“Devastation”*

As I’ve recounted elsewhere, before being drafted into the infantry in 1944, I had obtained a scholarship—four-year tuition paid—to study chemical engineering at a leading engineering university. So after my tour of duty, I anticipated returning there to complete my degree.

It was not to be, and this is the story of why. My first introduction to the devastation of war came on my first night in Etretat, France. While asleep along with a thousand other replacement officers—all on cots in a large gymnasium—I was awakened by a French prostitute who jumped atop me crying, “Fuck me for chocolate!” I was frightened to death. As an eighteen-year-old virgin, I had promised to remain so for my then sweetheart back home. What appalled me most, however, was the degradation I heard in the voices of the hundreds of desperate women. It was not the sex; it was the desperation that frightened me.

The next morning we were loaded onto a train of boxcars to be delivered to a town in Germany. The old wooden freight cars had absolutely no amenities. Somehow the confused engineer got it into his head that we were destined to a similar-sounding town in France. As a consequence we spent many weeks in those freight cars traversing France and part of Germany. But what was illuminating to us as we viewed the landscape from the open door of the boxcar was how completely ruinous were the towns and countryside through which we passed. Then, at every stop, there were the ragged, emaciated children gathering at the open door, begging for food.

My first assignment was to head a transportation company that administered motor pools for troops in the Mannheim-Heidelberg area. Mannheim was especially shattered by the allied bombings, and its people were gaunt and cold, with little or no fuel during winter. I can remember the incongruity of attending a concert of the music of Bach and Mozart in the dead of winter. There was no heat in the hall. The musicians wore gloves, and the audience huddled together in overcoats and scarves. It was, however, my introduction to the transcendence that classical music can bring, whatever the context.

My next assignment was to supervise two prisons of captured German soldiers. One was in a town on the Ammersee, and one was located in Ettal, near Oberammergau in the Bavarian Alps. I commuted between the two prisons. There was little destruction of the lovely Bavarian countryside. But the horror of war did not leave that beautiful area untouched. Two examples illustrate.

The first was the result of the decision by Occupation Headquarters to use Polish displaced persons to guard the German prisoners. For these Polish officers and ex-soldiers had become slaves of the Nazis after their capture and forced to labor in factories and concentration camps. We dressed them in blue-dyed GI clothes and sent them out to guard the prisoners on work details. The result was mayhem on occasion, for the hatred of the Poles for the Germans was extreme. Often the work detail would return minus two or three prisoners. The story the Poles told were that these prisoners had to be shot for they tried to flee. It happened too often for me to completely believe these tales, especially as I observed the glee and laughter of those who did the shooting.

The second example of devastation in beautiful Bavaria occurred one morning as I entered my office to begin work for the day. I was greeted by the acrid smell of gunsmoke and the sight of two halves of a man’s brain that had made bloody streaks as they skidded across the floor of the outer office. Slumped across the rifle rack that contained some two dozen rifles locked in it was the body of one of the prisoners. He had apparently found a shell that fit the rifles while on a work detail, had placed it in a chamber, put his head over the barrel, and pulled the trigger. It was my first experience with violent death resulting from despair. And a vivid one, at that.

I believe it was that very moment that I decided I could not possibly devote my life to the study of any form of engineering.

I knew I had to add whatever abilities I had to the alleviation of the pain and suffering that I was observing at the tender age of eighteen. There just had to be something that could counter the despair and hopelessness that I saw everywhere.

So when I returned to college after the war, I forsook the scholarship; and with the help of the GI Bill that paid for tuition, I enrolled for a degree in Psychology. This too, however, proved to be a dead end, though that is another story.

Sherman is said to have made the statement “War is Hell.” What my experience has taught me is that Hell and its devastation can be seen in such a way as to provide a potent motivation toward a career of healing.

Put another way: love is far more powerful than the devastation of hatred.

* “The miracle looks on devastation and reminds the mind that what it sees is false.” (ACIM)

Copyright 2007 Frank West

“Defenselessness Is My Strength”*

Recently I have been judgmental of myself for not progressing faster in the process of divesting myself of my selfishness and egotism. At the same time, I found myself resentful of my six ‘spirit guides’—they weren’t providing sufficient help. Coincidentally, I found myself resentful of one of my daughters who, despite my many appeals over some eighteen months, had not returned a photograph I’d given her, nor had she done the processing of it which she had promised.

