The United States is the land of individualism—or so we think. In truth, individuals largely take their attitudes and beliefs from the groups to which they belong or with which they identify. Thus, in this present moment, an individual who identifies as Republican is likely to hold an anti-immigrant attitude and believe there was massive fraud in the 2020 presidential election.  A Christian Fundamentalist is likely to be homophobic and believe in the literal truth of the Bible. Of course, there are Republicans who aren’t anti-immigrant and Fundamentalists who are tolerant of homosexuality, but they are exceptions to the “rules” that define their groups.

I’ve been interested to learn that group membership even affects the senses. In “Group Think,” an episode of the Hidden Brain podcast, we hear of an experiment in which a sweaty t-shirt was smelled by students from two rival universities. When the emblem on the shirt was from the other college, students found the odor more disgusting than when the shirt was from their own school. Their sense of smell was affected by group affiliation.

The experiment recalls George Fox’s famous declaration, “All things were new; and all the creation gave unto me another smell than before, beyond what words can utter.”  

Maple syrup is popular in Canada. A maple leaf even appears on the national flag. When an experimental sample of Canadians simply tasted honey and maple syrup separately, they showed no marked preference for one or the other. However, if subjects were first primed by Canadian symbols, maple syrup emerged as the clear winner. Taste was affected by people’s identification with Canada.

We are told that Jewish children were once given honey cakes to eat, upon which were inscribed the words, “The Lord God gave me a skilled tongue to know.” The implication of the ceremony was that the words of Torah were sweet as honey.

Of course, in sports sight is always being distorted by group loyalty. Was the pass in an American football game successfully completed, or was the football bobbled as the player went out of bounds? Fans of different teams will often “see” the play differently. Or consider the police body camera footage from an incident of deadly force. Someone who is pro-police may very well interpret the video differently from someone who has taken a stand against police violence.

Regarding mystical vision, who can forget George Fox seeing an ocean of darkness covered by an ocean of light? And, of course, the Quaker Inner Light is a metaphor from physiological vision.

This lengthy preamble leads to a personal question. How has my membership in a Quaker group affected my personal preferences and perceptions? “What!” you say. “You just recently became a member of OCMM. You haven’t been Quaker long enough to be affected by that fact.” Of course, it’s not formal membership that’s at issue but, rather, my identification with Quakers. That identification has a long history and has been particularly intense since I started taking FGC spiritual deepening courses three years ago. Moreover, for some time I have been a participant in two Quaker worship sharing groups, one of which is right here at Old Chatham Meeting.   

I’ve noticed that I no longer take pleasure in the violence of action movies like Batman Begins. While I can’t prove causality between Quakerism and a changed taste in movies, I think the connection is very likely. I also feel a deepened sympathy for the outcasts and misfits of our society. After all, Quakers themselves are misfits in the dominant American culture of consumerism. When someone arouses my irritation or antipathy, I mentally say the phrase “that of God in everyone” and usually feel the negativity subside. While I personally am no social activist, I feel an increased admiration for those who actively try to help people on the margins of our society.

Have I, then, become a Quaker saint? Well, no. I still have a marked tendency to anger. I often forget Fox’s admonition, “Be still and cool in thine own mind and spirit.”

And I can make disdainful jokes about eccentric neighbors, namely the cat lady and her alcoholic son. Even though the lady lets her cats poop in our yard, she possesses an Inward Light. And when her alcoholic son throws fast food trash into the street, allowing it to blow into our yard, he is to be pitied rather than scorned.
There’s no need to detail my many imperfections of character and spiritual failings. Still, I think Quakerism has improved me. And progress is the thing. We are on a journey, and progress toward the Goal makes me hopeful of one day, perhaps not reaching the Goal, but coming close enough to see, smell, even taste It.

~ Richard Russell

George Fox believed that Christians could “…come to Adam’s perfection, —into that image of God, that righteousness and holiness, that Adam was in before he fell; to be clean and pure, without sin, as he was.” While I personally reject the idea that humankind is inherently sinful and depraved, I haven’t seen anybody in this life who is sinless. In fact, a person claiming to be spiritually perfect in the twenty first century is possibly suffering from a psychological disorder.

It is true that Jesus said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” In context, however, Jesus was saying that we should even love enemies and tax collectors. He was really saying, “Be compassionate.”

