Mind Matters: 1914 to now

I write this from Canada after attending “All Is Calm,” performed by the Chor Leoni Men’s Choir. This was a musical version of the 1914 Christmas Truce that occurred in the trenches of WWI. Earlier, the book and movie, "Joyeux Noel" (2005), poignantly depicts the same event where French, British, and German troops spontaneously initiated their own ceasefire by joining in the singing of Silent Night.

Christmas 2014 is the 100th anniversary of this memorable truce where enlisted men stopped killing each other to share their common humanity in song, stories, food, and play, and, most of all, peace. For a brief period in time, the trenches were calm — in some battle areas even until the New Year. Perhaps these soldiers would never have lifted their weapons again if it were not for their superiors forcing them to do so.

“All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr, a novel about WWII, also renders a story where humanity transcends the inhumanity of war. Here we see, counterpoised, the lives of a young blind French girl and an almost equally adolescent young German soldier.

Although, in the true story of WWI, the troops were more inclined to consider the enemy as similar to themselves, knowing each other’s language, having traveled to each other’s countries prior to the war, the devastations and depredations of World War I in some part led to the atrocities of World War II, where human interconnectedness became incomprehensively broken.

Doerr narrates a story of how Hitler’s Youth Corps were inhumanly treated while at the same time propagandized to accept authority blindly. This is not an unusual recipe for molding children into unquestioning followers of orders, even when those orders are evil or immoral, whether it’s the “Lord’s Resistance Army” in Central Africa, where young boys were also brutalized in order to brutalize others, or even where seminarians are whisked away on their journey to priesthood at age thirteen. This is all in the service of forming the young brain into unwavering obedience to whatever cause.

In “All the Light We Cannot See,” the young German keeps returning to his childhood time when he connected by radio to a Frenchman telling wondrous stories. His sister and her letters keep this memory alive and his heart and soul alive too—enough so that he saves a young French girl from her demise.

So at this one-hundredth anniversary of the 1914 WWI Christmas Truce, what is the connection to a WW II novel? Perhaps it is about how the heart can hold close to its humanity and transcend blind acquiescence to the powers that be. To the question “What’s a person to do?” this may be the answer.

About Kayta Gajdos

Dr. Kathleen Curzie Gajdos ("Kayta") is a licensed psychologist (Pennsylvania and Delaware) who has worked with individuals, couples, and families with a spectrum of problems. She has experience and training in the fields of alcohol and drug addictions, hypnosis, family therapy, Jungian theory, Gestalt therapy, EMDR, and bereavement. Dr. Gajdos developed a private practice in the Pittsburgh area, and was affiliated with the Family Therapy Institute of Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, having written numerous articles for the Family Therapy Newsletter there. She has published in the American Psychological Association Bulletin, the Family Psychologist, and in the Swedenborgian publications, Chrysalis and The Messenger. Dr. Gajdos has taught at the college level, most recently for West Chester University and Wilmington College, and has served as field faculty for Vermont College of Norwich University the Union Institute's Center for Distance Learning, Cincinnati, Ohio. She has also served as consulting psychologist to the Irene Stacy Community MH/MR Center in Western Pennsylvania where she supervised psychologists in training. Currently active in disaster relief, Dr. Gajdos serves with the American Red Cross and participated in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts as a member of teams from the Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.Now living in Chadds Ford, in the Brandywine Valley of eastern Pennsylvania, Dr. Gajdos combines her private practice working with individuals, couples and families, with leading workshops on such topics as grief and healing, the impact of multigenerational grief and trauma shame, the shadow and self, Women Who Run with the Wolves, motherless daughters, and mediation and relaxation. Each year at Temenos Retreat Center in West Chester, PA she leads a griefs of birthing ritual for those who have suffered losses of procreation (abortions, miscarriages, infertility, etc.); she also holds yearly A Day of Re-Collection at Temenos.Dr. Gajdos holds Master's degrees in both philosophy and clinical psychology and received her Ph.D. in counseling at the University of Pittsburgh. Among her professional affiliations, she includes having been a founding member and board member of the C.G. Jung Educational Center of Pittsburgh, as well as being listed in Who's Who of American Women. Currently, she is a member of the American Psychological Association, The Pennsylvania Psychological Association, the Delaware Psychological Association, the American Family Therapy Academy, The Association for Death Education and Counseling, and the Delaware County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Board. Woven into her professional career are Dr. Gajdos' pursuits of dancing, singing, and writing poetry.

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