Putting Down A Put-Down

I try not to be judgmental about many personal choices other people make, especially when those choices serve their personal and emotional needs and hurt absolutely nobody else. But I can't tolerate those SOBs who charge right in and do whatever they can to put vulnerable people down. Case in point this afternoon.

I have a good friend who's vulnerable in a multitude of ways. She's had a hard life, and is doing what she can to live as honorably and sanely as possible despite that. She also happens to consider me as something of a second mother.

I love that.

She lives fairly near where we spend our summers, Steve and I that is. Years ago I met her extended family up here and got to know them... a little too well.

This afternoon I'd been invited to a birthday party for one of her two children. As usual, since the other child has a birthday falling after we leave to go back south, I bring a pair of whatever, so each gets a present. It's modest, but it's the principle. 

Today after I arrived my friend asked me if I wanted to see her alter set-up. She's a practicing Wiccan, and I was interested. I don't happen to believe the way she does, but recognize she gets benefits from the meditations, mental exercises, and reflections she puts into her beliefs, all of which give her feelings of peace and security. For my part, I appreciated the designs on various items and her explanations of their meanings to her, as well as the large collections of different rocks she has spread out around the center piece on her alter. I happen to have a pretty fair running knowledge of what the stones are, like obsidian, jasper, quartz, fluorite, amethyst, malachite, and so on, and was able to appreciate the quality of the stones she'd chosen as well as reaffirm their names occasionally.

When we emerged to rejoin the party, her father-in-law asked me if I liked her "voodoo setup". This was not the first or even second he'd gone out of his way to belittle her to me. Out of the blue on other times he'd provided elaborate detail of the medications she had to take to cope, pointing out her psychological vulnerabilities as personal faults as if he was hoping to discourage a friendship. (Surely I couldn't value a person like that! Obviously he didn't.) I recognized the attempts to keep her isolated, made noncommittal noises, and found something else to do in another location each time he tried.

This time I didn't hold my peace, but neither did I want to disrupt the party. I just informed him that I wouldn't call it voodoo, since voodoo was solidly grounded in Roman Catholicism, and I wouldn't consider his son's wife to be a Catholic.  

With a brief comment that he didn't know about the Catholic connection, sounding like I'd given voodoo sudden credibility, he shut up and quit trying to drive a wedge. The rest of the party was amicable, the food was great, and I settled down to taking pictures of the family to send her once I got home.