    Consider these words from the Apostle Paul, probably referring to the epileptic attacks he may have suffered:

    Therefore, in order to keep me from being conceited, I was given
    a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three
    times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said
    to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect
    in weakness.”

Here Paul has Jesus connect human weakness with divine grace. As a Friend recently commented to a group of us, “Good enough is where God’s grace happens.”

“Good enough” is a maxim that can counteract perfectionism, not only in spiritual matters, but in all areas of life. A brilliant doctoral student whose punctuation is not perfect deserves compassion. A conscientious host whose zoom meeting lacks internet stability at least deserves “good enough.” And although I’ve taken fifty years to follow a leading to Quakerism, I know that God’s power is made perfect in my weakness.  

~ Richard Russell
    

My father was a psychopath, or at least somewhere on the psycho-sociopath spectrum. Outwardly charming and a successful businessman, he made our home life a hellish mixture of verbal and physical abuse. Although he’s long deceased, my brother and sister still have not forgiven him. I have.

But in my 20’s and 30’s, I not infrequently felt a deep anger, even rage, when I remembered what he had done, the details of which I’ll omit here. How did I overcome these feelings? How does anyone get rid of anger stemming from childhood trauma? I believe the current treatments for PTSD are a solution to this problem.

PTSD, post-traumatic stress syndrome, originates with a brain structure called the amygdala. Suppose, while walking in the peaceful countryside around Old Chatham, you suddenly come upon a black bear with its cub. The bear, in protective mother mode, turns, growls, looks at you, and seems ready to charge.

Your eyes and ears send signals to the thalamus, the brain’s “switchboard,” tasked with routing those signals to the appropriate brain regions. The thalamus then sends the bear information to both the neo-cortex and the amygdala. The amygdala decides that the situation is too threatening to wait for the sluggish processing of the neo-cortex. So, the amygdala initiates the so-called “flight or fight response.”

In response, adrenaline is pumped into your bloodstream, causing the heart to push blood to your muscles. You breathe more rapidly, taking in more oxygen for energy metabolism, which is also fueled by the emergency release of blood sugar (glucose). You’re ready either to run from the bear or fight it.

But wait! The bear charges, fortunately stopping short of you. Your stress response continues with the release of cortisol. Hopefully, your neo-cortex kicks in and tells you not to run as that would encourage the bear to chase after you. Luckily, the bear decides against charging again, and, shepherding its cub away from you, puts distance between itself and you, a perceived danger to its progeny.

Physical abuse in the home also activates the fight or flight response of the children who experience it. In later years, even the memory of the abuse can cause these children, now perhaps adults, to react with sudden fear or anger as their amygdalae react inappropriately. I’m guessing that my anger at my father was the result of this process. In other words, I suffered from a mild PTSD and was completely incapable of forgiving paternal misdeeds.

What treatments are available for such PTSD? One consists of medication; another is psychotherapy, in which the patient is tasked with repeatedly recalling the traumatic event or events, perhaps while meditating and doing breathing exercises to reduce the pain of remembering. With time, the patient is desensitized to the disturbing memory and the PTSD symptoms disappear. Another option is to use a flashing light or hand movements to distract the patient during recall of the trauma. The distraction may allow the patient to think positive thoughts that color the negative memory and eventually sanitize it.

Which method did I use? Well, “None of them,” I admit. Sometimes PTSD sufferers completely suppress bad memories and avoid any thought of past traumatic events.  That’s what I did. It’s not a recommended therapeutic technique, however. “The return of the repressed” may produce other psychological symptoms. In my case, I’ve completely forgotten, not only traumatic incidents, but most of my childhood and adolescent memories. Memories are inextricably linked, and my memory repression has affected, not only bad memories, but also good and neutral memories.

Nevertheless, this forgetting of memories has also enabled me to look more kindly upon my father and even to forgive him for his abuse. Forgiveness, however it comes about, is a good thing. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus calls upon us to forgive others just as God forgives us. Surely, we must heed his call.

