Free Will?

When it comes to the 'free will v. God's sovereignty' debate, as some of my friends will attest, in recent years I have beat the crap out of the bush. Dancing around it is hardly something I like to do. I have still traveled all the way around it for my own position, from Arminian to 'somewhere in the middle' to Calvin and beyond...all the while - beating the bush.
This is not another attempt to do that. Only very recently have I begin to wrestle with it on a much deeper level; a level that seems to temper me from jumping in the ring with my boxing gloves on. Mainly, that the discussion pertains to the character of a Person. It pertains to the characters of 'persons' in general, yes, but it isn't math; it is the reliable, yet mysteriously unpredictable Person of God. Already it sounds like a cop-out, even to me.

I don't have a position to state, it's more of an influence to ponder.

Lewis has been causing me to think about more of the presuppositions that go into such positions. I've been involved in countless debates of Calvin v. Arminian, where the issue of 'what is sin?' never even comes up.
For the moment, I'm finding a great value in more thoroughly examining the foundational assumptions of both arguments, and I'm hoping that this will help clear some of the water for me.
So far, here is an excerpt of Letters to Malcolm by Lewis. This has been a very profitable reflection for me.

"You remember the two maxims Owen [Barfield] lays down in Saving the Appearances? On the one hand, the man who does not regard God as other than himself cannot be said to have a religion at all. On the other hand, if I think God other than myself in the same way in which my fellowmen, and objects in general, are other than myself, I am beginning to make Him an idol. I am daring to treat His existence as somehow parallel to my own. But He is the ground of our being. He is always both within us and over against us. Our reality is so much from His reality as He, moment by moment, projects into us. The deeper the level within ourselves from which our prayer, or any other act, wells up, the more it is His, but not at all the less ours. Rather, most ours when most His. Arnold speaks of us as "enisled" from one another in "the sea of life." But we can't be similarly "enisled" from God. To be discontinuous from God as I am discontinuous from you would be annihilation.
A question at once arises. Is it still God speaking when a liar or a blasphemer speaks? In one sense, almost Yes. Apart from God he could not speak at all; there are no words not derived from the Word; no acts not derived from Him who is Actus purus. And indeed the only way in which I can make real to myself what theology teaches about the heinousness of sin is to remember that every sin is the distortion of an energy breathed into us-an energy which, if not thus distorted, would have blossomed into one of those holy acts whereof "God did it" and "I did it" are both true descriptions. We poison the wine as He decants it into us; murder a melody He would play with us as the instrument. We caricature the self-portrait He would paint. Hence all sin, whatever else it is, is sacrilege.
We must, not doubt, distinguish this ontological continuity between Creator and creature which is, so to speak, "given" by the relation between them, from the union of wills which, under grace, is reached by a life of sanctity. The ontological continuity is, I take it, unchangeable, and exists between God and a reprobate (or a devil) no less than between God and a saint. 'Whither shall I go then from thy presence? If I go down to hell, thou art there also.'
Where there is prayer at all we may suppose that there is some effort, however feeble, towards the second condition, the union of wills. What God labours to do or say through the man comes back to God with a distortion which at any rate is not total.
Do you object to the apparent "roundaboutness"- it could easily be made comic - of the whole picture? Why should God speak to Himself through man? I ask, in reply, why should He achieve, the long way round, through the labours of angels, men (always imperfectly obedient and efficient), and the activity of irrational and inanimate beings, ends which presumable, the mere fiat of omnipotence would achieve with instantaneous perfection?
Creation seems to be delegation through and through. He will do nothing simply of Himself which can be done by creatures. I suppose this is because He is a giver. And He has nothing to give but Himself. And to give Himself is to do His deeds - in a sense, and on varying levels to be Himself - through the things He has made.
In Pantheism God is all. But the whole point of creation surely is that He was not content to be all. He intends to be "all in all."
One must be careful not to put this in a way which would blur the distinction between the creation of a man and the Incarnation of God. Could one, as a mere model, put it thus? In creation God makes - invents - a person and "utters" - injects - him into the realm of Nature. In the Incarnation, God the Son takes the body and human soul of Jesus, and, through that, the whole environment of Nature, all the creaturely predicament, into His own being. So that "He came down from Heaven" can almost be transposed into "Heaven drew earth up into it," and locality, limitation, sleep, sweat, footsore weariness, frustration, pain, doubt, and death, are, from before all worlds, known by God from within. The pure light walks the earth; the darkness, received into the heart of Deity, is there swallowed up. Where, except in uncreated light, can the darkness be drowned?"
-C.S. Lewis Letters to Malcolm

If anyone has thoughts on this, which I'm sure they do, I would greatly appreciate hearing them. The varying positions, and even just fragments of ideas, really help me in my attempt to see a bigger picture. Now that the bush has been mutilated to twigs, I'm beginning to see that I have a lot to learn.