# Chasm of Belief

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-20 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Barbara L. McLellan, Chasm of Belief, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Chasm of Belief
> 
> Barbara L. McLellan
> 
> 1996
> 
> For the past seven years I have been privileged to work with a young woman
> who is a trauma survivor. I have watched as she courageously met each new
> day knowing that it would be filled with nightmares. Simple chores like
> going shopping were filled with terror. Radio and television had to be
> closely monitored to ensure that nothing would trigger her and put her
> into a traumatised state.
> 
> I can also remember clearly the day I gazed out my office window and with
> absolute certainty and conviction believed that the human race was not a
> fit species to inhabit the earth. I would not have been at all surprised
> if God suddenly decided to destroy the earth. That moment which took
> place a few years ago was a turning point in my belief system and led me
> on a search for meaning. I knew that my old ways of understanding
> adversity were no longer valid. I was not interested in "how could an
> all-loving God allow these things to happen" because I believe that man
> not God causes suffering. The process I became interested in is what I
> call a chasm of belief . A chasm is a great divide, usually a deep long
> running pit gashed into a mountain. The mountain symbolises one's faith
> and the chasm can be formed by great suffering. Suddenly one's world is
> cleft asunder. One does not lose faith, but there is a deep wound which
> requires healing. Part of the healing process, I believe is finding
> meaning when one has endured dire adversity and trauma.
> 
> This paper will explore the elements of trauma, belief, truth, and some
> possible difficulties being in community.
> 
> Is there a place in the Bahá'í community for people who have experienced
> great trauma?
> 
> If a person's view of the world is one of extreme pessimism, does that
> person have a real place in community, or must they hide what they know to
> be true?
> 
> After the war in Viet Nam, many soldiers were eventually diagnosed with a
> disorder known as post traumatic stress syndrome. It is not a mental
> illness. Dr Matthew Friedman of the National Center for Post traumatic
> stress disorder says that the etiological agent or the traumatic event was
> outside the individual rather than an inherent individual weakness or a
> traumatic neurosis. The traumatic event is something outside the range of
> usual human experience for instance the Holocaust, war, severe abuse,
> torture and genocide. Not all people exposed to these events will have
> Post traumatic stress disorder. It has been recognised that trauma, like
> pain, is "not an external phenomena that can be completely objectified".
> Like pain, the traumatic experience is filtered through cognitive and
> emotional processes before it can be appraised as an extreme threat".1
> Some aspects of the traumatic event seem to get fixed in the mind,
> unaltered by the passage of time or by the intervention of subsequent
> experiences.2 People with Post traumatic stress disorder have difficulty
> sleeping, are extraordinarily concerned with issues of safety and freedom,
> and can suffer physical illness. In addition people with Post traumatic
> stress disorder can be easily triggered by visual and or audio input.
> 
> How does someone with Post traumatic stress disorder cope in community?
> To understand this, we must first know the nature of Post traumatic stress
> disorder. This disorder confines people to the past, not through any
> inherent weakness they might have, but by the traumatic event itself. So
> for instance, someone who was involved in a bombing might be thrown into
> the past when a car backfires or she hears a loud bang. All the memories
> are reborn once again and all the feelings of horror and confusion return.
> 
> The Holocaust is the name given to the systematic execution of six million Jews in Europe
> during the Second World War. Since the Holocaust, there have been many, many other
> traumatic events and many more survivors. Ritual abuse is a terror endured by children
> and adults alike. This is a particularly brutal form of sexual, physical and mental abuse and
> takes place in a group setting. It renders the survivors very wary of group activities. The
> survivor can not trust the group and feels vulnerable, unsafe and at times terrified.
> 
> One of the differences between the Holocaust survivor and a ritual abuse survivor is that
> while there is almost no denial about the former, there is still an absence of belief about
> ritual abuse. This denial makes it much more difficult for survivors to recover.
