Month: October 2017

TRUE COLORS, Part 3

Posted on by kathiemm

by Doe West

 [Note from Kathie: this is post 3 in a four part series  by Dr. Doe West,  award-winning psychologist and pastor.

THIS I CAN PROVE:

Trees actually begin to show their true colors in autumn.

Here’s why: The four primary pigments that produce color within a leaf are chlorophyll (green), xanthophylls (yellow), carotenoids (orange), and anthocyanins (reds and purples). During the warmer growing seasons, leaves produce chlorophyll to help plants create energy from light. The green pigment becomes dominant and masks the other pigments. As days get shorter and nights become longer, trees prepare for winter and the next growing season by blocking off flow to and from a leaf’s stem. This process stops green chlorophyll from being replenished and causes the leaf’s green color to fade. The fading green allows a leaf’s true colors to emerge, producing the dazzling array of orange, yellow, red, and purple call fall foliage before the stem finally detaches. Leaves fall, and their true colors are revealed.

We may never know the true colors of the Las Vegas shooter — why he did it, what forces internal or external drove him. We see only the dominant color of his behavior that one dark night. I lovingly offer that we need to shift focus from his behavior to our own behavior in response. One clear view I have about the fraught issue of forgiveness comes from another atrocity, another October massacre. On October 2, 2006, a shooting occurred at the West Nickel Mines School, an Amish one-room schoolhouse in the Old Order Amish community in Pennsylvania. A gunman took the children in that school hostage and then shot eight of the 10 little girls (ages six to 13), killing five of them before taking his own life.

The emphasis on forgiveness and reconciliation in the Amish community brought me to my emotional knees. Each time I find myself in this same spot, driven by anguish or anger or awe, I remember this:

On the day of the shooting, the grandfather of one of the murdered Amish girls was heard warning some young relatives not to hate the killer, saying, “We must not think evil of this man.” Another Amish father noted, “He had a mother and a wife and a soul, and now he’s standing before a just God.”

Jack Meyer, a member of the Brethren community living near the Amish in Lancaster County, explained, “I don’t think there’s anybody here that wants to do anything but forgive and to reach out to the family of the man who committed these acts.”

Amish community members visited and comforted the gunman’s widow, his parents, and his parents-in-law. One Amish man held his sobbing father in his arms, to comfort him. About 30 members of the Amish community attended the man’s funeral, and the widow of the killer was one of the few outsiders invited to the funeral of a victim.

The widow wrote an open letter to her Amish neighbors, thanking them for their forgiveness, grace, and mercy. She wrote, “Your love for our family has helped to provide the healing we so desperately need. Gifts you’ve given have touched our hearts in a way no words can describe. Your compassion has reached beyond our family, beyond our community, and is changing our world, and for this we sincerely thank you.”

 

 

TRUE COLORS, Part 2

Posted on by kathiemm

by Doe West

[note from Kathie: this is post 2 in a four part series  by Dr, Doe West, award-winning psychologist and pastor. ]

At times like this [in the wake of the latest mass killing], we,  Christians and others, get asked the worst questions–from other people and ourselves: Must we forgive?  This?  HIM?!

Ephesians 4:31-32  – 31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

 We read those words and may even taste some bile in our throats that rises with those words hitting deep in our pain.

I have been called a red letter Christian … preaching from and turning to the words of the Christ over the words in the Old Testament.  But I do read all the words … and I do preach from the Old Testament … but it always surprises me when the Old Testament helps me with the New Testament.

Isaiah 43:25-26   25 I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more. 26 Review the past for me, let us argue the matter together; state the case for your innocence.

Yes, Father God, let us argue the matter.

And how I would love to hear the case for this mass murderer’s innocence… and mine, as I deal with my anger toward his behavior.

I realize that I cannot hate or be angry with him for I know only what is printed about him and his life and his preparation for that night.  Which is nothing I can know much less prove.

What I feel is the anger / rage at is his behavior.

In all my decades of learning and work –as Pastor, as Counselor, as Professor – I find one path for escaping from the constant on-state of pain during such times is by engaging my mind with my emotions… using contemplation and consideration as a rope walk up from that pit of rage.

I learned a phrase when working on a grant at the Harvard School of Public Health when we were doing investigation and debate of findings on some unknown pathogen … pathogens of body or mind or behavior: What do we think? —- what do we know? — what can we prove?

