If St. Paul's Day be fair & clear, / It doth betide a happy year

January 25: Conversion of St. Paul

If St. Paul’s Day be fair and clear,
It doth betide a happy Year;
If blustering Winds do blow aloft
Then Wars will trouble our Realm full oft.
And if it chance to Snow or Rain,
Then will be dear all Sorts of Grain.

Traditional

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Welcome, friends. I’m Kristin: a Pacific Northwest artist, mom, & farmer offering support for seasonal, local, liturgical living. Together, we’ll explore the agrarian heritage of the Church calendar and ideas of sacred time & sacred place.

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» Printable Resources

Keeping a liturgical Book of Hours binder helps me to distill all of the inspiration I find, so I can easily look to the elements that have been most nurturing for our family & community.

Here’s a packet of goodies for you to add to your liturgical binder so that you can start building out your resources for the Conversion of St. Paul! It features:

• Cover page with art emblematic of the feast: a horse for St. Paul, and Winter Aconite…the “small yellow winter-wolfsbane, whose leaves come forth of the ground in the dead time of winter, many times bearing snow on the heades of its leaves and flowers; and the deeper the snow is, the fairer and larger is the flower, and the warmer the weather is, the lesser is the flower” (John Gerard’s Herball).

• Seven pages of prompts, information, & poetry (dotted with ink illustrations and photos) to help you learn about this feast and reflect on how it intersects with your own life and landscape. These pages feature historical tidbits, traditional meals, agrarian connections, plants and animals associated with the feast…and lots of prompts and space to encourage you to look at your own surrounds and how they wear the color of this season.

• AND two coloring pages! These whimsical coloring pages are meant to be fun for kids and adults alike, and all the elements in them were hand drawn with a good ol’ fashioned dip pen. (If you want, try printing them out on cardstock or watercolor paper so that you can paint them!)

My paid subscribers can find this (as well the rest of my library of printables) in the Scriptorium:

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RIVERBED CONVERSIONS

A blest conversion, and a strange,
Was that when Saul a Paul became;
And, Lord, for making such a change,
We praise and glorify thy name:
For whilst he went from place to place,
To persecute thy truth and thee,
(And running to perdition was)
By powerful grace call’d back was he.

George Wither, excerpt from “Song LXVI: The Conversion of St. Paul” in Hymns and Songs of the Church (1623; reprinted 1856)

The story of St. Paul’s dramatic conversion is a shocking moment that, through its familiarity and colloquial use, is sometimes rendered as a given. Whether in sacred or secular contexts, “road to Damascus”¹ is an idiom with which most everyone is familiar.

And yet, there it is: a moment in one man’s life, so crucial to our collective faith heritage, so alive with the spark of the divine, that it impacted the formation process of the Church - the very Body of Christ - in lasting ways. Our souls become alert & recognize the familiar call of truth in St. Paul’s blinding conversion…but honestly, it’s easier to place it in the realm of “unreachable” story, assign the utter strangeness of it to St. Paul’s life experience (not ours), and just move on to his theology.

The Church, though, simply won’t have that. Instead, she reminds us to pause and sit with St. Paul’s conversion.

“I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And I did so in Jerusalem. I not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death I cast my vote against them. And I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme, and in raging fury against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities.

“In this connection I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. At midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, that shone around me and those who journeyed with me. And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ And I said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’” (Acts 26:9-18 ESV)

It has a mythic flavor about it, after all: Pharisee-educated, Tarsus-born Saul - a Roman citizen and fervent opponent of the budding Christian faith - is en route to Damascus to arrest Christians and return them to Jerusalem for imprisonment or execution. His departure from this mission is not a gradual process - it’s a blinding-light, knocked-off-your-horse sort of conversion.

We all have moments in our lives that, in hindsight, probably look like they were foregone conclusions. We recall the turning point, but don’t always connect the seemingly unrelated accumulation of life that takes us, by the grace of God, to that turning point.

We sometimes miss the blessed patience in the mundanity of our daily lives, layers of experience and choice that mark our footsteps to the place in which we now stand. (I wonder how many Damascus moments I’ve taken for granted in my own life? Or how many I do recognize, though they remain isolated from the patient, enduring days leading up to them?)

A river’s edge creates a natural border to our farm. In the summer, its water irrigates thirsty crops here. In the winter (…and sometimes, in the fall and spring, too), the river will sometimes swell over its banks, floodwater sweeping over the fields.

A river bank is not a static thing. Over time, banks are eroded, sediment is deposited -and floods of rushing water accelerate all these changes. When the floods come, the river starts exploring new terrain.

Sometimes, as it explores, the river leaves part of its old channel behind, favoring a straighter route from its previous meander. We can easily see this change in the river’s path - those meanders remain, like tangible memories, as oxbow lakes.

An old oxbow in pasture here on the farm - the riverbank itself is just beyond that near tree line.

The river’s path converted, and an oxbow was born.

“Adam stood up against God and Paul prostrated himself on the earth; Adam’s eyes were opened and Paul’s were blinded…”

Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend

And these oxbows are left behind, evidence of so many ‘road to Damascus’ moments in the history of the river channel. The formation of the new riverbed was sometimes slow and patient, sometimes sudden and dramatic - but now, I just see this remaining signpost, and the old meanders seem hard to imagine as I try to mentally connect this piece into the earlier path.

Here at the end of January, when the Church asks us to consider the signpost of St. Paul’s Conversion, David tells me that this oxbow is his favorite signpost in the denouement of winter: its varying depth communicates so much about the water table in all the fields here.