> 
> We have people in our community who have experienced war, ritual abuse, torture and
> have witnessed genocide. How do they see the world? A woman who survived the
> Holocaust was asked how, after all the terrible things that happened to her, she found the
> strength to live each day. She replied, "It's more a view of the world, a total worldwide
> view of extreme pessimism ... [a sense] of really knowing the truth in a way that other
> people don't know it. And all the truth is harsh and impossible to really accept, and yet
> you have to go on and function. So it's a complete lack of faith in human beings, in all
> areas you know, whether it's politics or whatever, you hear one thing and you believe
> something else. I mean you say, 'Oh, well, I know the truth'. 3
> 
> I found this to be a most enlightening statement. The survivor sees the world with
> extreme pessimism, sees it as no one else sees it, does not have faith in human beings, and
> does not believe in what they say. Can you imagine how it must feel to live a life which
> has these elements in it? What can be said to the survivor?
> 
> The survivor of ritual abuse also knows the truth. She knows that her teacher, or her
> doctor, or her lawyer or the next door neighbour is capable of great evil and sadism, while
> at the same time presenting a public face which would deny any accusations against
> them.
> 
> Refugees from terror and persecution also know the twin faces. They remember that one
> day they were sending their children off to school, going to work, thinking about painting
> their roof and before the day was over, they were fleeing for their lives. They absolutely
> know that life is unpredictable and unsafe. And there is another aspect. I met a Bahá'í
> refugee from Iran who is no longer in New Zealand. He was filled with guilt. He asked
> was not his blood the same as those being martyred? And yet he was safe and sound in a
> free country with his wife and children. He had enormous guilt because he was able to
> leave Iran.
> 
> Shoghi Effendi wrote that a tempest, unprecedented in its violence is sweeping the face of
> the earth, that it is a cleansing force and it is disrupting the homes of its peoples and
> harrowing up the souls of its inhabitants.4 The promised day is come, the day when
> tormenting trials will have surged above your heads, and beneath your feet, saying: "Taste
> ye what your hands have wrought!"5
> This is the day that we are living in. It is a day fraught with danger, both spiritual and
> physical and we know as Bahá'ís, that it's going to get worse in the short term. Having
> said that, however, I am concerned with process: how do we as a community respond to
> the sufferings of others? How do we help people make sense of their suffering? This
> suffering is real and at times paralysing.
> 
> Extreme trauma destroys one's ability to trust the world. The person actually lives in two
> worlds - the one around us and a world which is like a deep well of sadness. The
> traumatic event seems to violate the integrity of the essence or nature of the person.
> 
> One of the ways for a survivor to live with Post traumatic stress disorder is for other
> people to listen to them. Survivors need to have a hearing in community. In other words,
> they need people to listen to what has happened to them and not make judgements.
> However, this process is fraught with difficulties. In working with Viet Nam veterans,
> Jeffrey Jay of the Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Studies and Treatment in Washington
> D.C found that despite all the different therapies they tried, the young men were not
> recovering from their night and day mares. He writes With our therapeutic weapons of
> catharsis and confrontation in group therapy, we marched resolutely through the desolate
> landscape of the veterans' alienation and isolation. Slowly, we began to understand the
> depths of the problem and the meager impact of our methods, which centred on the
> private, inner experience of the survivor. Only when we started to understand that the
> veterans, like most trauma victims, cannot fully recover until they can find meaning for
> their experience did we begin to realise the intimate connection between public acceptance
> and private resolution of the trauma.6 Jeffrey Jay and his colleagues decided to have
> gather people together to listen to the veterans' experiences. This was at a time in
> America when being a Vietnam vet was very unpopular. A young man told his story of
> how he threw a Vietcong family out of a helicopter to their deaths and wondered how he
> can now take up a normal life. At that meeting was an older man who had fought during
> World War II and his response was I want you to know that I was in the Pacific in the
> WW2. I landed on Corregidor. What happened to us was much worse than what
> happened to you, but I have never talked about it, I have never complained, and I never
> will.7 To the older man, the young Viet Nam veteran had violated a fundamental code of
> privacy that rigidly forbade the public revelation of terrible truths. However, the younger
> man had decided it was better to tell the truth to whomever wanted to hear than to go to a
> pub and drink it off.
> 
> The older man could be replaced by an older woman admonishing a young woman that
> rape is part of a woman's life, or religious refugees who say, we did it for God, do not
> complain I do not think the trauma victims are saying oh woe is me, look at how hard life
> is, I believe they are trying to share what has happened to them to widen the human
> experience and speak their terrible truth.
