Skip to main content

Pilgrims

Using a favorite British accent, I led my social studies class on a pilgrimage yesterday around our school. At each stop, we talked to a pilgrim (actually, each was a music stand with different paper pilgrims taped to them), who told us about Thomas Becket, killed by four knights after angering Henry II.

Among these pilgrims was a miller, whom we found assaulted by highway bandits. In fact, curious unaffiliated students began to walk away with the music stand displaying the miller as my class and I walked toward it. Alarmed, a student yelled that these boys were thieving the pilgrim, and so without preparation, my class and I gave chase. With a battle cry, all twenty-nine of us ran full speed toward these three lads, until the boys gently placed the pilgrim down and walked away.

Alas, the miller did not escape unscathed. Slightly crumpled and missing a small section of his paper, he had--in our minds--lost a leg, and we vowed to avenge him. We would, in addition, not abandon the man, and carried him to the safety of Canterbury Cathedral, where there awaited for us a memorial candle for Thomas Becket and his accompanying reliquary.

In medieval days, pilgrims did sometimes worry about highway robbery, and even hired armed guards as protection. We found that we were that protection this day, proud knights whose mournful pilgrimage ended on a note of high esteem, realizing as we did that we had saved the life of this man, whose unchanged paper countenance betrayed a toughness unbefitting of a man whose job it is to grind grain.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Heroes

Although we have several examples of heroes in our day, one of the best known is of a woman named Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (“Gonja Bojaju”), who devoted her life to sustaining the “poor, sick, orphaned, and dying.” Her venue was Calcutta, India, where she served as a teacher until she began to take notice of the poverty there. Seeking to do something about it, she began an organization that consisted of just thirteen members at its inception. Called the “Missionaries of Charity,” the organization would eventually burgeon into well over 5,000 members worldwide, running approximately 600 missions, schools and shelters in 120 countries; and caring for the orphaned, blind, aged, disabled, and poor. As her personal work expanded, she traveled to countries like Lebanon, where she rescued 37 children from a hospital by pressing for peace between Israel and Palestine; to Ethiopia, where she traveled to help the hungry; to Chernobyl, Russia, to assist victims of the nuclear meltdown there; and to ...
2 comments
Read more

The Nice Guy Fallacy

I read part of a poem recently by one of my favorite poets. It reads: I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage The linnet born within the cage That never knew the summer woods. I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time Unfetter'd by the sense of crime To whom a conscience never wakes. Nor what may call itself as bles't The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth Nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate'er befall I feel it, when I sorrow most 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. At base, Tennyson contrasted a life of risk, and consequent pain, with one of security. He sides conclusively with the life of risk, and says he fails to envy those who have faced no hardship. I agree with him; and, for good or ill, his words are just as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth century. Like then, there are those today who choose to live their lives with as little risk as...
2 comments
Read more

Comparative Medical Care

One thing I'd like to understand is why there is such a difference between medical costs here and those in Haiti. At the time the book Mountains Beyond Mountains was written, in 2003, it often cost $15,000 to $20,000 annually to treat a patient with tuberculosis, while it cost one one-hundredth of that-- $150 to $200-- to treat a patient for the disease in Haiti. Even if the figures aren't completely accurate, the sheer difference would still be there. Indeed, the United States pays more per capita for medical care than any other country on Earth. My first guess for why the disparity exists is that there is a market willing and able to pay more for medical treatment, so suppliers see the demand and respond with higher prices. According to at least one doctor (go to http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2009/05/what_is_the_cause_of_excess_co.php), part of the reason is administrative prices here. People here have a higher standard of living, and so the cost of care is shifted to ...
2 comments
Read more