Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
I am a cradle catholic, but with two caveats. First, I was raised in the very definition of a "leafy suburb Novus Ordo" parish. Second, almost all of my 20s I was totally away from the church - zero mass attendance, zero daily prayer.
I'm now a (developing) traditional catholic. Latin mass, much better (re)cathechesis, real theological reading and study - although this last part is largely just do to my ability to sit still now.
However, I didn't have any specific moment of reawakening. The journey was longer and sort of ... academic? I started reading about epistemology when I was working in Data Science. I did this because I found it profoundly preposterous how professional "data scientists" and their managers would find some very weak frequentist statistical relationship between two variables and present it as 100% iron clad evidence for some sort of business decision. After letting myself become jaded with business data science, I wanted to at least recover faith in an analytically rigorous process of both induction and deduction. So, lots of books on epistemology and prob/stat.
Pair this with a growing awareness of culture war topics starting in the mid 2010s. That led me to a much quicker "conversion" from a wishy-washy tits-and-beer lib to an Old Right style conservative. Philosophically, I went hard into the idea that at least the conception of an absolute morality is required for a functioning society.
Thus, you have a combination of adherence to the concept of absolutely morality paired with a constant suspicion in how humans reason and come to believe things (side note: a pure rationalist / empirical stance is epistemic downs syndrome). That's a pretty good petri dish for faith formation. I think that maybe the specific bridging function was reading Alasdair MacIntyre (RIP, homie) combined with all of my latent catholicism - as lame as suburban NO history is.
I'm a big hiker and I do "find God" out there more than I do in other places. I think you said it well in your own post - looking at something the Wyoming Rockies and shrugging it all off as "ehh, random collision of atoms over billions of years. All noise." seems far too trite. It's overwhelming beauty that your brain can't fathom beyond "oh my god this is wonderful" (see what I did there?).
Obviously I'm going to make the unsolicited recommendation that you look into the Roman Catholic Church. Adult cathechesis - at a traditional parish - will tickle your lawyer brain. It's very structured, very grounded in philosophy and theology often in the tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas.
In terms of finding that personal spark, sorry to be trite, but that's on you, bud. There's no way to force it.
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