This morning I awoke with an awareness that all three of these resentments were of a piece. My self-hate for my ‘slow progress’ had clearly projected out onto the figures in my dream—the ‘spirit guides’ and my daughter. As usual I had attempted to rid myself of my guilt by blaming the ‘others!’ My resentments were not making me feel any better about myself—in fact, just the opposite: they increased my guilt. And my self-criticism was not in the least alleviated. I had just made a mess emotionally, and by this morning I guess I decided I’d had enough of the misery. So I did what A Course in Miracles prescribes—I took all three of my attacks to the Source of eternal Love that is my true Mind and asked for the clarifying awareness that nothing had really happened at all. I had merely been asleep, dreaming the nightmare of guilt, dreaming that I was separated from my ‘guides’ and my daughter and my God; merely making the mistake of forgetting that there is only one Mind of Love, and that we are all subsumed there.

In that briefest of moments when I experienced a glimpse of what freedom there is in defenselessness, I could give up all three of my attack thoughts. When I was aware in that moment that I was my daughter and my guides, I was the innocent Son of God with them, and I did not need my attack thoughts. They just seemed silly, costly and imprisoning, so I let them drift away.

I have no illusions that I will not run to seek them again. But at least I know the peace and freedom that comes when I choose to remember that I’ve made up the idea of separate figures who victimize me—or that I, myself, am merely a figment of my imagination. I see more clearly today that self-attack, i.e. guilt, serves only to preserve my beloved separate identity and brings but unhappiness in its wake.

*ACIM, Workbook, Lesson #153

Copyright 2007 Frank West

A Healing of a Belief in Deprivation and Loss

One of my earliest memories was accompanying my father to his job after supper. I joined him in sweeping out the offices of a local oil company. I saw the look on his face of humiliation touched with bitterness as he emptied wastebaskets and dusted desks. I did not know until much later why those grievous looks appeared on his face. I just knew I didn’t like them.

It was 1933, and America was deep into its economic depression. Some say poverty is a disease; my father certainly thought he was an afflicted victim of it. He saw himself as a skilled artisan, and indeed he was. Before he lost his job with the Pullman Company, he was foreman of a nine-man crew that installed fancy wood inlays in the Pullman car interiors. He had built himself a house in a small Illinois town, prospered, and seemed on the way to a successful life as a skilled craftsman who took great pride in his work. But now he was reduced to being a janitor.

For the Depression had struck and he lost all: his job, his new home, the mortgage which he could no longer pay, and all his carefully garnered assets. Worst of all, he lost his sense of self-respect. A defeated man, he chose to return to the town of his birth to face his parents and siblings. He chose to see himself as a failure, as a victim betrayed by the Puritan God in whom he believed; i.e., a God who blessed with prosperity the faithful, those who worked hard, were pious, and who diligently obeyed the laws laid down by that God. I do not believe he ever recovered from the disillusionment of those beliefs. He thought he had kept his part of the bargain (and bargain was what it was), but his God had not kept his.

Another memory is one of my standing beside my father as he stood in line, waiting to be given a free bag of cornmeal that the government in Washington had sent by boxcar to feed the unemployed. Once again I could feel the shame and humiliation my father felt at being on the dole. I must have been eight years old, and I think it must have been at that moment as I stood with him on that railroad siding that I made the firm decision to do all I could to avoid repeating this same experience in my life. Hence quite early I chose to deeply believe (of course wrongly) that money brought security, self-respect and peace of mind. I listened to the ego’s idea:

You really think you would starve unless you had stacks of green paper strips and piles of metal discs. (ACIM, Workbook, 70, 3:2)

A third memory I have involves stealing those “stacks of green strips.” When in my teens, I got a job to work beside my father on Saturday mornings. So we got up very early to journey to his workplace where he stripped wood furniture with paint remover and refinished the pieces with spray lacquer (again, not the work of a skilled craftsman). The stealing came in this way: we would arrive an hour and a half before other employees, punch the time clock, and then sleep until the other employees arrived. We were thus paid for sleeping. This was my first experience of conscious guilt (and fear as well), for I dared not question my father’s decisions. His anger could be terrifying. (Also I did so much like those extra “piles of metal discs.”)