> 
> We have all had the experience of being with someone who sounds like a broken record.
> All they can talk about is this terrible thing that happened and we can't seem to get them
> off the subject. We can't seem to get them to look at the bright side of life. These people
> are so negative we say. We should start to avoid them and let them get on with their own
> lives.
> 
> This is a very predictable pattern for human beings. At first we will reassure and offer
> cheering homilies. But the person keeps on talking in fact feels driven to a howling, self-
> centered outrage that exactly corresponds in ferocity to the pain and terror of the trauma
> itself.8 So we, the community begin to give subtle warnings, but the person who
> experienced the trauma can not take heed. The ultimate trump card is shame. Only
> shame is powerful enough to squelch the victim's desperate need to be heard. The power
> of shame is known and sanctioned in the Bible: In the story of Job, neither God nor the
> community would tolerate even a good and innocent man's crying out against the most
> outrageous betrayal and unjust violence.
> 
> The Greek root of the word shame is scham, which refers to a skin that is used to
> cover the exposed, vulnerable parts of a person, specially what is seen as shameful. The
> shamed person feels both exposed and condemned, uncovered and seen through - in a
> sense, flayed by the community's disgust and contempt. The trauma survivor already
> wishes, on some level, to disappear, to withdraw, to die. Therefore, the best technique for
> silencing the trauma victim, whose outraged and betrayed sense of self cries out for
> expression, is shame, which alienates the private, violated self from the social self. Shame
> causes the private self to retreat into numbness, to repress feelings and dampen personal
> engagement with others.9
> 
> Now you might be saying to yourself, how very cruel of community to silence these
> people who have suffered so much. But the other side of the coin is this reality: To
> discuss in public the lasting effects of trauma would defy the assumption of acceptable,
> safe relations between consenting citizens of a decent society. Basically, the victim who
> will not remain silent is challenging society's vision of itself, bearing witness to
> uncomfortable moral truths and demanding from everyone ... a kind of moral accounting:
> 'And where do you stand', the victim asks 'not on abstract issues of truth and justice, but
> on this war and this violence and this brutality, this terrible thing that happens every day in
> our world, yours as well as mine?'"10
> 
> Ah, we respond to the trauma victim: but tests are a healing medicine, my calamity is my
> providence, God must really love you, no one is given a test beyond her own capacity,
> don't be so negative, the world is not like that, forgive the people who hurt you and you'll
> get over it. And why do we say those things? Because we cannot bear to live without
> hope. We believe that the world cannot be as bad as we are being told. But this is what
> the Post traumatic stress disorder survivor does not have - hope. Many survivors have a
> great well of sorrow within them which cannot be filled. Robyn Morgan writes about a
> Cambodian woman who saw her family and friends tortured and executed by the Khmer
> Rouge. The woman said that one day they picked out one woman and one man and hit
> them again and again. She began crying again, and couldn't stop. She recalls that 'it felt
> like there was a big needle pushing through my head.' When she stopped crying, days
> later, she could no longer see.11 The woman was blinded by sorrow. Can you imagine
> what that must be like? To be so sad, you decide that you no longer want to look out at
> the world.
> Some people advise the person to forgive and forget. In other words, forgive the people
> who hurt you so you can get over it. I am not saying that we should not forgive, but I
> think we need to know what kind of forgiveness we are talking about when such advice is
> given and by forgiving the individual, will the event really be forgotten?
> 
> First of all, when we advise someone to forgive, what kind of forgiveness is it? Is it
> forgiveness based on the reversal of moral judgement, or as a remission of punishment, or
> is it to overcome resentment?12 I do not think any of these are appropriate when a person
> or persons have inflicted great harm on another. In a letter written on behalf of the
> Universal House of Justice regarding the forgiveness of a father who has abused his
> daughter, it states: To forgive him will not be easy, and this is not something to which
> either you or the members of your family can force yourselves. Nevertheless, you should
> know that forgiveness is the standard which individual Bahá'ís are called upon to attain. It
> is an essential part of the spiritual growth of a person who has been wronged. To nurse a
> grievance or hatred against another soul is spiritually poisonous to the soul which nurses
> it, but to strive to see another person as a child of God and, however heinous his deeds, to
> attempt to overlook his sins for the sake of God, removes bitterness from the soul and
> both ennobles and strengthens it." 13 This is the kind of forgiveness we are called upon
> to deliver: it is not in a soul's best interest to harbour hatred.
