OUR ROAD TO DAMASCUS

A debut manual looks at St. Paul’s Damascus road experience as a template for human contemplation.

Early on, Assisi assures his readers that despite its title, his book is not about organized religion. Rather, it’s about “unpacking a personal experience of an incredible person who decided to change himself—an experience from which we can hopefully transfer some wisdom into our lives.” As the title indicates, this incredible person is Saul of Tarsus, who had a vision on the road to Damascus and converted to Christianity. This presence of the divine is central to the author’s contentions here; everyone, he maintains, has a one-on-one relationship with what he refers to as “G.O.D.—the Guiding, Designing, Organizing force of the universe. Or whatever other nomenclature one chooses.” Some readers may find these opening assertions confusing—Saul doesn’t decide to transform himself, for instance; he’s essentially ordered to do so by direct divine intervention. And that divine intervention is not some generalized Guiding, Designing, Organizing force but very specifically the Christian God. Still, Assisi smoothly and invitingly broadens his inquiry to include the universal human desire for meaning and purpose in life and his readings of the Paul story. He’s particularly insightful on the many ways Paul’s tale more closely reflects the Christian faith experience than the stories of the other disciples. “Paul never met Jesus in the flesh, he never spent time with him, never had a chance to listen to his teachings directly from him, never followed him in his wanderings or preachings,” the author writes. “Paul was like most of the Gentiles—all who would hear about Christ, but not from Christ. Like us.” In a series of very readable chapters, Assisi turns the underlying precepts of the Paul story—a tale of being “called to change”—into a series of lessons designed to address a broad array of human experiences, from coping with complicated relationships to dealing with grief. The result is a book that succeeds in the tricky feat of being intriguingly spiritual without being explicitly religious.

A vigorously written and thought-provoking inspirational guide to changing your path in life.