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WINTER CONVERTS TO SPRING

Early flowers from tillage radish, sown in the oxbow pasture to help amend the soil. The poor things enjoyed some early warmth, and then got hit with frost.

Winter’s white shrowd doth cover all the grounde,
And Caecias blows his bitter blaste of woe;
The ponds, and pooles, and streams in ice are bounde,
And famished birds are shivering in the snow.
Still round about the house they flitting goe,
And at the windows seek for scraps of foode
Which Charity with hand profuse doth throwe,
Right weeting that in need of it they stoode,
For Charity is shown by working creatures’ goode.

The Sparrow pert, the Chaffinche gay and cleane,
The Redbreast welcome to the cotter’s house,
The livelie blue Tomtit, the Oxeye greene,
The dingie Dunnock, and swart Colemouse;
The Titmouse of the marsh, the nimble Wrenne,
The Bullfinch and the Goldspinck, with the king
Of birds the Goldcrest. The Trush, now and then,
The Blackbird, wont to whistle in teh Spring,
Like Christians seek the heavenlie foode St. Paul doth bring.

Ed. Thomas Forster, “On St. Paul’s Eve, 1823,” The Perennial Calendar, and Companion to the Almanack

As we look at that oxbow - a tangible record of riverbed conversion - to gain some sense of how the fields are faring, we intersect with earlier agrarian communities celebrating the Conversion of St. Paul.

Around Conversiontide, historic farming communities² were hankering for a signpost of changing weather: and though this wintry anticipation of spring brought with it plenty of superstition³ in weather-prediction, it’s all undergirded by a deep attentiveness to the process of change. When will we see St. Paul’s Damascus moment echoed in the land that sustains us?

Witty little proverbs, related to this innate curiosity over the coming change in seasons, abound:

“If St. Paul’s Day be fine, the year will be the same.” - French Proverb

“St. Paul fair with sunshine
Brings Fertility to rye and wine.”

“If the sun shines on St. Paul’s Day, it betokens a good year…” - Shepherd’s Almanack, 1676

Richard Inwards, Weather Lore (1893)

We tend to notice the fatalistic tone of these predictive ditties and dismiss them as old-fashioned; but in them, I see something reflective of both my landscape and my life in community.

The Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul occurs just weeks after the beginning of a new year - and even if that January 1st date is arbitrary, it still nonetheless informs our engagement in culture and calendar. February on the horizon, our eyes are wandering toward any early signs of spring. We’ve also now had a few weeks to let all those well-intentioned new year’s resolutions either fade or deepen - habits are cemented or cast out, channels of thought are deepened or abandoned, and we’re unconsciously making those habitual choices every moment of the day.

We celebrate St. Paul’s astonishing conversion…the landscape is starting to whisper a bit of change while we read the water level in the oxbow…and I’m suddenly confronted, on my own perpetual road to Damascus, with all the spectrum of habits that I’m constantly reinforcing.

Here at the feast of the Conversion, if I look at the weather of my daily habits & choices, does it spell a fair-weather year of closeness with God? Or have foul-weather habits already started to cloud their way back into my days?

We’re prompted to pause and take stock, noticing what habits are indicative of fair or foul weather in our souls. On the heels of a new year, it feels like the touchstone I need to help me re-examine the good intentions I’ve taken for granted.

The Church asks us to pause and consider what within us needs to experience God’s Conversion.

Water in a conversion process…changing from frost to crystalline droplets in the warming sun.

In reflecting on this Pauline feast all month, I’ve found myself repeatedly asking: does this habit/behavior take me further down the road to Damascus on my warhorse? Or does it knock me off my horse and turn me around, back toward Jesus?

“If St. Paul’s Day be fair and clear, it indicates plenty; if cloudy or misty, much cattle will die…”

To be honest, although some of my habits today are of the “fair and clear” variety, many have become “cloudy”: if I get lazy with my boundaries around technology…if my choices in speech or thought allow bitterness to fester…if I wallow in pessimistic thought patterns…all of these habits will, I know, spell foul weather.

I can respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and change the trajectory of my habits any day, of course - but, being forgetful, I’m thankful to have a reminder placed here in the calendar, just as resolutions of the new year begin to become shrouded in mist.

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BENEDICTION

When from the truth we go astray,
(Or wrong it through our blinded zeal)
Oh come, and stop us in the way,
And then thy will to us reveal;
That brightness shew us from above,
Which proves the sensual eye-sight blind;
And from our eyes those scales remove,
That hinder us thy way to find.

George Wither, excerpt from “Song LXVI: The Conversion of St. Paul” in Hymns and Songs of the Church (1623; reprinted 1856)

This will be my first year ever celebrating the feast of the Conversion - and I’m thrilled to be doing so in community with our Liturgical Life group! Is the Conversion of St. Paul a feast that you mark in any particular way? I’d love to hear!

May we take a note from St. Paul, the meandering river, & the shifting winter weather - and receive the grace we need to practice a Conversion of habits where we need to.

Pax et bonum,
Kristin

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1. “Road to Damascus” is such a prevalent idiom that its definition in many dictionaries often doesn’t even mention St. Paul!

2. “Among agriculturists all over Great Britain and Western Europe the feast had especial significance as a prognosticator of the weather for the entire ensuing year” (Ed. William Walsh, excerpt from Curiossities of Popular Customs and of Rites, Ceremonies, Observances and Miscellaneous Antiquities [1897])

3. See the section “Superstition: a space for curiosity & compassion” from my earlier Hallowtide post.