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That is a completely excellent analogy!

OF course, we WILL have to burn you at the stake, but I'll let you eat some of the marshmallows I bring before you expire. (or perspire, or whatever.)

I think this: The notion that God loves us, because, well because He does and it's a free country.... That is VERY hard for us, in our fallen state, to hold onto.But I also know they do not hear it anywhere else, no matt4r how excellently it is preached. It just seems to take an extraordinary act of the Holy Spirit to wake up each individual to the amazing truth of the Love of God.

It was as a (mostly) Calvinist Episcopalian that I believed, preached, and prayed about the love of God. And somehow that led me to Rome.

God says, "The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be still." I think the right understanding of all askesis and piety is tht it is learning how to be still in the confidence and peace that arises from believing that the Lord will fight for us and we have only to be still.

There may be language about indulgences and how this or that prayer or Rosary or Novena or whatever is rich in graces. And, s a matter of fact, I believe a lot of that stuff, having (unless, as is possible, I delude myself) But underlying all my piety is a conviction which can be expressed in a number of ways: "It's ALL gift," is one; "The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be still," is another.

But you win the metaphor of the night prize.

Thanks for the encouragement. But I can't take credit for the puzzle analogy. Papertyger put me up to it. Seems he was laying in wait in a logical ambush. But a kind enough ambush. Little did he know, I saw it coming and added a couple of words at the end of the post to serve as a stick in the jaws of the trap. Suffered only minor flesh wounds.

Now that's doing analogy.