> 
> I think one of the hardest things about forgiving is if the wrongdoers have not been
> punished by society. However the above quote indicates that forgiveness is an individual
> act, rather than a community act, so it is possible for a wronged one to forgive, whether or
> not the wrongdoer is repentant. And it is up to the community to punish the wrongdoer as
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá revealed:
> 
> But if criminals were entirely forgiven, the order of the world would be upset. So
> punishment is one of the essential necessities for the safety of communities, but he who is
> oppressed by a transgressor has not the right to take vengeance. On the contrary, he
> should forgive and pardon, for this is worthy of the world of man." 14
> 
> I read a wonderful book entitled Why Bad Things Happen to Good People by
> Harold Kushner. His son had a degenerative disease and his book explores not why bad
> things happen to good people per se but the human response to pain, our own and others.
> I found his book to be a great eye opener because it distances God from the evil that
> humans inflict on each other, and puts disease and accidents in their rightful place in the
> scheme of things. In examining the life of the Prophet Job, he comes up with three
> statements he says we would all like to believe and they are:
> 
> that God is all-powerful and causes everything that happens in the world. Nothing
> happens without His willing it;
> 
> that God is just and fair, and stands for people getting what they deserve, so that the good
> prosper and the wicked are punished;
> 
> that Job is a good person.
> 
> These three statements do not contradict themselves as long as nothing goes wrong. As
> we know, everything went wrong for Job, one of God's most devoted followers, therefore
> since God is all powerful and God gives people what they deserve, then Job must have
> been a sinner. But we know that Job was not a sinner, therefore was God testing him?
> But why kill his children to see if Job could pass a test? Would you want to believe in a
> God that murders innocent children? How do you pray to such a God?
> 
> We may not say these things out loud to ourselves, especially being Bahá'ís and believing
> that we know God's Plan for humankind. However, I believe in the collective memory of
> humanity and I believe that we have all kinds of unchallenged assumptions about God and
> life on this planet. So even if we are Bahá'ís we are liable to have a belief system which
> dates back to the time of Job. This is not a criticism, but rather an acknowledgment that it
> takes many generations to discard outworn beliefs. So in endeavouring to make meaning
> out of suffering, and knowing that God is good, and wants only the best for us, it must
> have been on some level, we think, that Job was the sinner. However, as we know, when
> Job questioned God, God neither gave him a reason nor call him a sinner. God said in
> part:
> 
> Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins
> like a man; for I will demand of thee and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid
> the foundations for the earth? Declare if thou has understanding. .... Hast thou
> commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place?15
> Or as Bahá'u'lláh revealed: From His retreat of glory His Voice is ever proclaiming:
> 'Verily, I am God; there is none other God besides Me, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise".16
> According to Kushner, there is an old Iranian folk proverb about God and suffering and
> our response to one another's suffering: If you see a blind man, kick him; why should you
> be kinder than God ? He explains: In other words, if you see someone who is suffering,
> you must believe that he deserves his fate and that God wants him to suffer. Therefore,
> put yourself on God's side by shunning him or humiliating him further. If you try to help
> him, you will be going against God's justice".17
> 
> I don't know if this is an Iranian folk proverb. Perhaps it's just a human folk proverb
> because some part of me immediately understood the proverb. If God is an all-loving
> parent, then He would never hurt us, so therefore the blind man must have done
> something to deserve his blindness. This is one way of trying to understand suffering, but
> upon close scrutiny, it does not stand up to reason. Does God really make people disabled
> so that the person will know and love God more? I think not. I think sickness occurs
> because there is disease. There is something out of order in the body. God is there so
> that one can find strength and comfort. How can one pray to the One that caused the
> illness? It's like being nice to a thief that robbed you of a precious jewel. God does not
> cause evil. Humans inflict evil on each other.
