Get right up again.
Show some pluck like Donald Duck…”
Lent, Day 6
I’ve been questioning whether Donald Duck’s example is the right one to follow. He doesn’t always seem to get the better of the situation that way…
In the personal introspection encouraged by Lent, I have come to the conclusion, that my church experiences have suggested the idea that they do not encourage the Donald Duck philosophy. Stay down, seems to be the option encouraged. When phrased as the concept of “stay oppressed”, it makes church an oppressor, not liberator of mankind, but, hey, isn’t that what the detractors of the church have been saying for centuries.
“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall sent you free”, (John 8:32) becomes “You shall know the church, and the church shall oppress you.” Whether this encourages one to say oppressed, or to leave the church, then becomes the question, I guess.
That is the thing, when you follow the logic of some point or idea, there is often more than one path you can follow it along, and blast it, the person you want to follow your logic often doesn’t take the path you’ve chosen, whether it be the path more or less traveled.
I am sure the churches are trying to give me some point other than “stay oppressed”, but they aren’t pointing out anything else to me, except to “stay away”.
And, blast it, that is one point that Christ has specifically pointed as the way “not to go”, even if it is the path more traveled. We are “not to forsake the assembling of ourselves”, yet when I try, those assembled tell me to get away. And why? because I insist on stating the truth. And the truth sets me free from the church, whether I would or not. Because the church will not listen to the truth.
So the church is the road less traveled, Or is it?
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost (1915)
At The Rainbow 