# Acts Chapter 9
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## Summarrium
Saul has a dramatic conversation to Christ on the road to Damascus where he had planned to arrest and bring Christian believers to the Chief Priests for punishment. He is blinded by the encounter with Jesus and does not eat or drink for three days until Ananias prays for him and he is healed. At Damascus he immediately begins preaching in the Synagogues and offering proofs that Jesus was the Christ.

The Jews plot to kill Paul and so his disciples help him escape Damascus by lowering him through a hole in the wall on a basket. Saul joins the disciples in Jerusalem who are initially apprehensive but later accept him as a brother. Saul preaches boldly in Jerusalem and the disciples learn of a plot on his life and aid him to escape to Tarsus.

Peter heals Aneneas who was paralyzed and bedridden for eight years leading to the residents of Lydda and Sharon to turn towards the Lord. Peter also visits Tabitha (Dorcas) who had passed away and through the power of the spirit she is raised to life. This becomes known throughout the region of Joppa with many believing in the Lord.

## Meditatio
Much happens in this chapter. We have the conversion experience of Saul, his escape from Damascus and Jerusalem, Peter healing one man and raising a woman from the dead.

Interestingly I had just been sitting with [this conversation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfeY-Fz8sBc&t=7153s) between Vanderklay and Brandon which seemed to circle the problem *'should we evaluate the value of myths on the basis of their coherence with our present understanding of natural world or based upon their functional utility as praxis?*'. This conversation was very frustrating but none the less raises an important point between how modernism and meta-modernity is framing the issue.

The modernist perspective has introduced new categories that did not exist prior to the enlightenment; natural and super-natural being some of them. For the pre-modern world it was as natural for God to participate within creation as it would be for a developer to participate within the Game he has created. We assume with the observations of the past 300 years that we can unpick and remove a complex web of ideology that has persisted since...was it 40 milion years ago we diverged from apes?

Now there is of course good reason to celebrate the modernist perspective. My children and I are alive because of it and enjoy living in the benefits of a modern world. But there are limitations to it. The project did not and has not succeeded in gathering 'all facts'. Material correspondence is not always the best way to view a problem; one does not test for Socrates in a lab.

So how to respond to Acts 9? Do we de-mythologise and reject what appears unnatural to us? Do we instead recognise that it is part of a pattern of a functional narrative within which we inhabit? These are not easy questions to answer, but as for me an my house...I've always been a bit of a pragmatist.

I appreciate this post is a variation from the pattern and barely makes mention of the source material at all. Apologies.