I am always fascinated by the rules around succession to a
throne and how monarchs exclude their children that were
born of some women, but include the children that were born
to them of other women. I get upset when children are
described as "illegitimate" - as if God made a mistake with
that child. And not too long ago - in the youth of our
grandparents - children that were born to unmarried parents
were as a rule given away for adoption. Some of those
children never even found out that they were adopted, or
finding this out was a very painful experience to them,
because it reflected the "shame" of their births.
In some cultures children that are born "out of wedlock"
carry that stigma with them for the rest of their lives,
simply because their parents were not married when they
were born. In other cultures people fall in love, live
together and have children, and later on they get married.
Are those children illegitimate?
All children come into this world because they have planned
to do so, like us. They choose their parents and they
choose their paths in this dimension. I believe that they
also choose the experience of "being illegitimate",
probably because they have to deal with feelings of
inadequacy and rejection.
Why are the children "illegitimate"? Because their parents
were not married when they were born.
Marriage should be a celebration of two souls joining
together in love, and finding fulfillment in that love.
For most people marriage is also about raising children in
a loving environment.
Does that mean that marriage has to be a ceremony with a
legal contract? No. A wedding is any celebration of two
souls joining in love. The legal contract was added
because of the rules of society. Without a legal contract
a mother cannot claim what is due to her children when
people decide to end a relationship. Without a legal
contract a father does not have the right of access to his
children. What a strange world we created for ourselves!
Of course the church likes the idea of a legal contract
between people, and so this legality was integrated into
the traditions and ceremonies of the church.
I understand that the church can play a role in helping
couples to understand the contract between themselves -
that is the love contract. But I am afraid I find it
difficult to understand how people who chose to be celibate
could think that they are in a position to explain and
regulate the relationship between couples, when they
personally rejected that type of relationship in the first
place. My own experience of being counseled by a man of
the cloth about marriage was an attempt to give me a huge
injection of fear and the threat of rejection from society,
when I was emotionally in tatters. Fortunately I was
immune to this treatment. I am also sure there are also
people that gain much benefit in such situations, even
though it did not work for me.
A marriage contract, like any other contract, can reach a
logical end. When that happens, there is a divorce. When
people get divorced, they reach the end of their love
contract. That is in most instances also the end of the
legal contract between them. In cultures where there is a
stigma attached to divorce, there is a strong fear base.
Those cultures can be quite cruel and will often see people
living in misery because they can no longer be their true
selves in a relationship that has changed, but people would
rather have that than have those people question the
institution of marriage as a binding contract even if it
destroys both parties.
In this context of messed up adults who create fear and who
blindly follow the rules that are imposed on them, children
happen to come into this world to parents who are not
caught up in the bureaucracy of marriage. The children are
then expected to take on the same heritage of fear and
rejection when you do not toe the cultural and religious
line. Those children then take up an entire lifetime to
fight that heritage. And the more they fight their
heritage, the more that heritage rules their lives, because
fighting something means you put more and more energy into
exactly what you do not want, and you make it real.
I am not saying that it is all right to have many babies
from one or more relationships. We all need to control
ourselves and our destinies. If our destiny is to be a
parent to many children, then so be it, as long as we take
responsibility for each one of those children and raise
them in love.
Can we really look at a new-born baby, an innocent child,
and reject that baby outright because the parents were not
married? Hardly. Then how do we justify doing it when
that same child is older and can understand the rejection,
but cannot understand the reason for it?
We justify it by having our own warped understanding of
love. We do not open ourselves up to the beauty of
unconditional love.
Every single child that comes to this planet is a
legitimate child, because it is part of God's plan. And
when that child grows up, it becomes an adult that is
legitimate. Whenever we question the legitimacy of any
person on the basis of our own biases, we need to look
inside, identify the fear that we project and eliminate
that fear. When we accept everyone on this planet as God's
creature, we will have more love for ourselves and the
world will be a better place.
----------------------------------------------------
Elsabe Smit hereby grants a NON-EXCLUSIVE license to any
and all persons and entities to copy and reprint any
article she posts as long as the article is left IN-TACT
and UNALTERED and proper credit is given to her as Author.
Elsabe Smit is the author of A Tapestry of Life and of the
blog http://www.mypurpleblog.com , Spiritual
interpretations of everyday life.
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