My slow return to religion

If you met me during the last twelve years or so, I probably wouldn’t strike you as a religious person. I got a Master’s degree in a technical field, and I spent a few years as a PhD student doing research. Now I am an AI/ML engineer. All this time, I looked at the world through the lens of science. Sure, from time to time, I practiced some form of meditation, but there is some scientific evidence that it works, and it ultimately served my own benefit. But you should know, dear reader, that I was raised as a Catholic. As the tradition dictates, I was baptised shortly after birth, received my first Communion when I was 8 or 9, and Confirmation when I was 16 or 17. For a long time, I attended church at least once a week and was an active member of our community. Everything changed after I moved to Czechia to study at the Brno University of Technology. Czechia is much more atheistic than my home country of Slovakia; a big city like Brno has a different social dynamic than a small…