The Locked Door

continued

On the contrary, seeing us returning, the goat woman hurried toward us. I rolled down my window to meet a pair of inquisitive brown eyes peering through the wild tangle of her hair.

"Pardonnez-nous, Madame," I said. "Please excuse us. We're trying to get home and we're lost."

I don't know what I expected to hear from this strange individual -- medieval Latin if she answered at all!

"Mais non!" she exclaimed in lilting French. "But no! One is never lost. One cannot be lost! All roads lead to Rome!"

Her lively eyes were darting about the car, front seat, backseat, taking in binoculars, bottled water, the details of our clothes. If we were curious about her, it was clear that she was just as intrigued with us. We'd bought the car in Germany, and she must have seen the D on the license plate.

"You're German! It is good to travel far when one is so young!"

As John was then sixty-four and I, fifty-nine, we liked this view of ourselves. She would have been as glad as we, I think, to keep the conversation going, but the goats had sprinted up the opposite bank. She gave us directions to the nearest town, then clambered after them and disappeared through another break in the hedgerow.

For a moment we stared after her, still not quite believing the encounter. Inside an ungainly body in its fluttering rags was a mind rich with experience and eager as a child's.

One is never lost. All roads lead to Rome!

They did once, of course, in this area, those astonishing paved ways built to carry Roman legions to every corner of the empire. But that evening in 1987, the phrase said something different to me. I heard my own voice: We're trying to get home and we don't know the way. Heard the goat woman's answer. One is never lost.

What if even the wrong roads we set out on -- my childhood need to hide, my neurotic competitiveness -- what if even such byways can lead us home in the end? What if all roads lead potentially, not to Rome, but to heaven? Not that any route I choose will take me there, but that nothing can happen to me that Jesus cannot turn into an avenue of grace.

One cannot be lost.        <<< end