> 
> "Indeed the actions of man himself breed a profusion of satanic power. For were
> men to abide by and observe the divine teachings, every trace of evil would be
> banished from the face of the earth. However, the widespread differences that
> exist among mankind and the prevalence of sedition, contention, conflict and the
> like are the primary factors which provoke the appearance of the satanic spirit.
> Yet the Holy Spirit hath ever shunned such matters. A world in which naught
> can be perceived save strife, quarrels and corruption is bound to became the seat
> of the throne, the very metropolis, of Satan."18
> 
> I would now like to talk about the soul. I am conscious of the fact that Bahá'u'lláh
> revealed that the soul is a mystery no mind, however acute, can ever hope to
> unravel.19
> 
> The Bab revealed "As this physical frame is the throne of the inner temple, whatever
> occurs to the former is felt by the latter. In reality that which takes delight in joy or is
> saddened by pain is the inner temple of the body, not the body itself..." 20
> 
> Abdu'l-Bahá writes "But when sadness visits us we become weak, our strength leaves us,
> our comprehension is dim, and our intelligence veiled. The actualities of life seem to elude
> our grasp, the eyes of our spirits fail to discover the secret mysteries, and we become even
> as dead beings. 21
> John Bradshaw, the author of Creating Love: the next great stage of growth believes that
> the soul is what recognises that we are being degraded in an act of abuse.22
> 
> This is what I believe happens when traumatic events occur and people develop Post
> traumatic stress disorder: I believe that when people suffer a traumatic event, it's like
> someone has heaped a lot of garbage on them - invisible garbage. And they have to find
> their way out of this labyrinth of awfulness and it is their soul which knows something
> terrible has happened and it seeks relief. It is imperative that the community prays for the
> soul to assist it in its long journey out of the invisible garbage heap. Remember, for Post
> traumatic stress disorder survivors, their world has been turned into a nightmare. At any
> time, due to some outside influence they can return to the place of the trauma. Sometimes
> the sadness and grief is so great that even listening to music can be the cause of great
> pain.
> 
> I do not believe it is useful to mouth the platitudes I mentioned above to people who
> suffer from Post traumatic stress disorder. To say to someone that because this traumatic
> event happened to them proves that God must really love them places both God and the
> survivor in a very precarious position. Where does the survivor now go for love and
> succour? Is this really what God is all about - personally visiting chaos on unsuspecting
> people?
> 
> Trust is a most crucial element in a human being's life. It's a firm belief in the reliability or
> truth or strength of a person or thing; it's a confident expectation. We trust gravity will
> work every time we put our feet on the ground. We trust when the traffic light is green,
> it's safe to proceed. Now I want you to picture for a moment what it would be like for
> you not to trust anything around you. What would it be like not to be able to rely on
> anything? This is what it is to varying degrees for people with Post traumatic stress
> disorder. For instance, for people who have been ritually abused this overhead shows the
> world they might inhabit. [Overhead]. Words take on different meanings, the young
> woman is thrown back to the experiences of the past and can not trust the psychiatrist
> because he has now become in her mind "one of them".
> 
> So how is trust regained? It is my experience that there are some very important elements
> in rebuilding trust and they are love, listen, and believe.
> 
> Love: Bahá'u'lláh revealed O ye rich ones of the earth! The poor in your midst are My
> trust; guard ye My trust, and be not intent only on your own ease.23 'Amatu'l-Bahá
> Ruhiiyih Khanum said that there is so little love in the world that those of us who have an
> abundance of it should share it. And this is what this Hidden Word means to me. If we
> are rich in love, then we must share it with those who have known abuse and
> degradation.
> 
> Listen: Sometimes all it takes is for someone to extend a hand and reach in the invisible
> garbage heap and help the survivor find her way. This means listening to the person. It
> can take hours and hours, sometimes years, but eventually the person is finally able to stop
> talking and resume some sort of life.
> 
> Brenda Ueland says listening is a great and powerful thing, a magnetic and strange thing, a
> creative force. She writes Think how the friends that really listen to us are the ones we
> move toward, and we want to sit in their radius as though it did us good, like ultraviolet
> rays.24 She says that when we are listened to, really listened to as if what we have to say
> means something, ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life. When we have
> problems, who is that we go to she asks? Not to the hard, bossy practical ones who can
> tell you exactly what to do, but to the listeners: that is, the kindest, least censorious, least
> bossy people that you know. It is because by pouring out your problem to them, you then
> know what to do about it yourself.25 I think people with Post traumatic stress disorder
> are always trying to make sense of what has happened. They are trying to find the
> meaning of their experience.
