The Road Less Traveled...

...such a famous phrase, often wearing an underpinning of smugness that says, "How wondrous that I see the good in things that most can't see as they rush through life." But I think this is a false path; a type of dead end that doesn't know it is a dead end.

How very different is the real "road less traveled." First, it must be found alongside the "less frequent companion" and is a path that leads to feelings like C.S. Lewis expresses here:
"My fear was now of another kind. I felt sure that the creature [I was with] was what we call 'good,' but I wasn't sure whether I liked 'goodness' so much as I had supposed. This is a very terrible experience. As long as what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it is also dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you can't eat, and home the very place you can't live, and your very comforter the person who makes you uncomfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card is played. For a second or two I was nearly in that condition. Here at last was a bit of that world from beyond the world, which I had always supposed that I loved and desired, breaking through and appearing to my senses: and I didn't like it, I wanted it to go away. I wanted every possible distance, gulf, curtain, blanket, and barrier to be placed between it and me. But I did not fall quite into the gulf. Oddly enough my very sense of helplessness saved me and steadied me. For now I was quite obviously 'drawn in.' The struggle was over. The next decision did not lie with me."

"If this cup could pass from me..." Jesus Christ Himself knew this road, forging a trail to make it navigable, then requiring us to travel it with Him when He storms ahead with His face "set like flint," and we wonder if we really know Him at all.

And along that road He prepares us, eventually revealing our own particular cup to drink if we are willing to see and receive it. Staring into the flashing depths of wine peculiar to this cup of divination, we see the thing we seem to be "made for" but in seeing it we are bemused, for it is our greatest heartache; a thing over which we would like to say to God, "This is too hard. You haunt my heart, telling it to be true to some secret heavenly vision, then tell me I can not have it but by this road less traveled." And it is never the road neatly bordered by smug uniqueness and false dignity, rather it is the one where voluntary helplessness and abject humility creep across the footpath.

No wonder so many choose another road instead: the Road of Resignation (even over the Bridge of Temporarily Constructed Joy) on our way to the village of Life the Best I Can Arrange It for Myself.