We recently wrote about some traditional healers and pastors encouraging Zimbabwean families to be more attentive to their relatives’ spiritual life. This story made me think of making a personal appeal to all of my fellow Zimbabweans.

Really, whether you are a Muslim or a Pentecostal Christian, traditionalist or a Rasta, we all share a human need for the healthy spiritual life. The Catholics and the Orthodox came up throughout the centuries with a formalized procedure of cleaning up a beliver’s conscience. Other religious communities have their own traditions in this respect. But a factor that is indispensable in any religious system is a person’s reliance on his/her immediate family in the corse of life.

Sometimes it is the family that can be the first to identify a person’s spiritual concerns. Not a priest or a sangoma.

It is now a Christian speaking to you, and my credo might be in conflict with yours, but I address your human proclivity to comfort and love that ought to guide you, my reader, to taking care of your family members’ spiritual life.

I pray for your attention of heart that sees every human being as a great mystery placed in our midst by the Creator for some high purpose. If someone was born into your family, there must be a purpose for that too.

Don’t cheat yourselves by pretending that the negligence covering your conscience is just.