On this national day of mourning, I hope you will not think it presumptuous of me to share a few thoughts. We are all struggling not to make sense of this tragedy, which is impossible, but to understand what to do and how to be as people in response to these horrific events. We give blood and send relief donations. We seek consolation and guidance – in the Bible, in the thoughts of great statesmen like Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Churchill, and in the moral examples of spiritual leaders like Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama. We can also find help closer to home in the perennial wisdom that medicine itself has to offer.
