An Earth Day and Mourning the Pope Preview: A Dance to Heal the World

Ekaterina Pokrovsky/AdobeStock

PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

“We are faced not with 2 separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental.” - Pope Francis

“I think it’s essential if we’re going to survive, if we’re going to remember how to treat the earth” - Sharon Bridgforth, dramaturge for Antaranga¹

Today, Pope Francis just passed away, the day after Easter. As the leader of Catholicism, he emphasized the connection and protection of the poor and of the earth. Last Thursday night, the day before Good Friday, my wife and I attended a dance of destruction and resurrection. With Earth Day coming tomorrow, I will try to cover more of the mental health and earth health concerns of Pope Francis as he is mourned.

The dance was at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in the small town of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. It was the Ananya Dance Theatre out of St. Paul, Minnesota with their new piece, “Antaranga: Between You and Me.” The group is a Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOPC) feminist ensemble. The dance is modernized traditional Indian dance of great stamina, interplay, and expressiveness. Lynn Wilcox in her dance writing in August 2024, poetically described it and the ever present need to rise together from tragedy²:

“Find my synchronicity

Make it yours

Follow the path

Follow each other

Find the crevice

Reach & reach &

Rise

Be fierce & never

Still

Let our lines

Blurrrrrrr”

This new piece began development right after the October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel by Hamas and the ensuing and still ongoing war. It begins with what seems to be a devastated ecological world from some catastrophe, where the characters are starving and have lost empathy in becoming disconnected. Think of the combined polycrisis ravages of social media addiction, climate instability, and the poor.

However, some survive who have superior connecting and loving powers, not only for humans, but plants and animals. As they journey together as “fellow travelers,” they forge the connections which may begin to heal the world.

The piece is designed to be a metaphor for our times. As choreographer and artistic director Ananya Chatterjea said³:

“It is my hope that the metaphoric journeys of these archetypal characters, as they grow into their full strength and community, offer patterns for negotiating our future.”

Archetypes such as “the (wounded) caregiver” connect with psychiatry in the Jungian concept of archetypes, our negative shadows, and collective unconscious. Jung thought that psychiatrists were wounded healers, with the potential to use our vulnerable psychological wounds for empathy, compassion, and the healing of others.

A related kind of mythology exists in Jewish mysticism. The vessels of divine light have been broken, and it is up to us to put them back together, as say happened in the real world “Night of Broken Glass” in November 1938 when shattered glass from broken store windows littered the street. Positively, Germany has reformed after losing the war.

It is also Jewishly thought that there are always 36 unknown righteous people in the world who hold it together. I think I may know one. Perhaps some of these 36 are represented by the dancers.

In the middle of the dance, we see such broken and shattered mirrored glass shards, reflecting the world’s brokenness back upon the dancers and ourselves in the audience. That feels like our challenge after the dancers finally and heroically reach a world of honey: sweet, viscous, and slippery. At the end, the audience jumped up in a standing ovation and joined the company in a collective dance of transformative joy, just as we must look forward to in our everyday lives.

Although the company has been in existence 20 years and devoted to social justice, it represents what the current government administration wants to eliminate. It is the kind of artistic and cultural creativity that has been reflected in our national John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, as well as the more general National Endowment for the Arts, but is now in danger of funding cuts and a new conservative political agenda reminiscent of Stalinist Russia.

These arts are not only for entertainment, but at their best present pictures of our upcoming and current world which is hard to grasp in other ways. The heroic journey goes from “Before the Conflagration to the World of Shadows to Mirror World and to Honey.” If you think their message is only metaphor or science fiction, just read the Opinion article by Ross Douthat in the April 19 New York Times: “An Age of Extinction Is Coming. Here’s How to Survive.”⁴

The use of arts in psychiatry has been a healing and therapeutic tool of care, though unfortunately decimated over the years by cuts in psychiatric funding. Now those arts are also in danger in society by the cuts in DEI and social justice-oriented productions. Just between you and me, we must find ways to stop that.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.

References

1. Regan S. In Ananya Dance’s ‘Antaranga,’ women pave a path for a better world. The Minnesota Star Tribune. September 23, 2024. Accessed April 21, 2025. https://www.startribune.com/in-ananya-dances-antaranga-women-pave-a-path-for-a-better-world/601150084

2. Wilcox L. Reflections on "Antaranga: Between You and Me". Potential Poems Substack. August 2024. Accessed April 21, 2025. https://potentialpoems.substack.com/p/reflections-on-antaranga-between?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

3. ANTARANGA: Between You and Me. John Michael Kohler Arts Center. Accessed April 21, 2025. https://www.jmkac.org/residencies/antaranga-between-you-and-me/

4. Douthat R. An age of extinction is coming. Here’s how to survive. New York Times. April 19, 2025. Accessed April 21, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/19/opinion/extinction-technology-culture.html