As the quote goes, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” In family law, the norm is to cast stones, the first, the fifteenth, the fiftieth.
I write often about different approaches, theories, paradigms of practice in family law. There is scorched earth, which presumes that there can be winners and losers in family law with an unrelenting, damn the torpedos, kamikazi like madness to its method, and then there is the peace maker.
Peace makers take a wholistic approach to family law. They almost certainly take a far more spiritual approach. Many of the Bible’s core passages provide direction: complaining about the speck in your spouse’s eye while ignoring the beam in your own; turn the other cheek; do unto others; and tonight’s title, cast the first stone.
Central to these aspirations is a method to avoid an inherent inclination to hubris, ego, holier than thou. It is a method to intentionally practice humility, being humble.
Of course, being humble doesn’t mean that you have to live a life of quiet desperation, endlessly suffering in a bad relationship. Being humble means that you acknowledge the need to move on for your own sake, without having to live off of the negative images and energy that you vest in your former spouse.
This holiday season, may you find quiet comfort and the resolve to move through your circumstance, whatever that may be, and indeed your life, with humility, with conviction and with dignity.
In the words of Mother Mary, or was it Paul, “Let it Be.”