Resumption

Dear Ronda-Blog readers,
  One of the reasons I put the Blog on hiatus is not liking the pressure of coming up with good stuff every week.  But due to receiving e-mails from people who said they would miss the blog, I thought I would try collecting items on a file and then, whenever they mount up sufficiently, sending them out. 

So here are some thoughts since last time:
 I was reading something about how pride is behind all sins of the flesh. Here is what came to mind: 
Let's take over-eating.  When this is an addictive behavior, what is the prideful thought behind it?  What would you think of this explanation:
The over-eater feels "I have to satisfy this craving for food because I am miserable in different ways and eating whenever I have a craving soothes that feeling.  So, the pride is that instead of humbly praying at that moment something like "Jesus, you know me and love me. You want to give me what I need to be totally happy one day in heaven. You allow sufferings in this world.  Please You soothe the sufferings in my life so that I don't choose bad remedies such as over-eating which will one day increase my sufferings because of side effects of overweight, etc. Right now, I offer to you this specific craving by not satisfying it and offering that for the intention that everyone in my family will be saved (or some other spiritual desire.) 
A little far-fetched, perhaps, but there is something in it.

From  the hymn sung at Vespers on Tuesday of the First week of Ordinary Time:
 Grant to life’s day a calm unclouded ending,
An eve untouched by shadows of decay,
The brightness of a holy death-bed blending
With dawning glories of the eternal day.
 More and more, at 81, I am wondering why even strong Catholics seem surprised that I am longing for death as a gateway to purgatory.  Yet there are so many passages in Scripture and in the Office of Readings that write about how we should have hope in eternal life.  Not to get away from the sufferings God permits for us on this earth, but out of desire to be totally with Jesus, forever and ever, Amen.

 I have become a great fan of the Japanese pianist Mitsuko Uchida. Listening to her playing a Beethoven piano concerto, I am recalling an off-quoted by me line from an English novelist whose name I now forget. The novel involves a pianist who gives up being a concert pianist to raise her children and then teaches them to play different instruments. When they are setting forth into the world, she proclaims to them: “never, never think that life is not as incredible as music says it is.”

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