The Touch, The Feel of Patienthood

At Ft. Hood’s “Spiritual Fitness Center” , the therapeutic’s trying to change warrior culture one triumph at a time:

on the vast Army post cloaked in drab, Fort Hood’s new Spiritual Fitness Center offers color. Inside, sunlight filters through stained glass of lavender and blue. Candles are surrounded in dishes of polished stones and George Winston piano solos flow from speakers above.

“We like to call this place ‘listening and love,’ ” Lt. Col. Ira Houck, a chaplain, explained from deep in an overstuffed armchair, one week after the shootings left 13 people dead and dozens wounded.

If the concept sounds New Age, it is. The converted chapel in the heart of the newly christened Resiliency Campus offers a refuge for broken and distressed soldiers.

Yet Sgt. Matthew Spencer, a combat veteran who works as a greeter at the center, laughs when he says he and his buddies would never seek help here.

H/T: Matt Frost. Tocqueville would point out that the Ft. Hood psychologist who blames the military’s “macho culture” for reactions like Sgt. Spencer’s really means its honor culture.