> 
> Belief: Often the traumatic event is unbelievable and to take the step towards belief is to
> go against what one might have thought previously about the goodness of human beings.
> But belief is essential because as more and more people believe that human beings can
> become lower than animals, the person with Post traumatic stress disorder is not living in
> an isolated world of terror. They are able to talk about it knowing that people won't think
> they are crazy.
> 
> How does all this relate to community? I would like to share with you a recent incident,
> although none of the people involved have Post traumatic stress disorder. It was at a
> study class, and there were two people who arrived late. One of them was very upset
> because a friend of hers had just committed suicide. She asked that in our round of
> prayers we remember her friend. The study class continued after the prayers and there
> was some tension. When I was driving home, I realised that what we should have done,
> had we been true community, was to listen to the woman tell us how she felt about this
> terrible news, and ask if there was anything we could do, perhaps pray, or let her cry, or
> let her tell us about the dead woman. Now I know some may be thinking about justice
> and how it would not have been just to all the friends who came for the study class. Well
> I have thought about it, and I think if it had been Feast or an LSA meeting, perhaps that's
> correct because these are institutional meetings. But this was a study class where a great
> big white elephant walked in and everyone ignored it.
> 
> Shoghi Effendi wrote to an individual believer in 1935 that Bahá'í community life provides
> you with an indispensable laboratory where you can translate into living and constructive
> action, the principles which you imbibe from the teachings...."26 One of the outstanding
> writers of our time is M Scott Peck, author of books like Different Drum, The Road Less
> Travelled, and A World Waiting to be Born, who writes at length about the laboratory or
> community. I think he has some wonderful insights about the nature of community.
> 
> Community is and must be inclusive. The great enemy of community is exclusivity.27
> 
> Community: a group that has learned to transcend its individual differences.
> 
> Community is contemplative. The members are thoughtful about themselves, and become
> thoughtful about the group. 28
> 
> Community is a safe place. As soon as it is safe to speak one's heart, as soon as most
> people in the group know they will be listened to and accepted for themselves,
> vulnerability snowballs and community members find themselves being valued and
> appreciated. They become more vulnerable. Love and acceptance escalates. They
> become intimate friends, and true healing begins.29
> Community requires the ability to expose our wounds and weakness to our fellow
> creatures. It also requires the capacity to be affected by the wounds of others, to be
> wounded by their wounds.30
> He also writes about the stages community goes through, over and over again.
> The stage of pretense. The communication in pseudo-community is filled with
> generalisations. It is polite, inauthentic, boring, sterile and unproductive.
> 
> The stage of chaos: the attempt to obliterate the differences which have escalated during
> pseudo-community.
> 
> The stage of emptiness: I call this the suffering stage because it is the time that members
> of the community are striving to become community and must relinquish prejudices, snap
> judgements, fixed expectations, the desire to convert, heal or fix, the urge to win, the fear
> of looking like a fool, the need to control. Peck writes Other things may be exquisitely
> personal: hidden griefs, hatreds or terrors that must be confessed, made public, before the
> individual can be fully 'present' to the group. This is the time of risk taking and requires
> great individual courage.
> 
> Peck believes that community must become empty for a kind of miracle to occur. Is this
> not what Bahá'u'lláh tells us about teaching either ourselves or others? - that we cannot
> fill an overflowing cup. It must be emptied first.
