Our way of thinking is like a path in the woods. It starts with one thought in response to one experience — and through repetition, that path becomes a mental superhighway. If you’ve ever noticed the same types of challenges showing up again and again in your life, it might be time to try a new mental route — to choose new thoughts in response to familiar triggers.

Rare Faith is a new way of thinking, and it doesn’t always come easy. It’s like cutting fresh trails through dense forest — blazing through mental territory that’s never been explored before. It means facing years of ingrained thought-patterns and choosing something different. It’s responding consciously — not automatically — to the same old stimuli. In short: it’s work. But it’s meaningful work.

If you press forward — choosing elevated thoughts like gratitude in difficulty, expecting good to come, and seeing setbacks as blessings — your brain starts forming new neural pathways. With time, those new paths lead to a life that’s not just richer in perception, but in reality too.

My dad once sent me a poem that captured the nature of my pre–Rare Faith thinking:

The Calf Path
Sam Walter Foss

One day, through the primeval wood,
A calf walked home, as good calves should;
But made his trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.

Since then, two  hundred years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf if dead;
But still, he left behind his trail,
And hereby hangs my moral tale.

The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that past that way,
Then a wise bell-weather sheep,
Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep;
And drew his flock behind him too,
As good bell-weathers always do.

From that day, o’er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made.
And many men wound in and out,
And dodged and turned and bent about,
And uttered words of righteous wrath,
Because ’twas such a crooked path.

But still they followed; do not laugh,
The first migrations of that calf;
And through this winding wood way stalked,
Because he wobbled when he walked.

This forest path became a lane,
Which bent and turned and turned again.
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled beneath the burning sun,
And travelled some three miles in one.
Thus, a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.

The years past on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street.
And this, before men were aware,
A crowded city’s thorough-fare.
Then the central street was this,
Of a renowned metropolis.
And men, two centuries and a half,
Have trod the footsteps of that calf.

Each day a hundred thousand route
Following that zig-zag calf about.
And O’er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.

A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way,
And lost a hundred years a day.

For thus, such reverence is lent
To well established precedent.
A moral lesson this might teach,
Were I ordained and called to preach.

For men are prone to go it blind,
O’re the calf paths of the mind.
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.

They follow in the beaten path,
Out and in and forth and back.
But still their devious pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw that first primeval calf.

Ah!  Many things this tale might teach,
But I am not ordained to preach.

As we reflect on how some of our mental trails were shaped not by wisdom but by habit, we begin to see how much time and energy we may have wasted following “the calf paths of the mind.” But the good news is — we’re not stuck there.

We can intentionally imagine better destinations, blaze straighter trails, and develop habits that bring us more peace, joy, and abundance — both within and around us.

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