So often we get stuck at what we think but do not know.

Or know but cannot prove.

In my next posts, I will share what I think and what I know and what I can prove, and how these insights may help all of us,

 

TRUE COLORS, Part 1

Posted on by kathiemm

By Doe West

Note from Kathie: Dr. Doe West, member of the Engaging Peace Board of Directors, Psychologist, and Counselor, is also a pastor.  The next few posts will focus on her sermon on Sunday October 8, 2017, a week after the horrendous mass shooting in Las Vegas.  It is a message for all people, regardless of their personal faith.

This is not the sermon I prepared last week to deliver today.  That is because none of us are the same people we were a week ago today.               We all came out wounded to some smaller or greater degree by this latest — and one of the largest — massacre in US history — the massacre in Las Vegas.  People lost their lives. People lost their loves. People may have lost hope or may have lost faith.

And with the understanding of a counselor as well as a pastor, I see a next dangerous occurrence:

The transition whereby anger without a pathway for safe expression turns inward.

Anger turned inward creates depression, a depression associated with helplessness and hopelessness.

In my psychology training, I learned about the experiments done with rats put into a cage with electrodes on all four walls and ceiling and floor. When they were shocked from one side, the rats were startled but found balance. When they were shocked from all sides, the rats fell over and became catatonic.

In my nearly 40 years of working with human minds, emotions, and spirits, I’ve seen how we can deceive others and ourselves about how much shock we can take before we go catatonic — or ballistic.

I’ve witnessed how often we define ourselves by how we’ve been wounded. We can wear it like a skin, and thus be seen in that shape.

At such times, the counselor in me will offer tools of expression and decompression, for ways to get out of the cage, but that is a harder trip than people think.

Once we are in a cage, we begin to structure our lives in alignment with the pain as long and effectively as possible, even after the way out is pointed to, or after the outside infliction of pain stops.

How can we get free of our cages?

[Stay tuned for next post.]

 

CONGRATULATIONS DUE!!! HUGE HONOR FOR ENGAGING PEACE BOARD MEMBER!!!

Posted on by kathiemm

By Kathie MM

Engaging Peace is delighted to announce that Dr. Doe West, one of its newest Board of Directors members, has just earned major recognition for her accomplishments on behalf of social justice for the most oppressed members of our society. She has been named a Lifetime Achiever by Marquis Who’s Who.

In this post, we share some of the accomplishments that led to this honor. In our next few posts, we will be sharing her perspectives on violence, nonviolence, apology, and forgiveness in the wake of the recent Las Vegas mass shooting.

Dr. West received an MS from Boston University and a PhD in Law, Policy & Society from Northeastern University. As a Native American Scholar, she was awarded an Advanced Minority Fellowship for her dissertation, a widely respected work on bioethics.

In addition to her PhD in Law, Policy & Society, Dr. West also holds a Master of Divinity, and has nearly completed a doctorate in Religious Philosophy. The two doctoral degrees reflect her belief that work and faith in union are the foundations of social justice.

Dr. West wears many hats in her commitment to the generation of social justice. She is currently a full-time tenured professor and program chair in the human services department of the School of Public Service and Social Sciences at Quinsigamond Community College. She also serves in teaching and consulting roles at Bay Path University and Assumption College.

Dr. West has served in ministerial or pastoral roles at Quincy City Hospital and Charlton’s Overlook Lifespan Community; her home church is the First Congregational Church of Woodstock, CT.

Among Dr. West’s early achievements was work that led to the current Americans with Disabilities Act. Her work with the City of Boston’s Department of Health and Hospitals helped create national guidelines for reasonable accommodation and definition of undue hardship. She was the first Commissioner of Handicap Affairs and 504 compliance officer for Boston, and worked with Senator Edward Kennedy to ensure that  historic Faneuil Hall was accessible to people with disabilities.

As a social justice activist, Dr. West has served as executive director of Social Action Ministries. She has worked with the Massachusetts Housing & Shelter Alliance and provided “street ministry” for homeless individuals in the Boston Common area.

As a mental health advocate, she worked with the New England Family Study on familial schizophrenia, and coauthored the book Coping+Plus: Dimensions of Disability. Further publications can be found at her Marquis Lifetime Achiever website as well as https://doewestmsmdivphd.academia.edu.