A Time To Grieve

    I recently was blessed with the opportunity to attend a conference for media professionals seeking to transform the world into a better place through the use of their art... I felt mildly out of my league to put it lightly... but sat quietly in the back for a solid five hours absorbing as much inspiration as my brain could handle. Days later, I find my mind clinging to a brief presentation by artist, Chris Jordan.  Before you read any further, I implore you to look at his work... unbelievably resonant.
     The conference was a blur of mass information: consciousness, transformation, environmental conservation, mental illness, storytelling, money, books... a lot to absorb... however, i find myself dwelling on and retelling to my peers only one statement presented by Jordan.  In the words of Walt Whitman "Whatever satisfies the soul is truth."  If Jordan's one plea to the audience of a thousand has stuck with me so profoundly, I believe my soul has longed for this truth since its birth.  Simply put he implored... "our society needs to grieve."
    Jordan explained that after the Holocaust, German artists used their medium as a catharsis for decades, manifesting the shame of their society onto canvases, sheet music, screens, literature, every artistic medium.  German society acknowledged their human role in mass horriffic loss, looked inward at their conscience, and moved forward together as a united, grieving society.  Germany's people had experienced the darkness that shows itself when a society falls asleep... and in the aftermath of World War Two, they cried together and reflected on what they had done... even those who played a role only in their passivity.  Societies are made up of humans, bringing with it all the fear, insecurities, love, stories, and risk that human nature allows. Germany decided not to run from their dark foundations, and realized that acknowledging darkness in retrospect, is required to move forward into the possibility of light.
     Amidst the chaos that American society has found itself lost in, foundations must be questioned.  Our nation has seen its share of shame.  Violence, mass environmental disregard, unjust wars, enslavement of minorities, failure to see each other as humans, money put on a pedestal... we as humans, must acknowledge our missteps and their horrible consequences.  We cannot pass our shame onto future generations... seeing ourselves and our ancestors in a light of innocence.  We are humans, all of us, and projected innocence of our past does not amount to nobility.
     It is remarkably beneficial to grieve in solidarity with each other, as shared sorrow has the power to connect us in ways that saccharine small talk cannot. I am an eternal optimist for the future... however, the future does not come to us like an impending wall... we create it.  American society has to stop the movement for just a moment and decide that we WILL not be afraid of grief. We must acknowledge that we are a country made up of humans, all the dirt and gore that human implies.  We have made mass mistakes and continue making them every day.  It's time we grieve together for our slaughter of forests and animals.  It's time we grieve together for our acceptance of violence and oppression towards the vulnerable.  It's time we grieve for our failure to see money as nothing more than imaginary numbers on paper.  It's time we grieve for our time of passive sleep.  Grieving is nothing to be afraid of... and we have to do it together.