of theodicy and pumpkin

I've had questions of theodicy coming at me right and left. How not? They seem unavoidable in a situation such as the one here in Haiti.  Why? Why? Why, God?  I've started a book called When Suffering Persists.  So cheerful.  I don't expect it to give me answers, but at least it gives me another base from which to think so as to spend less time going around in circles.  I think in the long run it all boils down to trust - including the trust needed to take the next step, to do the work before me without needing to fix it all or to have the answers first. 

It reminds me of a quote I copied earlier this year from a novel.  The protagonist has been puzzling over something:

preparing to make soupe joumou

"She stopped.  It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it.  In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin.  That brought you down to earth.  That gave you a reason for going on.  Pumpkin."
 -- The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, p. 95 (Alexander McCall Smith)