September Magazine

There’s a shortage of mental health professionals to work with troubled individuals before they decide to create a bomb or to blow themselves up. So, while we have become experts at reacting after the fact, we still have a long way to go in what I will call here public safety.

The Reverend Anne Saunders almost died when she was a child. Scarlet fever ran rampant, afflicting children everywhere, regardless of the color of their skin or how much money their families had. In the late 1930s, most children stayed home to heal, but Anne Saunders was so sick that her father wanted to take her to the hospital. He was told that if he took her to the hospital, she wouldn’t be alive when she got there.

David Brooks explores a richly textured landscape far beyond the usual scope of his Sunday NYT oped piece. “When I was young, I wanted to be knowledgeable, but as I got older, I wanted to be wise,” he states. Brooks is not alone in his quest seeking wisdom. There is a great need to see a person for who he or she really is inasmuch as there is a deeply heartfelt desire to be loved for who we really are.