naps (and other fleshly desires)

"...daytime sleep is like the sin of the flesh: the more you have the more you want, and yet you feel unhappy, sated and unsated at the same time."

----- Umberto Eco, The Name Of The Rose

Ha - I take this as proof of the point yesterday that delight of any sort provokes desire for more of that same delight, regardless of how it comes. Some people delight in sleep, but take it during the rightful time for wakefulness, a clear abomination against nature. ;)  I, of course, do not nap.

In the prior post I spoke of "delight in the Beloved" as potentially being found in several different kinds of objects, some of which are, I suppose, more "noble" than others (God being the most noble of all choices for the Beloved.)  Along the same lines, I suppose there are some ways of taking delight that are better chosen than others, even if the object itself is noble.   Naps, um... would not be one.  ;)

Well, the joking tone of the opening quote notwithstanding, the real admonition in it is that if your delight is in a noble object, and is legitimately experienced, then there is no unpleasant "aftertaste", as it were, no lingering tinge of frustration or disappointment or regret, no smiting of the conscience afterwards.  Both are needed.

Hm.  I get that.

In the prior post I also spoke of substitution as a way to avoid despair in the face of a seemingly permanent loss of delight in the Beloved. And since then, I ran across this quote:

"Always you renounce a lesser good for a greater; 

the opposite is what sin is."

----- Flannery O'Connor, The Habit Of Being

Hm.  I get that, too.  But... always?

I don't know.  I'll have to think on that some.

Can you always discern which good is the greater one?

Especially in the midst of a dilemma, at the moment of choice?