Author explores trauma of shattered home life

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This article was published 27/05/2023 (1224 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The first memory Arthur Boers has of his father was when, in a rage, his father threw a potted plant at his wife — Boers’ mother.

Only three, Boers saw his mother duck. The potted plant sailed past her, hitting the living room window and shattering it into hundreds of pieces.

When thinking about that experience, “What could I understand?” asked Boers, 66, in his book Shattered Glass: A Son Picks Up the Pieces of his Father’s Rage. (Eerdmans.) “No one told me that smashing windows is outlandish — a troubling, dangerous infraction of civility, family life, simple good sense, thrift, safety.”

In the book, called a “poignant, compelling, redemptive cry of the heart,” Boers describes growing up in a severe, strict and theologically conservative Christian Reformed home in southern Ontario.

The son of Dutch immigrants who had endured the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands during the Second World War, he was subject to his father’s deep-seated anger and violence — including, at age seven, being beaten by him into unconsciousness.

Although a successful businessman in the greenhouse industry, Boers’ father, who died in 1991, “struggled with anger and alcohol,” he said.

While never justifying his father’s actions, Boers came to understand how it was rooted in the Nazi occupation, when his father hid as a teenager to avoid being taken to a labour camp, and to his service in the Dutch army during that country’s colonial war in Indonesia in the late 1940s.

“Looking back, I’m sure he had PTSD,” he said, including from his participation in that “brutal” war. “For the rest of his life he would wake up at night sweat-drenched from nightmares.”

Knowing about his wartime experiences “makes me feel more compassion towards him,” he said, adding his dad was also beaten regularly by his own father. “Boers men beat Boers sons,” was a saying in the extended family.

The experience caused Boers to have his own share of trauma and troubles, including depression and mood swings. “I have childhood PTSD,” he shared.

His childhood experience also resulted in a distorted view of God — if people are treated harshly by their parents as children, and especially by their fathers, it can result in a view of God as angry, hostile and vengeful, always looking for chances to punish those who step out of line.

“My negative image of God was the same as my image of my father, writ large,” Boers said. “Just as I was scared of my father, I was scared of God.”

But the book isn’t only about that trauma. It’s also about redemption as Boers found a new image of God as a loving and kind parent. In this, he was aided by mentors like Henri Nouwen and Eugene Peterson, who showed him love and support as Christlike father figures.

The book also is about his calling to be a pastor in both Mennonite and Anglican churches, including becoming an Anglican priest, along with teaching pastoral theology and leadership at seminaries in the U.S. and Canada.

As a pastor, those childhood experiences reminded him that “people have a lot of hidden pain,” said Boers, who wrote Never Call Them Jerks (InterVarsity Press), a book for clergy about dealing with difficult parishioners.

“You never know what kinds of things people have endured in their lives,” he said, “what kinds of sorrows they have had in life.”

For Boers, that means clergy always need to be compassionate and trauma informed. “You never know where the anger is coming from” he said, recounting the old adage about being kind because “everyone is fighting a great battle.”

It also means clergy should give themselves “permission to admit things can be difficult in their own lives,” he said. That includes being honest with their congregations about their own challenges.

“Not every pastor can write a book about their trauma, but they should be able to acknowledge their vulnerabilities,” he said. “That can allow their members to feel they can talk about their vulnerabilities, too.”

Writing the book was therapeutic, although painful. “But it led to healing, even if it was a hard way to go,” Boers said, adding he still deals with the pain of his childhood “every day.” But it also caused the father of two grown children to decide to stop the chain of violence with him and to look for ways to alleviate it in others — to be a “wounded healer.”

Boers, the author of six other books, including The Way is Made by Walking: A Pilgrimage Along the Camino de Santiago, will be speaking about his new book May 31, 7 p.m. at Common Word bookstore at Canadian Mennonite University, and on June 1, 7:30 p.m. at St. Margaret’s Anglican Church, 160 Ethelbert St. He will also speak at the evening service at St. Margaret’s on June 4, 7 p.m.

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