A wonderful concept -- but you are still struggling with burnout. You can lessen the effect of it by cropping from the top until the eye no longer goes to the white hole in the picture, but rather, the rays of sun that point the way to eternity. Watch your edges when you shoot, Jenene -- the two cross roads signs at either edge should fully included in the frame to make the point you trying to make.
The key to avoiding burnout in this kind of image is to shoot into the sun under greater cloud cover than it is here. Shooting directly into a full sun will give rays like this, but will also burn a big hole in the picture like this as well. In my shot of the Chinese horsemen athttp://www.pbase.com/pnd1/image/58761579 , burn out is held to a minimum by the placement of the clouds over the sun.
