Last week’s headlines featured an unrelenting series of disasters which depressed me. First there were the nuclear-armed cruise missiles unknowingly flown across the country that got my attention. Those weapons sat on a plane on a runway at an Air Force base in North Dakota for 24 hours without crews noticing the warheads had been moved out of a secured shelter. The Secretary of the Air Force, Michael Wynne, said, “We would really like to ensure it never happens again.” I didn’t find this reassuring.

Then I discovered that the Afghan and Iraq War may cost $24 trillion; that number is so mind boggling I can’t even imagine it. Whatever its astronomic cost, it’s higher than the cost of Vietnam or Korea (when Bush invaded Iraq he estimated the War would cost no more than $50 billion. The Congressional Budget Office put it in perspective and estimated that $24 trillion is nearly $8,000 per man, woman and child in this country. I didn’t find this reassuring and plunged deeper.

Then it was the catastrophic fires in Southern California, stoked by ferocious Santa Ana winds. Firefighters said there was nothing they could do until the winds died down, and it seemed to me that even the heavens were conspiring to intensify my blues. In the midst of my disaster overload I read about acts of loving kindness, and that stopped my descent.

The fires created the greatest mass evacuation in the history of San Diego County. Tens of thousands of evacuees filled their football stadium where volunteers offered free massages; there were tables piled high with food, and palettes of apples and bananas. If you didn’t want to make your own sandwich, a volunteer would make one for you. There wasn’t a motel room in San Diego, so people in the community began posting “Free Room and Board” offers on Craigslist. David Paullson, the FEMA Administrator, said after visiting the stadium, “Nobody does disasters better than California.” Those images . . . massage, Starbucks, and beach music made me laugh and I knew I’d bottomed out . . . It never rains in Southern California.

Nothing helps me more than laughing, and nothing makes me giggle more than playing with my grandkids. They are so into the possibilities of every moment that they can’t be bothered by your limitations. Their expectation is that you will keep on amusing them forever. So I invited them out for brunch, to be followed by Olympic competitions. Our contests (which feature not only sports but pencil and quiz games) are staged in my library. These contests are quite intense, accompanied by unimaginable sound effects and lots of spontaneous frivolity.

There is no darkness that cannot be illuminated by the spark of love and acts of loving kindness.

The Department of Veterans Affairs reported that the number of Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans seeking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has jumped almost 70% in the last year (USA Today, 10/18/07). Of the 100,000 who have served, more than one out of seven have sought help for mental illness; half of those were diagnosed with PTSD.

PTSD has become quite popular in American psychiatry and in the public consciousness over the last 25 years. This diagnosis means that you’ve experienced a fear or horror that has sparked a cluster of 17 broad symptoms which include but are not limited to: intrusive thoughts, memory avoidance, and uncontrollable anxiety. The treatments of choice for this disease in the U.S. are potent drugs and counseling. The primary psychotherapy model emphasizes the importance of being re-exposed to the trauma until the repetition makes it loosen its hold on you.

PTSD, as it is diagnosed in the U.S., is unknown in other countries. After the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, American mental-health experts predicted a second tsunami of mental illness in the form of PTSD and sent trauma recovery experts over. But the PTSD epidemic never hit. It wasn’t the nightmares or flashbacks that most of the population was concerned with; their deepest psychological wounds were not even on the PTSD checklists. Their greatest wounds were the loss of one’s role in the group. As long as people found a community into which they could reintegrate, they healed.

Ken Miller, a psychology professor who studies such traumas says cultural beliefs affect how we manifest illness and how we heal. In NYT Magazine (6/12/07), Miller said, “Can you imagine our reactions if Mozambicans flew here after 9/11 and began telling survivors to engage in a certain set of mourning rituals in order to sever their relationships with their deceased family members.” And in East Africa, not talking about distressing experiences is a sign of maturity.

I have no quarrel with these veterans who have been traumatized; I would simply like us to reframe the system that defines them as mentally ill and requires them to be disabled and pill-dependent to be eligible for benefits. Here is a revolutionary idea for dealing with the PTSD epidemic: don’t hire more counselors; instead invest in communities. Have the VA fund local agencies who can bring together veterans, teachers, counselors, plumbers, electricians, dancers, doctors, fishermen— anybody who can help sufferers focus not just on their illness — and help them identify their strengths and inspire them to mobilize those gifts. Instead of an illness model that promotes drug dependency and disability, let’s move to a community mental health model that brings people together to let the spirit soar and not the illness.

Last Mask of the Authentic Healer

Nov 30– Dec. 2, 2007
Franciscan Renewal Center, Phoenix, AZ
PDF Flyer
“This unique, experiential workshop is designed for healers and
those who are interested in expanding their therapeutic repertoire.
In the language of ritual and ceremony, we will explore the many
ways you can magnify your healing power.
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I just got back from doing a workshop with my friend Patch Adams and the School for Designing a Society, at the University of Illinois. It was a five-day intensive on redesigning the health-care system and brought together people who had a stake in healthcare. There were participants from 11 countries including college students, medical and nursing students, clowns, nurses, doctors, patients, architects, scientists, public health activists, lawyers, musicians and artists.

