Is there a way we could be at peace?
I wonder what would happen if we all knew our fathers and mothers unconditionally loved us.
Mostly we don’t. We were told we were loved, but only if we behaved.
When I look back, and think about my dad especially, I felt I had to win his approval.
And so, sitting bewildered in the chapel of the boarding school and hearing someone read the story of how John the Baptist baptised Jesus and the heavens opened and a voice came out from the sky saying
"This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased"
That story meant a lot to me because I don't think I ever believed my dad really was well pleased with me.
And I always felt I had to conceal from him the fact that I was probably not his beloved son but someone else. I didn't know who but someone I was afraid and ashamed of and someone I desperately did not want him to find out about.
And I know that for me, this was a source of great suffering.
And when I look at the atrocious cruelty of someone like Trump, knowing that his father abused him, I wonder whether that man's cruelty and rage are projections of his own hurt and rage.
The rage he felt towards his abusive father . A rage that he was too frightened to express.
But here, in this story, Jesus is told that he is his parent’s beloved child and the dove of peace comes and rest on him.
And perhaps if we all knew we were always unconditionally loved we too could be at peace….
You are most probably right, even though it is always problematic to psychologize people with whome you have not spoken. Love is a force almost beyond comprehension, our threshold for letting it out is comprehensible but alas so destructive and useless.