My final memory concerning the ‘value’ of money came upon my father’s death. For the first thing my mother asked me to do with her after we returned from placing my father’s body in the ground was to go down with her into the basement where my father spent most of his free time. Her intention was to seek hidden monies that she was certain he had withheld from her and stashed somewhere among his tools. Together we tore the place apart, but alas, to her disappointment, we found nothing.

All the above is a preface to the following ego attack that I recently experienced.

* * * * * *

Most of our guilt is unconscious, and in this case it most certainly was. In the last few months I had been feeling especially generous. So much so that I had recently set up educational trusts for my four grandchildren. And I had set up another trust that enabled one of my daughters to maintain and pay the taxes on half of some island property that I was about to give to her and her brother. (Having fibromyalgia, she has been unable to summon much energy to maintain that property herself, nor work with much constancy.) I had also helped another daughter set up a solar/wind electrical system for her home.

I had been feeling good about these matters (a sign I was listening to my right mind). But I had also been concerned about the health of a third daughter who had been ill with walking pneumonia for the past ten or twelve weeks. Since she, lacking the energy, had been unable to work much, I expected a request for money from her. Although I had not been resentful of past requests of help from her, curiously, this time I began to dread her call.

This was a warning sign to me that I was listening to the wrong side of my mind. I made the mistake of not taking this evidence seriously. And not making a correction.

When she called requesting money to pay for her mortgage I replied: “Sure, I’ll drop a check in today’s mail.” However, what next came roaring up from my unconscious (and which I spoke aloud) was the hateful attack: “I guess I’m supporting you too.” Instantly I was stricken with guilt. Where was all that good feeling of generosity now? In place of perceiving her truly, as a daughter I loved, I saw her in that moment as my victimizer, exploiting me.

I knew I had to get to work fast on my insane and hateful mind. So I did what I teach. I chose to look carefully at what I had condemned her for. I saw her as seeking to take from me what I considered mine. I saw her not as loving but exploiting me. This was clearly a twisted and distorted view of her. My mind was in chaos, and my mind was drowning in guilt. In my misery I chose to remember the fourth Law of Chaos:

This seeming law is the belief you have what you have taken. (ACIM T., 23; 9:3)

and

But in a savage world the kind cannot survive, so they must take or be taken from. (Ibid., 10:4)

I also chose to remember:

Projection makes perception. The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. (ACIM, T, Intro, 21, 1:1,2)

Now I had a way out of my misery. If I saw my daughter as exploiting me (instead of loving), I must be guilty for all my brothers I have exploited. (Projection makes perception.) All that happened in that regrettable moment when I attacked her was the result of failing to heal my mind in the hours of dread prior to her call. It was clear to me now that I must have repressed guilt for using and exploited others. It was so painful to me that I had projected that guilt onto my daughter, hoping to thereby be free of it. (Of course, as events proved, I only increased my guilt—now adding the guilt of hating my daughter. Meanwhile the original guilt remained unforgiven.)

So, again I did what I teach. I remembered: “My sinlessness is guaranteed by God” (ACIM, W-93, 8:3). And remembering all the many ways I had used and exploited my wife for fifty-five years; and remembering all the patients I exploited in the early days of my practice when I was attempting to support a wife and four children in Manhattan (patients whose needs were beyond my competence to deal with, but whom I took because they were a source of income). I lay these events on the altar of my heart and asked to be reminded that “all my sins were forgiven me.”

Immediate relief resulted and in place of the misery of guilt came “light and joy and peace” (Lesson 93). All of the above healing of my mind took under fifteen minutes. So now perceiving my daughter as innocent I called her and said: “I hope you will forgive me for my vicious attack upon you a few minutes ago. I now realize that I was dumping on you my own guilt for exploiting others over my lifetime.”

It turns out I left that on her answering device, for she had not picked up. Later in the day she called me, thanking me for my call. She said it had helped her heal her own mind. She ended the call with the words, “I love you, Dad.” So this story also illustrates the following quote:

And so you let yourself be healed; you see all those around you, or who cross your mind, or whom you touch or those who seem to have no contact with you, healed along with you…you are never healed alone. (Workbook, Lesson 134, 10:1,3).

