Pamphlets on the faith of Sage Santina

[NeedForGreed]

Religious pamphlets scattered around the Well, occasionally rewritten and refreshed anew. They are left often in the wake of Fiordelise's outreach work to the wounded janissaries of the Krak and the languishing refugees and Orentids.

[NeedForGreed]

The Bruised Heart Grows: Meditations for Sage Santina

Compassion is not convenient, not easy. It is a bruising, unconditional willingness to love without reason.

It is choosing vulnerability: choosing to open yourself to exploitation, manipulation, humiliation, and hurt. Accepting these risks, knowing the hand that feeds may be bitten, yet reaching out again all the same. The one that snaps its jaws at kindness often needs it most of all.

Every time we are hurt, we face a choice: to nurture empathy or to smother it. Often we choose apathy. To withdraw from the world, to grow cold and suspicious. To take what can be taken. To hold your hand back when your fellow man drowns. To hold a knife tight to your heart. It is not bravery; it is a fear that stifles our growth just as shade stifles the wheat.

Empathy instead tells us to listen, sometimes against our better judgment. To let our hearts bleed. And when compassion fully blossoms, we are called to empathize with those most unlike ourselves. To wade through the mud and the ugliness of this life. To offer our love not only to the harmless, but to the leper and the thief as well.

It is not idealistic dreaming, but the only way to transcend this cycle of apathy. We can choose to understand rather than condemn, give space for redemption and healing.

Only the bruised heart grows.

[NeedForGreed]

Poverty Is The Thief Who Robs Us Of Our Potential

A sick man cannot be his best self. Illness robs him not only of vitality but of dignity and self-reliance. It is the thief of potential, leaving lives to wither before they've had a chance to ever grow.

This is why lifting the burden of disease is crucial. It's not merely about easing suffering but about restoring self-determination. We heal the body to free the spirit.

Poverty is illness's cruel twin, another thief draining its victims of vitality just as surely as any plague. Consider the plight of the refugee: carrying all they own on their back, fleeing in desperate hope of safety. Everything left behind - their craft, their art, their very identity. What little they have buys only fleeting sustenance, and they join the faceless masses, to some only another mouth to feed. All too many are dragged down like so much quicksand, unable to find the work to support better lives than to huddle in tents and rely on charity.

Some of us have known poverty. Known the endless cycle of meager pay and the heavy cost of clinging to life. Known the way it drags you down each and every day until you are robbed of hope and motivation. Known the way the hunger settles into your bones and never lets go.

But in every impoverished soul, every refugee - lies dormant potential. The artisan's skilled hands, the scholar's keen mind, and the parent's nurturing heart were stifled by circumstance. You have seen the benefits of mercenary work to lift refugees out of poverty, to turn strangers into neighbors and the very soldiers that defend the Well. Where would the Well be if work were not so easily available for those with the blades to claim it?

Imagine a Well that doesn't spurn the masses outside its walls but sees them as individuals of endless potential and equal dignity. Cleverer minds designing work, mentorship and resettlement programs. Whatever the solution might be, we must be inspired to seek it, rather than turn our eyes away.