On public grieving

On public grieving

Kathy Shaidle doesn’t mince words in her “obligatory Virginia Tech post”. While I wouldn’t have her courage or forthrightness to say it in exactly the same way, she makes a good point.

Please don’t indulge in godless modern paganism and set up homely, self-indulgent makeshift memorials with cheap flowers and teddy bears. Don’t hold hands and sing bad pop songs.

Go to church. That’s what it’s for. For centuries, people smarter than you and with more finely honed aesthetics worked on rituals that actually do what they’re supposed to do.

Those people who hung around outside the Palace after Princess Diana’s death looked like fools and you will too if you cave to the lure of cheap grace and post-modern superficiality. Those British mourners displayed as much gringe-inducing [sic], pan-generational learned helplessness as Katrina survivors, but their laziness and ignorance was spiritual.

Worse, you will still feel as empty as you did before, maybe more so, and wonder why.

Don’t make America look stupid and shallow to the whole world by Disneyfying your grief.

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