In retrospect, it occurs to me that it is no coincidence that all this repressed, unhealed guilt arose from my unconscious at the specific time it did, for as it is written:

The ego is therefore particularly likely to attack you when you act lovingly, because it has evaluated you as unloving and you are going against its judgment. The ego will attack your motives as soon as they become clearly out of accord with its perception of you. This is when it will shift abruptly from suspiciousness to viciousness, since its uncertainty is increased. (ACIM, Text, Ch 9, VII, 4:5-7)

That is the ‘bad news’ of course. The ‘good news’ is that every time we make the mistake of listening to that part of our mind, we have another golden opportunity to once again open ourselves to the readily available healing power of forgiveness — a power that is far greater than our guilt can ever be. All that is required of us is to watch our minds carefully and then ask for help from the Source of our innocence. The result is inevitable.

Copyright 2007 Frank West

Decision for Change—A Life or Death Matter

There is an idea that today’s Physics seems to support and it is this — that the idea of linear time is an artifact, an illusion we perceive to be true. There is also a second idea— i.e., that we come into the world at birth with a script we have chosen to live out in this lifetime; also that the pre-written script can be altered by decisions we make in the present ‘instant.’ As my life draws to a close, I’ve come to believe that these ideas are indeed true. By changing our perceptions about ourselves (perceptions that are largely fearful or based on fear), we change our lives accordingly.* I have a personal story that illustrates such a change and it concerns a choice of life over death.

For some forty to fifty years, I have believed that I would die in a particular manner. I had a firmly fixed notion that my end would come in this way: that I would, while sailing alone, fall off my boat while the motor was running, and I would die by drowning as the boat sailed off without me.

Several years ago one cool November day, I was sailing alone on Long Island Sound. No other boats were in sight. The wind had been favorable, but began to diminish. So I decided to lower the sails and return to the marina. I started the motor in order to head the bow into what little wind remained so I could easily lower the sails. I sail a cutter, that is, a boat with three sails (all of which, in this case, could usually be dropped from the cockpit). On this day, however, the middle sail became fouled and was unable to be lowered. Since the seas were now calm, I thought there was nothing dangerous about going forward to the bow for the purpose of freeing the tangled sail so it could be lowered.

What I did not notice was an approaching swell caused by the wake of some large ship that had long ago, some miles away, passed down the Sound. As I bent over to free the sail, the swell lifted myself and the bow high in the air and then dropped us both in an instant. And I landed in the water, just close enough to seize the edge of the deck with one hand.

With horror I remembered my fearful script predicting my certain death in this form. At this point, two of the three factors in that ‘dark dream’** were present. Being November, I was dressed for the cool weather, and my long pants, sweater and windbreaker were all soaked, adding considerable weight to my 200 pounds. When I attempted to pull myself up the three feet of freeboard at the bow, I realized the futility of the idea. It was too high.

Then it occurred to me that midship might be easier—there the lift required was a foot less. But no success there either, despite a determined attempt. Then with relief I remembered a triangular extension just a foot above the water at the stern. It secured the backstay of the mast.

So I worked my way aft, holding to the edge of the deck. With a great deal of effort, I managed to get my body across that extension. But two and a half feet remained before I could be in that cockpit. The motor was running and I had fearful visions of the undirected boat hitting a submerged ledge and tossing me off my perch, again into the water. As it was, I was in such a position that I had purchase to raise myself only by the means of one leg.

By this time I was not only cold but tired. I was in my mid-seventies and waterlogged. But my mind was determined to change the ‘fearful script’ I’d written so long ago. So I prayed aloud for strength from that one leg to lift me the last 30 inches. Where that extra strength came from I do not know. I do know it came, and I tumbled into the cockpit, my knee in pain but my heart beating joyfully. I had decided against death and chosen life. For some 18 months a strained and painful knee was a reminder of that moment.

When I described this incident to my son, some twenty-five years younger than I, he marveled at the feat, saying that he didn’t think that he could have had the strength to do the same thing. I’m convinced that the strength was not my own alone. Rather, the strength to choose life over death — to decide against the script I’d written — came from my mind. For I had decided to align my will with the will of God in that crucial moment.