> 
> Only after these three stages can there be true community, which then must go through the
> stages again and again as it advances towards perfection.31
> 
> If we have people in the Bahá'í community who have terrible stories to tell and they have
> no one who will listen to them, how then will we become true community? How will be
> enriched by their courage and their will to live in the face of denial, if we do not hear their
> stories? I believe we have a lot to learn from people who have suffered trauma because
> we will learn how to be truly human as God has intended us to be. And the community
> also has a an important part to play in the healing process. In a letter to an individual
> believer, the Department of the Secretariat wrote on behalf of the Universal House of
> Justice, Your letter refers to experiences in the Bahá'í community such as group activity,
> chanting, embracing, and referring to 'Abdu'l-Bahá as the Master, which have the effect of
> triggering in your daughters the revival of the painful memories they are seeking to
> overcome. While this is unfortunate, it might also be viewed as an important part of the
> healing process that they learn to clearly distinguish between people motivated by a
> corrupt inclination to abuse and manipulate others, and a community which has as its
> watchword the protection of the rights of each individual, and which is striving to
> strengthen the bond of mutual love and respect which binds it together.32
> 
> When people share it also brings about incalculable public good. Jeffrey Jay writes that the
> effects of trauma cannot disappear from the history of the victim so there are two choices
> for the victim: introspection or extrospection. The latter allows the victim to understand
> not only how the traumatic state is maintained by public ostracism, but how they can
> transform their personal shame into effective public witness. Even though the community
> resists what trauma victims have to say, it needs their knowledge in order to understand
> that trauma begins in the community and belongs in the community.33
> The Bahá'í community has an awesome responsibility. As world conditions worsen, there
> will be more and more traumatised souls coming into the Bahá'í community. Unless the
> community is able to listen and believe what has happened, and unless the community
> allows these people to speak their pain, then they will come in and go out again. Because
> remember many of them have a complete lack of faith in human beings, in all areas you
> know, whether it's politics or whatever, you hear one thing and you believe something
> else. 34
> 
> I have attempted in this paper to address the issues that accompany post traumatic stress
> disorder, its challenge to the community, and steps which may assist the community to
> face this issue.
> 
> Notes
> 
> 1 Friedman, M Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: An Overview, February 1996
> 
> 2 ibid
> 
> 3 Jay, J. Terrible Knowledge, Networker, Nov/Dec 1991
> 
> 4 Shoghi Effendi, Promised Day is Come, page 1
> 
> 5 Bahá'u'lláh as quoted in Promised Day is Come, page 1
> 
> 6 ibid, page 24
> 
> 7 ibd
> 
> 8 ibid
> 
> 9 ibid, page 25
> 
> 10 ibid, pages 26, 27
> 
> 11 Robyn Morgan, The Words of a Woman, p 283, 284
> 
> 12 Haber, pp 12-22
> 
> 13 Some issues relating to child abuse. Department of the Secretariat of the Universal
> House of Justice. An attachment to a letter to an individual Bahá'í: 5 January 1992 5
> #10
> 
> 14 'Abdu'l-Bahá. The Promulgation of Universal Peace. Discourses by Abdul Bahá
> Abbas during His visit to the United States and Canada in 1912. Wilmette: Bahá'í
> Publishing Trust, 1982.p268
> 
> 15 Job 38, 3, 4, 12
> 
> 16 Gleanings, p 49
> 
> 17 Kushner, page 94
> 
> 18 Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh Revealed after the Kitab-i-Aqdas, pp 176-177
> 
> 19 Gleanings, page 158, 159
> 
> 20 The Bab. Selections from the Writings of the Bab. Haifa: Bahá'í World Centre,
> 1976.p95
> 
> 21 'Abdu'l-Bahá. "Joy and Pain". In The Reality of Man Excerpts from Writings of
> Bahá'u'lláh and 'Abdu'l-Bahá. Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1962.p15, 16
> 
> 22 Bradshaw, p116
> 
> 23 Hidden Words, page 41
> 
> 24 Brenda Ueland, page 104 Utne Reader, Nov/Dec 1992
> 
> 25 ibid, 104, 105
> 
> 26 Ltr from the Guardian to Allen Tichener, 1935
> 
> 27 Peck, The Different Drum, p 61
> 
> 28 ibid, p 62
> 
> 29 ibid, p 68
> 
> 30 ibid, 69, 70
> 
> 31 Peck, A World Waiting to be born, Civility Rediscovered, page 275-275
> 
> 32 House, 5 January 1992
> 
> 33 Jay, p 27
> 
> 34 Jay, J. Terrible Knowledge, Networker, Nov/Dec 1991, 20
> 
> METADATA
> 
> Views15683 views since posted 1998; last edit 2012;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../mclellan_chasm_belief;
> URLs changed in 2010, see archive.org.../bahai-library.org
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