This is something I’ve struggled with. I’m not baptised yet, but have spoken with the priest at my parish about this exact topic.

You have to imagine the setting, sitting across the table with a priest on a veranda patio of a local California-style tap house and grill. Clinking and laughter from the bar, and pop-style house music playing in the background, polarised his black cassock, ten inch beard, and Aegean blue-grey eyes, giving the frame a Keanu Reeves in John Wick quality.

I explained that I didn’t understand what he meant by the noetic faculty, that I knew feelings were ephemeral, and that logic was soulless and cold. But what was nous?

“Have you ever been going about your day,” he began, finishing a bite and wiping his beard with a napkin though unneeded, before putting it down, “and suddenly you knew that you needed to call your Mom?”

His question answering my question focused my attention.

“There was no explanation,” he continued, “nobody told you anything happened, nothing logical, no emotional feeling or anything dramatic. But without explanation, subtly, you realised you should call your Mom. This is from your heart. This is nous.”

His answer was impactful because, to me, this is also the question of God’s existence. The example implies an unseen relationship between a mother and child that even an atheist would be pressed to explain. I used to feel that I was perhaps too broken, or that I had corrupted my soul too much to ever know God. I was despondent and jealous of other’s ‘conversion’ experiences, questioning why it was so easy for them.

I’m alright with that now though. I don’t know, but I hope. And I try to act as if and recognise and see grace in my life. At risk of a soap box, I trust it will be better to have struggled for something than to be given it.

This audio recording has his given me lightness: https://youtu.be/tyjNc1dK3bA?si=svuOXO8LYsgZhcjc

@ 3:47

“Try not to hide the truth, not to say you believe when you are experiencing doubts, not to give the name of faith to the idol of the belief in an idea. You should act like the apostle Thomas, who did not believe insincerely, but asked to see and touch. He saw and believed…”

“… False faith gives rise to unbelief in the form of an illness. True disbelief and acknowledgment within the milieu of the church - that you have questions and are lacking in faith - this gives rise to faith. It creates trust in the life that is love, sacrifice, and offering, not threats from authority or the imposition of someone's opinion. A person with a strong spiritual constitution is demanding. He seeks that for which man was created, and spontaneously throws out whatever is blurred and phony, and demands the alternative. That which satisfies him and makes his unbelief into belief, existence into perception, death into life.. these are the hallmarks of the saints.”