I gave up my will for death and allied myself with the will for Life. The one evidence I have for this is a thought that accompanied my final burst of energy. It was this thought that saved me — “I have more work to do here; I have more gifts to give the needy world. My purpose is not yet fulfilled! Not my will, but Thine be done.”

* “You wrote a fearful script and are afraid accordingly.” ACIM Text Ch 30, VII, 3:8

** “Your dark dreams are but senseless, isolated scripts you write in sleep.” ACIM Text Ch 30, VII, 6:15

Copyright 2007 Frank West

Beyond This World, There Is A World I Want

I have a memory of being about age 6, playing under the porch in the dirt, making toy roads for my toy autos and trucks. The vivid part of this memory, however, is not the play, not the setting, and not my age. Rather, what fixes this memory in my mind is an idea that crossed my mind during that playful moment. It was: “I do not belong here. I belong somewhere else.” There was no emotion attached to that thought, no self-pity, no loneliness or painful sense of alienation. Just a quiet, somewhat detached observation. Something akin to—“Oh, that’s interesting.”

I don’t think I focused on that idea until much, much later in my life—perhaps the past twenty-five years. And it has returned with an increasingly strong intention to focus my attention on that ‘other world,’ beyond what my eyes see here.

There is, however, another vivid memory I have, and this one occurred some forty years ago. I cannot exactly recall the date, but the context and the experience are crystal clear.

Martha and I had built a modern house in the woods above the Hudson River in the Hudson highlands—Garrison, New York. We had just moved in, having left New York City. I was attending to something or other in the crawl space under the building when the doorbell rang. Martha must have been away shopping at the time, so I ascended the ladder leading from the crawl space to the first floor. As I emerged from below, I glanced toward the front door—a huge glass door that revealed a figure standing looking in. It was a lovely woman holding a bunch of flowers. Our eyes met. I was instantly shocked, frightened and bewildered by what happened next. For an intense blue light, like a brilliant ray, shone from my eyes to hers—or her eyes to mine. I had never had that experience before nor have I had it since. I say I was frightened. My fright came from my ignorance of what that phenomenon really meant. At that time in my life I could only interpret the experience as sexual in origin. Sexual because of its intensity, and the fact that the woman was so beautiful. Only much later was I able to see that it was in reality a vivid experience of that ‘other world.’ It was an intense perception of an inner connection with another person on the deepest of levels. For as I got to know the woman, I discovered how deeply involved she was in the study of spiritual matters.

It turns out that she was a neighbor coming to visit, bringing flowers of greeting to her new neighbors. I never mentioned the blue light to her for the next five or six years, until one evening when a number of friends gathered for dinner. During dinner I said to her: “Do you remember the day when you brought flowers to our house to greet us as new neighbors?” She instantly answered: “You’re going to tell me about the blue light, aren’t you?”

I tell the story for it illustrates the truth, the truth about our purpose for living our lives here. The blue light symbolizes for me the truth that we are all connected on another, deeper level beyond what our eyes customarily see—the truth that we are all joined as one on that level. It is a level free of expectations, demands, judgments, fears and guilt. A level free of neediness, exploitation and attack. A level where “light, joy and peace abide.”* It’s a level I have chosen more often to forget than to remember. But when I do remember, I experience a sense of freedom, and a happiness that is difficult to put into words. And what brings me even more happiness is the thought that we are all capable of this same freedom, this same joy, for we are all the same at the deepest level (despite our many superficial differences in form and appearance).

Copyright 2007 Frank West

The Scream (And the Miracle)

That blood-chilling scream was a very long time in coming. It, and any other like it, had not been heard in the over fifty years I’d lived with her. Then one evening, its suddenly painfully piercing cry broke the silence of half a century.

We had retired early—eight o’clock as I remember. She in one room; I in another. It was strange sleeping alone; I missed the warmth of her body beside me. But sleep came easier since her restlessness had recently appeared. Her nocturnal tossing and turning was new. It seemed that a lot of different things were new lately, and they were happening with a distressingly greater frequency—like the day when she found herself in the middle of an intersection with a huge truck bumper but a few inches from the right front fender of our car. She was deeply troubled by that event, for she had utterly no awareness of how she had come to that fearful, dangerous moment. “What’s happening to me?” she asked. At that time, neither of us could answer that question which hovered over our lives like a ghostly demon. All that we knew was that we were entering into a new stage of our life together.

