The Divine Within There are many ways to twist a child’s soul. We can neglect children, hit them, make fun of them, demand perfection from them, expect them to take care of us, deny their pain, discount their emotions, hold them responsible for our feelings, bear grudges against them, insist on obedience rather than kindness, and treat them as possessions instead of seeing them as real, human, divine. A Hindu fable tells of a time when every person was a god. People abused their divinity, however, so Brahma decided he would have to hide their god-ness someplace it could never be found. Yet where could he put this divinity so…
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Fathers, Limits to Love, and Healing
Limited by Trauma She felt guilty. Her father had just died, but instead of feeling sad, she felt happy. Was she a horrible, heartless daughter? Not knowing what to think, she asked to talk to a chaplain. In bits and pieces, her story came out. For the last year and a half, she’d been her father’s caregiver. He’d never been easy to be around. A combat veteran, he had run his home with military discipline. Orderly, rigid, and autocratic, he showed his children a limited kind of love. Mostly he ignored them, but he could be abusive. When drunk, he was cruel to their mother. It was the typical story…