I am on a spiritual quest. I am trying to understand the nature of life, to achieve communion with the divine, to better myself at every turn. I don’t always succeed in being the best person I can be, though I try. I am as prone to err and fail as anyone. But I have this goal. And along the way, I wrestle with the questions that come up, as an engaged and present human being, in daily life.
There are the small heart-aches we who are alive on the earth face every day: loss of loved ones, divorce, loss of an income, illness, malaise. There are the larger, transpersonal heart-aches: war, famine, plague, cataclysm. I talk about this a lot in radio interviews, when hosts ask me why I wrote a novel where the worst happens to the main character over and over again. I always respond, how do we affirm a good God in the face of all these heart-aches?
And then there is man’s inhumanity to man. Again, there are the individual and transpersonal cruelties. Today I am saddened over the individual ones, the intimate hurts people inflict on each other. In my own family, my sister betrayed me, maneuvering to get my father to cut me out of his will, and my mother collaborated with her. It wasn’t a lot of money because my father was not a wealthy man. Still, I was his daughter. This kind of behavior is not something you ever forget, though I have moved on. That was many years ago. Currently, there’s a problem with my husband’s parents, who largely treat our young daughter as if she doesn’t exist.
It’s mystifying. My husband has two wonderful daughters, one by his previous marriage, who is almost 18, and ours together, a funny, charming, bright little sweetie who is three and full of wonder and mischief. She is just as much their grand-daughter as their older one is, but they consistently demonstrate reluctance to see her. My husband’s mother once told me that she had a ‘privileged’ relationship with my husband’s older daughter. But she tried with that relationship. She put time and effort and care into being with my step-daughter. Lots of time, in fact. By contrast, she makes no effort at all with our little one. Rather, she uses every excuse to avoid her.
My husband’s parents are intelligent people. Both have PhD’s. One would think they would understand the impact that their behavior has: on their son, who is hurt; on their older grand-daughter, who loves her little sister and is acutely conscious of the inequities in the two relationships, and uncomfortable because of them; on an innocent little girl, who wants to love and be loved.
Man’s inhumanity to man. It’s inexcusable, and happens every day.