Flo lifted a hand and let it drop in a sketch of old frustration
gone into the distance as hopelessness. "I could never get it to work."
"Well, it wasn't right for you, Flo," Iris asserted.
"I couldn't see it as anything but cowardice. It was asking me
to be less than I was, not to think freely or strive to the fullest.
It was asking me to be afraid and powerless."
"We are powerless."
"Yes, but you can face that. You can accept it and turn it into something
fine. We are what we are. Our species and our world, and we do some
wonderful things as well as some horrid things. This is us.
It's what we have to work with.
We might be farther along if we weren't blaming it on
supernatural things and trying to receive solutions on a platter from
heaven instead of thinking things through ourselves. All that energy put
into petitioning, why, if it had been set to constructive thought, to
puzzling out the problems for ourselves, we'd be so much farther on."