As I lay there, thinking about that moment in the intersection, the floor of my bedroom suddenly shook, as if from an earthquake. The bed trembled, and with it the sound of a loud crash—a sound that came from the other bedroom. I leapt from the bed and ran toward it.

What I found lay in a crumpled heap. She was sprawled on the floor, dazed and silent. As I knelt beside her cradling her in my arms, she said, “I think I fell.” A cold fear clutched my heart as the word ‘osteoporosis’ leapt to my mind. I’d known for years that she had that bone disease, was taking medication to hinder its progression, and that she dreaded falling. Images of fragile, eroded bones shattered lurked at the periphery of our minds.

“Let me help you to bed,” I said, and began to raise her body from the floor. With sudden ferocity, that long withheld scream burst forth from her lips, tearing my heart with it. “My G-d, she must have fractured a vertebra,” I thought. I knew that the only pain medication we had available that her body could tolerate was Tylenol—and what value would it, even at ‘double-strength,’ be with the pain she must be dealing with—a pain that could evoke such a scream as I had heard? But once vertical, she seemed to experience no further distress. A wave of relief swept over me as I helped her to bed.

But the relief was short-lived, for once I began to lay her down, that penetrating, horrible, heart-rending cry repeated. Louder than before, it emerged from deep within her, causing her every muscle to clench in pain—and my heart simultaneously to clutch in fear. I left her to get the Tylenol (for which I had little hope), and I returned with it. As she gratefully swallowed it I asked, “Don’t you think we should call 911?” “Oh, no,” she replied (typically). “I’ll be all right after some sleep.” Since I desperately wanted to believe that to be so, I somewhat doubtfully tucked her in, kissed her, and left her hoping that indeed, a good night’s sleep would help us both.

It was not to be. Barely two hours later, I heard her call. “Help me to the bathroom,” she said. I knew what that meant, for another one of those recent changes in our life together was her increasing incontinence, which involved constant changing of the paper underpants that absorbed the urine.

The trip to the bathroom, of course, involved my again lifting her upper body to a sitting position on the bed. It was this move that once again triggered that hideous cry of anguish from her lips. Thankfully, once again, when she was vertical there was no pain. The trip to the bathroom, the changing of the wet underpants and the return to the bed were all uneventful.

It was when I once again lay her back to lie on the pillow that the damnable, terrifying wail of agony burst forth. Its rasping sound thrust through my heart like a knife and along with it a thought: “I wonder how much of this horror I can endure?”

I was soon to find out. For despite my earnest hope that untroubled sleep might come to us both, the scenario I’ve just described repeated three more times in the remaining six hours before dawn.

When I heard the fourth call, it was with dread that I anticipated that which was about to follow. I did not wish to answer her call. But how could I not? Thus I arose from my bed the fourth time. And as I walked the twenty feet to her bed, a sudden and grotesque thought crossed my mind: “Oh, wouldn’t it be better if she were dead?!”—swiftly followed by the horror of what I had just thought. “My G-d, I just wished my beloved dead!” Guilt and shame flooded my heart, stopping me dead in my tracks. How could I go to her with that awful thought in my mind? The pain of the guilt was overwhelming. Now I could do but one thing. And that was to pray a desperate prayer for forgiveness for my insane wish to kill. So with sorrowful heart I raised high my right hand and silently, fervently cried out, “Gentle Jesus, take my hand. I need your help. Help me see my murderous thoughts through your kind eyes. Help me see I am forgiven for my dark wish for death.”

And miracle of miracles, in that very instant my prayer for the cleansing of my mind was granted…because my plea had come from my heart. So an instant peace had replaced the murderous hate; a calm compassion had replaced the anguished guilt.

As I returned to her bedside, I walked with lighter step, for I possessed a lighter heart. Of course two of the same heart-piercing screams were repeated. But this time as I lay her head on the pillow, she reached up and put her arms around my neck, kissed me and said, “I’m so glad I have you in my life.” And thus at that moment our hearts were joined. It was a brief and ‘holy instant’ in which, “An ancient miracle has come to bless and to replace an ancient enmity that came to kill.”

