Lately I’ve reflected upon the idea of “conversion.” That moment, as if illuminated by a closeby flash of lightning, the lay of the land transformed in appearance, you recognize an alternative, a different course than the one so familiar. Perhaps the conversion, the transformation of view comes upon one gradually, a kind of dawning of the new possibility. However it happens, it is involuntary.

Nietzsche begins his journal-style of philosophical exploration, Thus Spake Zarathustra, by a parable suggesting three part concatenating conversions are apt for someone living in an age marked by the ascendancy of science and its methodology, and the recession of Christianity.

I was raised in the South. Southern Christian fundamentalism was in the air that I breathed. (You could always find one of the local pastors holding-forth on the AM radio dial). I keep reminding myself that everyone has to start somewhere. And that it is a stunning stroke of luck to be alive, simply to be here at all. Personally speaking my launch into this world was from the cradle of Christian Fundamentalism. Well and good. I lived like a camel, the heavy-lift-life, among other wannabe camels eager to prove ourselves by adding weight, more weight… More suffering equals greater reward.

Here is the first phase of the story, what it is like to be the camel. Not to be discouraged though, becoming the lion, then becoming the child are future prospects!

Three metamorphoses of the spirit
do I name to you:
how the spirit
   becomes a camel,
      the camel a lion,
         and the lion at last a child.

Many heavy things are there for the spirit,
the strong weight-bearing spirit in which reverence dwells:
for the heavy and the heaviest
are what its strength longs for.
What is heavy?
so asks the weight-bearing spirit;
then it kneels down
like the camel,
and wants to be well loaded.

What is the heaviest thing, you heroes?
asks the weight-bearing spirit,
that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength.

Is it not this:
To humble oneself in order to hurt one’s pride? To let
one’s folly shine in order to mock one’s wisdom?

Or is it this:
To desert our cause when it celebrates its triumph? To
climb high mountains to tempt the tempter?

Or is it this:
To feed on the acorns and grass of knowledge,
and for the sake of truth to suffer hunger of soul?

Or is it this:
To be sick and send away comforters,
and make friends with the deaf, who never hear what you wish?

Or is it this:
To wade into dirty water
when it is the water of truth, and
not repelling cold frogs and hot toads?

Or is it this:
To love those who despise us,
and give one’s hand to the
phantom when it is going to frighten us?

                    -*-
All these heaviest things
the weight-bearing spirit takes upon itself:
and like the camel,
which, when burdened, speeds into the wilderness,
so the spirit speeds into its wilderness.

But in the loneliest wilderness
the second metamorphosis happens:
here the spirit becomes a lion;
                    it will seize freedom,
                    and become master
                    in its own wilderness.

Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. Thomas Common, page 21