belief of enlightenment, also known as “bodhi” in Sanskrit.
Enlightenment is when an individual ends their suffering from being driven by desires, darkness and ignorance and is enlightened by knowledge and wisdom as Buddha had been, according to an article by the Tricycle organization, a website that informs beginners of Buddhism.
That is something I believe, that if we reach enlightenment as humans, to separate ourselves from our own darkness, we fulfill our potential and become better people.
I’ve read other texts from different cultures and religions, folktales and stories related to Hinduism would resonate with me and I found beauty in the prospect of reincarnation.
Even though I didn’t adopt any virtues from the Quran, I saw the solace in the community as Muslims believed God to be an ever compassionate being to humanity.
I’ve adored reading about mythology from Pagan tales to Greek epics. I loved reading these stories as pieces of literature, but I also saw the ancient secular value in each text.
Stories of hubris, humanity, empathy and a divine power always fascinated me. I don’t necessarily think there’s one god, but I do believe in some power out there and the spirituality of souls, that humans are meant to exist without limitations.
There are still plenty of texts I want to read and learn from. Even though sometimes I disagree with some aspects of these beliefs, I’m grateful to have an understanding of the diverse religions that make up our world.
Although I adored learning from other faiths, there was a downside. I felt so connected to my father’s belief in spirituality and the scientific perspective of the world, believing the theory that the universe produces energy that creates us and as we die we give that energy back.
However, I felt so detached from my Filipino identity growing up. For my mom’s family, being Catholic and Filipino were one in the same.
When I would go to church I would feel so loved, but so much like an imposter as people turned their heads toward each pew offering a handshake and then blessing “peace be with you.”
I felt as if I didn’t belong in the church, but when we got to the after party, my titas, titos and pinsan would have plenty of food ready.
My cousins and I would work hours in an assembly line putting together a large plate of lumpia for the big get together.
At our family dinners, we would celebrate by eating lechon, pancit, lumpia, puto and feast on halo halo for dessert.
We connect through food, stories and love for each other.
My father, among the few white men in the group, would douse his lumpia in banana ketchup earnestly, listen to my aunties gossip and gave deep respect to my grandfather’s stories about World War II.
He was a Filipino prisoner of war captured by the Japanese in World War II.
My grandfather’s beliefs are what got him through such traumatizing times, and even though I don’t fully understand the extent of that level of faith, I can immensely respect it for what it is.
Even when there was a looming statue of the Virgin Mary staring down at me disappointed, I knew I still had a community.
There are many things in the Catholic faith that I don’t agree with or carry in my everyday life, that goes with every religion I’ve read and practices I’ve adopted.
I simply believe in a universe that creates everything with value, a universe that creates energy with meaning. And as we coexist with other energies of life, the best compliment to our creator, whoever or whatever it may be, is to explore our bodies and minds to its highest potential.
I want to read as many books from as many ideologies as I can, I want to travel around the world, I want to get tattoos to decorate my skin like I would decorate my room, I want to understand everything about what makes my body tick, what are the triggers, what makes me happy, what makes me sad. I was given this body and this life, why not allow myself every experience to realize it to its fullest extent?