Copyright 2007 Frank West

“The Authority Problem—Redux”

The boy lay in the darkness, his heart beating fearfully—It was those loud, angry shouts and the muffled sobbing of his mother that brought fear to his heart. He had never heard such sounds before. On the other hand, he did remember the suppertime when he was five. He had sat there puzzled. Why was there such ominous silence; such tense faces and sharp looks? Later he would describe the moment as one in which, “The air was so thick with tension, you could cut it with a knife.” Then, he had wondered what he had done to cause such a thing. Had he spilled his milk? No—but he better not try picking up the glass now.—It might indeed spill, so trembling was his hand. Maybe it was something that he hadn’t done! He searched his mind for the slight mistake he’d made—and came up with all sorts of things, certain as he was that this horror was all due to him.

Now, at age ten, lying there, he did the same thing. He desperately searched his mind. Could he have been responsible for this eruption of chaos in his mind or the war ensuing in the other bedroom (actually the living room where they slept on a pull-out couch)?

The next day, when he came home from school to find his mother furiously doing her best to install a newly purchased sliding bolt on the kitchen door (and later silently crying as she did the dinner dishes in the kitchen sink), he still did not know if he was the cause. Yet there seemed no clear reason that he could see for it at all. What he did see, however, was his father’s clothing, thrown in a disordered pile on the back porch—His heart sank at the awareness of what that meant. It was all clear now. Father must be to blame; at least that was evident by mother’s angry actions at the back door. Nevertheless, his anxious mind dare not allow itself to consider the horrific possibility that they might actually hate each other. For if that was so, what would happen to him? Too frightening to think of.

A simple solution leapt instantly to his mind. From the dark depth of his terror, from the trembling dread of his helplessness came the saving solution. He must be the cause, because only then would he have the power to bring an end to their conflict—and an end to their war was crucial to his survival.

The solution seemed brilliant and, best of all, at no seeming cost to himself. All he had to do was to be good—no, be better than he had ever been before. And in every one of the ways he knew they expected of him. He was certainly smart enough to figure all that out.

The trouble was, the solution he found didn’t bring happiness! For one thing, being good took an awful lot of effort, and constant questioning whether or not he were good enough. It all bordered on a kind of slavery. And with the slavery came resentment. Certainly it was no recipe for happiness.

And another thing: despite all his efforts, his plan wasn’t working. For father had chosen to live in humiliation down in the basement, down with the coal bin and the furnace. Not only that, there were a lot of spiders down there—he’d seen them! Worst of all, as Christmas drew near—(that usually wonderful time when his family seemed really to care about each other, gifts were given, and the house seemed brighter, and warmer)— his father was still down in the basement. Maybe he wouldn’t be upstairs to open the gifts on Christmas morning! The young boy cried, every time he thought about that. So he tried not to think about Christmas at all. Of course he failed. Despite his fervent prayers, when Christmas morning came, father was still in the basement. The boy slowly carried his present, wrapped as tenderly and carefully as he could manage, down the two flights of stairs to the basement. As he walked down, the stairs seemed to go on for miles. It seemed to take an eternity to reach the basement door.

It may have been at this moment, as he stood there at the basement door, that his idea of who was to blame for all this shifted. Shifted from himself and his father to his mother (shifted at least for the moment). As his father opened the door, the boy may have well thought, “How can I blame Dad? He looks so sad—just as sad as I feel this Christmas morning.”

Mother then became the one who was the force that was punishing both of them. After all, wasn’t she the one who hatefully put that bolt on the kitchen door? Wasn’t it she who threw father’s clothes on the porch floor? Perhaps it was at that moment that the boy became aware of his hatred for his mother. And of course also the inevitable painful guilt that follows in hate’s wake. Surely it was at that moment that the boy made a fateful determined decision—that he would never, never, ever allow himself to be put in such a humiliating position in which he now saw his father, and as he now saw himself. It seemed crystal clear to his impressionable mind that power and control were crucial if he were to avoid the bitter pain of helplessness and the humiliation that accompanied it. It would be many long and torturous years before he learned the enormous cost of that early, bitter, embedded idea. It was only much later that he would come to the liberating truth that the lust for power and control brings with it the horror of separation from others—and worst of all, separation from himself, and the loneliness and empty despair that accompany it.

Copyright 2007 Frank West