Why the Roadside?

As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"

"Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked.

"I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied. "Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do."

The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.

Acts 9: 3-9

[---]

The conversion of Saint Paul, formerly one of the early Christian churches most dedicated opponents, into one of it's most passionate and insightful leaders has been adopted as a rhetorical benchmark for similarly dramatic about-turns in personal or political allegiance; one who finds themselves championing a cause or ideology for whom they had very publicly declared they're contempt may be described as having had a 'Damascus Road' experience, after the route on which Paul's own intense encounter with what he believed to be Christ himself took place. It's a phrase that implies a forceful, perhaps literally blinding epiphany, a revelation which cannot be ignored or sublimated, a veritable, shameless rebirth.

And it's something I've never known.

My own spiritual life has been dominated by misplaced enthusiasm and a very slow convergence of ideas and evidences which inspire a semi-certain affection for Christianity; much of the time I still feel as though I've dipped a few toes cautiously into the water, content with small probings into a vast commitment which I don't fully understand. The tide of that sea rises and falls daily, bringing me by turns closer, then farther from that commitment, a cycle which has often led me to despair of reaching a definitive moment of clarity like Saint Paul.

But I take great comfort from the quote which I've chosen to summarize this blog; conversion is for everyone(even Paul, no doubt) a daily rediscovery of that seed of faith which, as many Catholic theologians would say, is possessed in some form by every human being. It's a never ending pilgrimage through often enticing pitfalls, along a pathway that is both 'ever ancient and ever new.'

So I guess these will be dispatches my slow going journey on the roadside, as I study the greats who walk ahead and above me.