Dear Shula, don't detect any pontification on your part. But upon what (he said reaching for the Book of Job) is this reassertion of faith and hope to be based, given the rest? Of one thing you are right -- the mood is too dour (spelling?) and unhealthy to be sustained. Yours, Peter P.S. I am reminded of a great Peanuts cartoon where Linus is reading and he says to his sister Lucy, "It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness". She looks at him. The next panel you see her outside in the darkness yelling: "You Stupid Darkness!"