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Sarek had been warned about Earth women who still practiced religion, and yet, had found one of them to be the most logical life partner for himself. Amanda Grayson was irrational in the way that all humans – all non-Vulcans, really – were, but was hardly a fulfillment of what he had come to find to be an illogical prejudice. One “spiritual but not religious” woman he had been on a “date” with pointed out certain flaws of “organized religion” but believed far less rational things about crystals. No explanation of the difference in the angles between molecules being the source of their more attractive appearance could convince her that the rocks did not hold some special energy that she could “tap into.”
Amanda’s faith, and her practice of it, by comparison, was quite reasonable. A long, written history of arguments about the correctness of certain actions in sometimes illogical circumstances – centuries of trying to bring order and logic to humans’ illogical, overly-emotional lives. Major religious observances that memorialized traumas, celebrated the community’s survival, compelled worshipers to deny themselves for a day and deeply meditate about their actions… and seek to make amends with their fellow humans, not just some deity who Amanda herself admitted to “occasionally believing in.”
She had even found a more logical, ethical way to implement her culture’s seemingly-illogical dietary rules - why refuse to eat one category of mammals, but feature the flesh of others at holy day meals? She simply abstained from consuming any animal flesh, and ate dairy sparingly, after ensuring that it came from respectfully-kept cattle. Her diet would enable her to live among his people without feeling too much deprivation… Sarek was about 97.5% certain. That ambiguity concerned him; Amanda’s attachment to frozen, sweetened cream could present problems, but he had a colleague at the Vulcan Science Academy who was working on the molecular-level synthesis of foodstuffs for several Federation species.
The only religiously-driven illogic Amanda really engaged in was an insistence in marking a paper calendar every year on the anniversary of certain deaths – “Yahrtzeit,” she called it. On one such occasion, he had suggested replacing the old, tattered paper with an item on her PADD if she had trouble remembering when those close to her had died. She uttered some incoherent profanities in a mixture of human languages, as well as his own, then slammed a door in his face.
Once Amanda had recovered from her emotional outburst, she lit a candle and began chanting in a language that Sarek had heard the odd word or phrase from, but had never heard her really speak. After she finished, tears streaming down her face, he said, with a distressing amount of his own feelings, “I grieve with thee,” then offered his fingers, which she accepted gratefully. It was gratifying to be able to send her comfort. He chose to carry out his daily meditation staring at the flame Amanda would let burn for the rest of the day and night.
Sarek did not see the logic of joining her religion himself, of “converting”; he had been raised with the supremely logical precepts of Surak, and those had kept him and the vast majority of Vulcans who had lived almost of the whole six millennia of Amanda’s people’s claimed history from re-enacting anything approaching the horrors that had compelled Surak to show Sarek’s people a better way.
When Amanda asked if he could accept her raising their children with her faith, he forbore to remind her (human memories were so fragile, she must have simply forgotten) that the odds of their having any children together were what she would imprecisely (but not incorrectly) describe as “infinitesimal.”
Instead, Sarek replied, “it is only logical – they would be children of a Jewish mother, therefore they would be Jewish as well, if I understand correctly.”
Her tight, tearful embrace initially seemed like a failure of her own logic, but a brief touch of his fingers to hers filled him with the joy that re-affirmed the sense in his decision to take her as his wife.