Tea at Trianon: Healing and Wholeness in the Family

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Healing and Wholeness in the Family

Here is an excellent article by Dr. Conrad Baars, who says:

If we realize how many people in our society go by the pseudo-Christian principle of trying so hard not to hurt people’s feelings, we see how widespread this disorder is, this state of psychic weakness in our society. I said “pseudo-Christian” because it is not Christian to go out of our way not to hurt another person’s feelings. Christ hurt a lot of people’s feelings. As the result of that, He was put to death. And yet we think we are real Christians when we try so hard not to hurt people’s feelings. It typifies the fear of another person not loving us, of becoming angry at us. Because a person is helpless, he wants to be loved. Such persons can’t stand their own anger. They are afraid of the anger of others and they always feel inferior and inadequate. Share