Weekend Entertainment #1 - September Test Drive Meme

[havetubawilltravel]

It's way too hot to be September right now where I am, but we're verging on October right now, and that means it's an app_this_plz weekend, and you know you've got characters you want to try out.


H O W T O P L A Y:

-->Reply to this post with any character, new or old, you wish to app into Milliways.
-->Scan the post and respond to any characters you'd like to interact with.
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--> Have fun! Post is open until Monday's DE and/or until the next Test Drive Meme!

Comments

[a_rare_benedictine]

"And you give education of the general sort, not only on Scripture?"

[witchfinder_general]

"Of course," Father Harman says. "Education has to be useful, and purely religious education isn't, so they wouldn't want it."

[a_rare_benedictine]

"Done properly", Cadfael points out mildly, "it can be a guide to living well. But I can see that the poor would have greater concerns... such as living at all."

[witchfinder_general]

"If we give their children a good education that helps them to live better than their parents, they won't mind that said education contains religious elements," Father Harman says. "A famous motto of our order is, 'Give us a child until age seven, and we will give you the man', meaning to say that we form not only knowledge, but character -- and the latter, of course, by Christian values."

[a_rare_benedictine]

He nods, smiling. "It's a great thing, when a child can rise above their birth - even by a little."

[witchfinder_general]

"It's the one thing that brings the world forward and the poor out of their misery," Father Harman says, earnestly.

[a_rare_benedictine]

"Especially if it can be paid backwards, as it were, to have the child lift their parents out of misery too."

[witchfinder_general]

"That's part of the general bargain," Father Harman nods. "It works, generally speaking; but even by my time, we still have many places in the world that are desperately poor and need our work. More than ever, it seems."

[a_rare_benedictine]

Cadfael sighs. "Alas, it seems that will never change. One family may be helped, but there will always be more falling on hard times."

[witchfinder_general]

"And there's that perfidious mechanism in human biology that means that once prosperity hits a place and child mortality drops dramatically," Father Harman says, "people continue to have as many children as they would have when they were still expecting most of them not to make it; then, population drops off again. We have six billion people on Earth by my time; optimistic predictions claim that the whole earth can support ten. So there is a great lot of people in poverty still, as the fact people are rising out of misery automatically means there are more people, for a while."

[a_rare_benedictine]

"Six - " That's a number beyond any of his imaginings. "However can they all be fed? Or... no. You're telling me they can't, of course."

[witchfinder_general]

"Not at this time," Father Harman says. "But that's more because of the greed of some rich people, rather than the Earth being unable to grow enough food for everybody. Because it can."

[a_rare_benedictine]

"The rich... stockpile the food?"

[witchfinder_general]

"Sort of," Father Harman says. "They trade in food in great bulk, you might say, and drive prices up. It's not that there is no food, it's that the poor can't afford to pay for it."

[a_rare_benedictine]

He shakes his head in dismay. "And nobody tries to prevent this?"

[witchfinder_general]

"No," Father Harman says. "Government has been in the pockets of the rich since -- well, since about your time, I think. Or a little later."

[a_rare_benedictine]

"Perhaps to a point in my time. But there are still those trying to do something for the poor and infirm."

[witchfinder_general]

"So there will be throughout history," Father Harman says. "But it is always uphill work, often done by people of faith because hardly anything else gives you the strength to carry on in the face of the world being stacked against you."

[a_rare_benedictine]

Cadfael nods sadly. "At least it doesn't go entirely undone."

[witchfinder_general]

"No, but it can get very frustrating," Father Harman says. "Still, we never stop trying."

[a_rare_benedictine]

"And every small difference means everything, to the ones helped."

[witchfinder_general]

"It does," Father Harman says. "Especially as we know that every single lost soul counts in the eyes of God. No sparrow falls without his knowledge."

[a_rare_benedictine]

He nods. "And if one lost counts, how much more one regained."

[witchfinder_general]

"So we keep working," Father Harman says, nodding. "Throughout the centuries, never giving up."

[a_rare_benedictine]

"Not as men, nor as a group." He smiles. "That alone is a blessing to know."