I am of the firm belief that every one of us carries something within that is marginalized: some piece of personal history or trait that has been, or that we wish would be, left behind or cast off—the emotional scars or shame left by an abusive mother, the malformed foot, a poor immigrant heritage…
This belief combined with Jung’s idea of the Collective Unconscious has led me to conclude that those whom who society considers or relegates to has cast off as “them” are, in reality, “us.” It has also inspired the creation of “Golden States of Grace: Prayers of the Disinherited.”
Even after working on this project for a cumulative seven years, I can’t deny the deep ambivalence I have towards organized religion, but I have found a way to look deeper into it and the questions it brings up, and to let it fuel me creatively. Even with the prevalence of mainline religious institutions and middle-class America continuing to exclude and even vilify those they view as beyond the pale – the addicts, the ill, the fallen, those – there are still reasons to be hopeful that we, as a society, can see beyond our religious tunnel vision.
If I have one singular hope for this body of work, it is that our collective eyes remain open long enough to simply acknowledge every human being’s need and right to come to some profound understanding about his or her own connection to a higher power. Be it in a prison cell or in the darkened corner of a small suburban chapel, in the end, “Golden States of Grace” is a study of otherness—the otherness out there, the otherness within each of us, the otherness that begs us to bind together as human beings to celebrate, contemplate, and find meaning in our lives.
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