Questioning is the basis of knowledge
From a very young age, my parents taught me to believe deeply in God and to have faith in him. For me faith is the trust I have in God. Because of my parents I was baptised and took communion and for a long time I went to church regularly, but also because of my parents I started to question my Catholic religion and I understood that God is not necessarily in a church, but within each one of us.
My paternal grandmother was a Cumanagoto Indian and as an Indian she had her own beliefs, but it was she who taught me to pray the Our Father and to make the sign of the cross on my face. And I also owe it to her to believe in miracles and to believe in what I have not seen. When my grandmother told me shamanic, fantastic, almost magical stories, she taught me to understand that there is a hidden world and that only a very small part of the universe is visible to our eyes.
Likewise, I grew up believing in the virgin and in saints. In fact, in my family there is proof of two miracles performed by José Gregorio Hernández. My father and my sister, at two different times, were in danger of death, and thanks to the saint, they were saved. That is why at home there is, on the little table where the photograph of my dead father and my dead grandmother is, the sculpture of José Gregorio Hernández, as if he were part of my family.
I feel that these beliefs, rather than making me a fanatic of this or that religion, have given me a more spiritual vision of the world. I believe in God, but also in human beings, in nature, in the cosmic and quantum energies that govern the universe. And most especially, I believe in the freedom to believe, even if this attitude, for a long time, has led me to be considered a ‘light’ Catholic.
I am sure that many religions serve to dominate, to put fear, to judge our actions. ‘Don't do this, don't do that because God will punish you’, I heard as a child. In my experience, religion is in you, in your strength, in the way you use that strength for your development and for the development of others.
I am not a person who goes through life evangelising, pointing out what you should do or think. I have friends who are atheists, evangelicals, Hindus, Mormons. Just as I talk to the teacher, I talk to the student, to the homosexual, to the madman. Differences should be bridges, not chasms. My convictions do not alienate me from people. At the end of the day, if faith is believing in God and God is within us, that strength leads me to live a simple life, without hurting anyone and above all, to want to be what I really am, without prejudice and without evil.
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This is my participation this week for our great friend @ericvancewalton's initiative: Memoir monday. If you want to participate, here's the link to the invitation post.
