Compelling conversion stories are usually very dramatic. The seedier and sleazier the former lifestyle of the converted, the better.

If I could start my story by professing to be an ex-drug pusher or pimp or high priestess (the gender does pose a problem though) in a neo-pagan cult, I could probably secure and hold the attention of most readers.

The truth of the matter, however, is that I was none of those things. I was not terribly different from "the rest of the guys". I was not outwardly or ostensibly immoral (that is to say, I wasn't a gangster or an arson or a used-car salesman... just kidding!), but I was wholly uninterested in religion or cultivating virtue or any thing of that sort. I was the centre of my universe: ain't nobody gonna to tell me what to do and what not to do! Especially a guy in a pointy hat and a long white dress (aka. the Pope).

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Allow me to start at the beginning, which is (in the words of Julie Andrews in The Sound Of Music) a very good place to start...