The Way of St. James

I learned just yesterday that my second wife will soon be departing from the US to France to follow the 'Way of St. James'. This 'pilgrimage', featured in a recent movie with Martin Sheen, involves a  480 mile trek from the northwest corner of France to the northwest corner of Spain. A good way to lose weight, at the very least.

She seems to have been very sad and confused ever since our divorce, and has harbored a lot of bitterness and anger. I hope this experience will do her good. I think that it will, as long as she commits to walking with her soul rather than just her feet.

For the last nine years, I have tried to maintain a relationship with her, often visiting while still in America, and then often writing to her since I've been in Bali, but it has been difficult, sometimes impossible. She has more and more invented her own version of the story of our divorce wherein she plays the heroine who has been betrayed and misused. For her, the story of our troubles begins from the day we separated; for me, it began a year before. She will not remember now how often I tried to talk to her during that last year, how many times I warned her about the hole she was digging for us, how many times I asked her why she was doing this. It all fell on deaf ears at the time. Only after the end finally came did she want to undo it. But, of course, you can't undo what has already been done.

It's a sad story, really, which should not have happened. But in this world there are many things that happen when they should not.

So I hope that she can arrive, at the least, at some sort of philosophical peace. You cannot make perfect or proper what is neither perfect nor proper. You cannot right a wrong. All you can do is accept it, integrate it, and move on, though you carry it always in your heart. There is more to come. The story does not end with the end of an imperfect world.

Good luck, Georgia. God bless you.