All of them were creative out-of the-box thinkers who believe the critical element in the word healthcare is care. There were four days of presentations, exercises, clowning, making music and dancing. We spent late nights in pubs and ice cream parlors, talking about how we sustain our spirit and continue to be a voice in changing the way healthcare is delivered; it was intense.

The most transcendent moment, however, was during a clown trip to a nursing home. When you’re with Patch, you clown. He believes it’s the best way of connecting with people across cultures and helps alleviate human suffering. Patch visits the sickest, most isolated and devastated members of society and reaches out to touch them lovingly. We visited some nursing homes in downtown Urbana; I found myself on an Alzheimer’s unit, dancing with a demented lady in a bicycle helmet.

When the door to the locked Alzheimer’s unit was opened she greeted me. A toothless old woman in a sweat suit wearing a bicycle helmet and drooling, she tried to get out the door. Since I stood in the way, she began pushing me backwards, but she was small and so, instead, we stood there holding hands. In the background, I heard another clown playing Home on the Range on a mandolin and suddenly found myself dancing with her. Around we went, and she forgot about trying to get out. She smiled a beautiful, toothless grin, and said the only words I heard her utter the whole time we were together, “I can dance.”

In that transcendent moment I understood my design of healing healthcare; find somebody to dance with, and let them drool on you.

Last Mask of the Authentic Healer

Nov 30– Dec. 2, 2007
Franciscan Renewal Center, Phoenix, AZ
PDF Flyer
“This unique, experiential workshop is designed for healers and
those who are interested in expanding their therapeutic repertoire.
In the language of ritual and ceremony, we will explore the many
ways you can magnify your healing power.
MORE INFO and Registration

I spent last weekend in bed with my wife’s cousin Sandy, a 61-year-old woman with end-stage Parkinson’s disease. Her memory was failing, body shaking or sometimes frozen, and she was unable to swallow. Last week, Sandy refused a feeding tube, saying she did not want to be kept alive this way. It took her a week to waste away; the last five days she was completely unconscious.

I knew Sandy as a child at family gatherings, but got to know her well when she moved in with us as an 18-year-old. She came to Santa Fe after she’d been banished by her family; she never had an easy life. She stayed a couple of years, during which we came to love one another as real family.

She married her childhood sweetheart, a good, sweet man who shared her difficult history and has been devoted to her. We have shared the loss of parents and children. Elaine and I wanted to say goodbye to her while she was still alive, even if she was unconscious.

One is never quite prepared to see a loved one comatose, staring open-eyed, looking like a skeleton. For two days, her husband, daughter, Elaine and I lay by her side at one time or another. I told her stories, recalled incidents, and revisited the places we’d been. During this time, her beloved husband of 40 years comes in, looks at Sandy and says, “Isn’t she beautiful, look at her skin it’s still flawless.” I don’t know what he sees, because to me she looks like a Holocaust victim. But the longer I lay by her side, felt her warmth, the tremor of her aliveness and talked, the more beautiful she became. I saw the feisty teenager who hid behind the bushes with my daughters to ambush me with a garden hose; I saw the furious teenager who reamed me out after I locked her out for a curfew violation. I sang to her and watched her beloved Chihuahua jump on the bed to lick her hand and lips. In time, when I looked at her, I could hear her voice, feel her aliveness, and no longer saw her wasted body.

In that moment I came to peace with one of my greatest fears: dying ugly, approaching death mentally and physically incompetent, in helpless dependency. My fantasy has always been that like the Apache warrior of old who, when it was clear he could no longer keep up with the tribe, would walk away from the encampment to find a good place to die and sing his death song.

My love for her was so far beyond her wasted body that it made me think even in my decrepitude, I wouldn’t have to separate myself from those I love. The Zulu call such loving relationships “Uboontu”, which means “I am, because you are.” When you love someone that way, you always see them as beautiful.

On her last night, her husband and daughter painted her fingernails red, and I held her hand and we danced. I hummed the tunes, described the house on Spruce Street where we first danced, and laughed out loud. Even if my fate leaves me a wasted shell, and not the self-inflated warrior of my imagination, I want to say I’ll be happy beyond all words if I’m dancing with my Uboontu. I am because you are.

Last Mask of the Authentic Healer

Nov 30– Dec. 2, 2007
Franciscan Renewal Center, Phoenix, AZ
PDF Flyer
“This unique, experiential workshop is designed for healers and
those who are interested in expanding their therapeutic repertoire.
In the language of ritual and ceremony, we will explore the many
ways you can magnify your healing power.
MORE INFO and Registration