The theme of this week’s Fun Foto Challenge is Walk 100 Steps or Less and Take New Photos. When you are done here I challenge you to step on out my door into the wonderful world of Cee and see what her other contributors have shown from their own front porch.

http://ceenphotography.com/2014/01/28/cees-fun-foto-challenge-walk-100-steps-or-less-and-take-new-photos/

The challenge got me thinking of a quote from J.R.R. Tolkein’s, The Fellowship Of the Ring-

“He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. ‘It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,’ he used to say. ‘You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.” 
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

That one quote took me off on a side road with the master of fantasy. It is true! Just going out the front door of my house has plunked me in the middle of many interesting journeys.

A view to the right

Some of those journeys were bound up in self-interest and self-advancement.  Of such thing Tolkein says, “We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming ‘sub-creator’ and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic ‘progress’ leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.” 
― J.R.R. Tolkien

to the left

Of course I never wanted to admit such counsel was correct. It flies in the face of so much I learned growing up. It took me some time but I have realized the more I think of myself and my own comfort the less I actually enjoy and am comforted by life. As I travel outward I am learning day by day that the more I brush up against others, the more I give them of myself, the more I am in turn blessed by the sojourn here.

I have been to places I am certain I never would have gone by choice, but the One who seems to have made the choices for me is by far a better choice-maker than I shall ever be. These roads have led me on great adventures all of which somehow bent the road back home and turning there  have found the place more welcome than when I left it.

Straight ahead

“Roads Go Ever On

Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on,
Under cloud and under star.
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen,
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green,
And trees and hills they long have known.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone.
Let others follow, if they can!
Let them a journey new begin.
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.” 
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings