The audio file above is the spoken word recording
without background music provided to Radio KOWS 92.5 FM broadcast of the
Scent of Light episode for insert into the Radio Spotlight Magazine
with host Andre' Marc.
Transcript
In this episode of the Scent of Light I will speak on
Trust. Trust is one of the Ten Words to the Creative Spirit, in which my mentor
Dr. William Hermanns’ wrote:
Give me Trust so no despair can grip my soul.
I rediscovered my mentors Ten Words 25 years
after his death when I was feeling despair over a health crisis that I was
facing. When I read this line I felt a bit surprised that one could ask for
trust, thinking that trust was something I had earned, discerned, grown, or
possessed through church affiliation, and the latter I lacked for some
years.
I remembered my mentor recounting some pretty
harrowing situations that required trust in somebody or something else to
intervene with a saving and guiding act. The memory of him responding to
situations with a trust that denied despair to grip him in his last 19 years
of his long life when I accompanied him came to the fore, followed by
memories of me also responding with trust to situations that seemed
hopeless.
Trust requires discernment, however, since misplaced
trust can have disastrous consequences, as my mentor discovered trusting in
his Kaiser and the Kaiser's call for war. After Willi Hermanns committed
this trust by joining the German army, he soon came to discern the feeling
voice of conscience in synchronicity with experienced events that abhored
the harm done to his comrades on the front line and the harm done to
mother’s and children of the French. The eyes of a French mother looking at
him with such fear and hatred as she held her baby standing before their
burning house, as he marched with his German battalion singing a song of
victory over the ravaged village, attracted him to place his trust in
something beyond imperial power yet aligned to his conscience feeling unity
with life in all humans, French or German, Jew or Gentile, Protestant or
Catholic or Muslim enmeshed on the battlefield trenches before Verdun in
1916.
This newly placed trust is what Willi Hermanns had to
rely on when he was half-buried by an exploding shell and he could no longer
move his legs. He raised his hand to the sky and cried, God save me and I
will serve you as long as I live! He was able then to feel his legs, pull
himself out of the crater, and his next steps seem to be guided so that he
would experience remarkable avoidances of harm in the next 24 hours. Even
his capture by French colonial soldiers from Senegal became fortunate as
they spared his life on hearing he spoke French. Within hours Willi was
instrumental in convincing a commanding officer, who called him a traitor,
to surrender an underground fort that faced certain mustard gas attack by
the French, thus saving the lives of over 200 German soldiers. He would
serve 40 months in French POW camps but he survived the war and was able to
later publish his memoir of this time with Harper & Row called The
Holocaust – from a survivor of Verdun.
I heard him repeat his vow everyday the last 19 years
of his life in which I accompanied him: God save me and I will serve you as
long as I live!
Of course he sought understanding of this God, to which he addressed his
vow, and his communications with prominent scholars and leaders that come
through his writings and poetry reflect that inquiry. He would come to
embrace different religious philosophies, but what was common in his trust
was the possibility of guidance in alignment with his innermost sense of
Self informed by his conscience responding in synchronicity with natural
experiences.
Often we need a new level or direction of trust. Even In God we trust
printed on the dollars in my wallet may lose its meaning if this currency is
not available or one’s financial worth is negative, which affect many today
with the concentration of wealth in the pockets of the few. I remind myself
everyday with my mentor's Ten Words to the Creative Spirit to be
open to the guidance for whatever is a present challenge.
Give me Trust so no despair can grip my soul.
This is Ken Norton on the Scent Of Light. You can
contact me via Ken at KennethENorton.com. The Scent of Light episodes are
archived on the web at kennethenorton.com Thanks for listening.
Ken Norton earned his master's degree in Materials Science from Stanford
University as the Vietnam War was ending. During that time Ken served as the
personal assistant to a poet/sociologist Dr. William Hermanns as he prepared
his writings for publication, exposing Ken to not only the sciences but also
the humanities and comparative religion for making conscious and
conscionable choices.
Ken is a regular contributor to Radio Spotlight Magazine with his episodes
on the Scent of Light.
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