~ Richard Russell          

I want to briefly look at the material and spiritual condition of Europe in 1946, my birth year. The destruction of homes and buildings was wide-spread, particularly in Germany and—to a lesser extent—in England. I do remember my parents remarking on the ruined buildings we saw in London on our way to Scotland in 1953. (My father was an exchange officer with the Royal Air Force.) Luftwaffe bombers, supplemented by V-1 and V-2 rockets, had taken their toll. Germany, of course, had been devastated by Allied bombing. During our 1954 European vacation, my parents must have seen bombed-out portions of Munich, but they remembered only the enchanting beauty of the Bavarian Alps around Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

Garmisch, a ski resort, was largely untouched by Allied attacks, but the major cities of Germany were “flattened” by bombs, as recorded in Kurt Vonnegut’s description of the Allied attack on Dresden. Vonnegut was a prisoner of war in Dresden at the time but writes from the perspective of a fictional character, Billy Pilgrim.

He was down in the meat locker on the night that Dresden was destroyed.
There were sounds like giant footsteps above. Those were sticks of high-
explosive bombs. The giants walked and walked. …Dresden was one big flame.
The one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn. (The) stones
(of the buildings) had crashed down, had tumbled against one another until
they locked at last in low and graceful curves. “It was like the moon,” said Billy             
Pilgrim.

Other German cities were also in ruins. Free-standing walls jutted up from the rubble, and people took refuge in roofless buildings that had three or four walls intact. Berlin had lost up to 50 per cent of its habitable space, and an astounding 70 per cent of residential Cologne was no longer livable.

While statistical studies can always be disputed, the death toll in Europe was enormous, perhaps thirty-five to forty million people. Great Britain lost about 300,000 people while over a half-million French citizens were killed. Some six million Germans died, equaling or surpassing the number of Jews who perished in Hitler’s Holocaust. Six million was also the probable number of Polish deaths; and in the Soviet Union an incredible twenty-seven million died violently.   

 Numbers are, of course, abstract. Keith Lowe in Savage Continent suggests another way to comprehend the death toll of World War II:

Perhaps the only way to come close to understanding what happened is
to stop trying to imagine Europe as a place populated by the dead, and
to think of it instead as a place characterized by absence. Almost everyone
alive when the war ended had lost friends or relatives to it. Whole villages,      
whole towns and even whole cities had been effectively erased, and with
them their populations. Large areas of Europe that had once been home
to thriving, bustling communities were now almost entirely empty of people.
It was not the presence of death that defined the atmosphere of postwar    
Europe, but rather the absence of those who had once occupied Europe’s
sitting rooms, its shops, its streets, its markets.

Absence was most acutely experienced by those Jews who had managed to survive Hitler’s “final solution.” After all, two out of every three European Jews had been killed.      As an experiment, I added the common Jewish name “David” to the surname “Hirsch” and searched for “David Hirsch” in an online data bank of Jews persecuted by the Nazis.

I found eleven instances of “David Hirsch.” All eleven were, of course, Jew (presumably) murdered by the Nazis. Based on my interpretation of the data, three had been sent to Auschwitz, two had died at Theresienstadt, two had been executed in the killing fields near Minsk, Belarus; and one was shot in the Rumbula forest of Latvia with some 26,000 other Jews. A David Hirsch also died at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin; and another Hirsch was sent to the Warsaw Ghetto where he apparently died shortly after German troops crushed a Jewish revolt in the ghetto. A final individual died earlier in 1939 when the Nazis herded thousands of Polish-German Jews across the border with Poland in a mass deportation. The Polish government sent them back to Germany!

So, where was God in 1946? Apparently, he wasn’t in Europe! Traditionally, of course, God is a loving God who is omni-present, omniscient, and all-powerful. Mere human beings can only speculate about God; but, based on the Judeo-Christian tradition, God is Love. In that same tradition, he is thought of as all-powerful. But then the question arises, “How could a loving, all-powerful God have permitted the events that led up to the human and material destruction of 1946? Aren’t those two divine attributes contradictory?

“Yes, of course,” is my answer. We must throw out “all-powerful” if we want to preserve God’s loving nature. And the excision of omnipotence makes sense. Again, remembering that we can only speculate, we can think of God as the Ground of Being, “Being Itself.” Being Itself must struggle against non-being, Satan or the Devil in mythological terms. Being Itself (we hope) will eventually triumph but only with the passing of time. While that time passes, human beings have the responsibility to cooperate with God, to work for the coming of The Kingdom of God. Exactly how this will happen and what the result will look like, we cannot know; but faith in God implies faith in the establishment of the Kingdom. May we have the courage to wait and work for this natural and supernatural culmination!
 
~ Richard Russell