Crossword Story #1, Part 10 or 10

Experimental Fiction: Crossword Story:  "The Volcano, the Island, and the Missionaries"

       Some of the female missionaries, like Erin, were Registered Nurses. It was a real struggle to get the villagers to embrace Western Medicine. After all, the Sou people had their own herbal concoctions, salves, poultices, and a wide variety of natural remedies, combined with a form of meditation.  The tribe especially feared needles and make-shift dentistry, and would often cry out in pain when pricked or prodded by Anglo physicians and nurses. Sometimes even pills were prescribed for real or imagined physical and mental conditions. Like most young women, Erin had the urge to 'sow her wild oats'. She often wore a missionary outfit, but would shed it around her paramour.  THE END

  Epilogue: After many years the missionaries succeeded in converting most of the young villagers to Christianity. This was a mixed blessing. The tribe survived, but the culture, the language, the traditions, and irreplaceable knowledge of the elders eventually died. These young villagers became part of the modern world and became susceptible to alcoholism, drug addiction, obesity, and other facts of contemporary life.  Some even intermarried with the missionaries.  Finito.

      I recently came across an interesting quote that sums up how I feel about religion, attributed to the philosopher Epicurus:      "If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to Then He is not omnipotent.

        If  He is able, but not willing Then He is malevolent.

        If   He is both able and willing Then whence cometh evil?

        If He is neither able nor willing Then why call Him God?"

                                --Epicurus