My Religious Preparedness:

  1. My precious mother: My Jewish mother's sincere and simple mentioning of God during my early childhood, which led to my simple childhood prayers to God.
  2. Sunday school: My simple Reform Jewish religious training in Sunday school from the age of 5 to about 15 years old.
  3. Community and history: The time I went with my parents and close relatives to the Synagogue during the High Holy Days of 1945 when I was 13 years old. It was about a month after the end of World War II and the news was just coming in about the Holocaust. Many of the leaders of the Jewish community of Minneapolis were there. Everyone seemed serious. My uncle pointed out the owner of the great Minneapolis Lakers basketball team. He seemed serious, too.
  4. The critical religious link to my Jewish ancestors: When I was somewhere between 7 and 15 years old, my father took me up a flight of stairs to an area above the auditorium at the Synagogue and showed me the sacred Everlasting Light. Just below the light was a plaque with the name of my revered grandfather, who died when I was about three or four years old. With the help of his father he had escaped from being drafted into the Cossack army by fleeing Lithuania at 16 years of age. He then came to the US seeking freedom. Trained as a tailor, he began his life in the US picking up rags off the streets of New York and then washing, sewing, ironing, and selling them.
The primary purpose of religion is to enable one to successfully negotiate the release of a trauma without panicking and having a nervous breakdown. Here is how it works: When I was 30 years old and the first knot or lead heart muscle of my trauma began the crucial 10 minute process of releasing itself and my stress, fear, and anxiety began to build up, I got scared. I thought: Am I gonna die? What's happening to me? I did not know what to do, but I was deeply prepared: With no options left to me during those crucial 10 minutes leading up to the release of the first knot, I instinctively began to use my simple prayers, my simple Jewish religious belief, and my imagination, in a very spontaneous and natural way. Although it wasn't easy for me to deal with purgation, I believe this religious preparedness was the decisive factor enabling me to 'walk the plank.'

Arlen Wolpert
(Draft of January 13,2008)
http://world.std.com/~awolpert/gtr569.html
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