On a sunny morning in June, 2003, two days after my 37th birthday, I had an unsolicited, unexpected and unbelievable encounter with God. Put more simply, without asking, praying or seeking, I woke up one morning a churchgoing agnostic (following years of rabid atheism) and put my head to the pillow that night a newly minted, highly unlikely Christian. I wish I could say my radical conversion happened gently…all harps and angels and light…but that was not my experience. On the contrary, I was nauseous, had trouble catching my breath and felt like there was a 500 lb weight on my chest. I thought I was having a heart attack. But here’s the kicker. A lifelong skeptic who was, at times, militantly anti-Christian, I suddenly believed without hesitation that the Christian story that I had frequently railed against was true. I couldn’t have told you what that story was, but I knew without the luxury of details that it was all true. Now this might make some sense if I needed a spiritual experience. Say if I was fighting a serious illness or was down on my luck financially-or maybe if I were struggling with a painful loss or trying to navigate a tough personal challenge. But I didn’t need a spiritual experience. As far as I was concerned, my life was perfect. I was a successful PR executive making a healthy six-figure salary, married to my best friend who also made a six-figure salary. We had three healthy, happy kids and lived in our dream home about an hour northwest of New York City. I was seven years sober and had faced down most of my major issues/resentments in a program of recovery. Life was pretty good. Yet, there I was-sick, crying and convinced that something beyond my comprehension had happened to me. No one was more surprised than my husband Martin, who was there with me when it happened. He had been a Christian since he was a kid and knew the extent to which I thought the whole Christian thing was a contrivance. I had fought vigorously over coffee and cigarettes to convince him that religion had been created by leaders to control the masses or by weak individuals to soften the blow of their incapacity to deal with their day to day lives. He never did come around to my way of thinking, but I figured if he could overlook the fact that I was an alcoholic single mother with two kids and marry me, I could overlook the fact that he was a Christian and marry him. So here I was, convinced that this Christian thing was true, with no idea what that really meant. What followed was years of learning that is discussed in much greater detail in a book that I am writing. Suffice it to say that I learned that following Christ and living by the dictates of the Holy Spirit does not always add up to the overly simplified “join the team and your life will be wonderful” message that I have heard so frequently. As a matter of fact, the years since that day in 2003 have been some of the most difficult I have ever encountered. We have lost more than you can imagine-money, possessions, prestige and people. And yet, I would not turn back for the world. So, now I’m trying to make sense of this new life. Attempting to go beyond predictable platitudes in order to allow this change of heart to lead to a genuine change of life. This blog will chronicle the day to day joys and trials of my journey and raise some key questions and challenges I face as I find my place in a faith that still confounds me.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Michael Jackson. How can you help it? His life and death and music is all over the media. It has eclipsed news about Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Between Michael, Farrah, Ed, Billy and the deaths of other high-profile people in recent weeks, the recession, billions being spent on the economic stimulus package and the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on prisoners seems like yesterday’s news. Celebrity deaths, it seems, is in fashion, replete with memorial t-shirts and swarming fans in it as much for being part of history and seeing a great show as they are for mourning the death of a human being.
That’s right, Michael Jackson was, in fact, a human being. Talented? Yes. Tortured? Yes. Broken? Deeply. But he was, despite our desire to make him something more, fully and entirely human.
I have to disclose here that I have never been star struck. Even as a young girl I wasn’t one to put posters of dreamy Teen-Beat guys on my walls or try to get back stage passes to shows. I love good music or art or movies (I even love bad music, or art or movies), but I have always seen “famous” people as the ones who happened to get seen. Walk through a subway or park in New York City or go to Rosie’s Turn a piano bar in the Village where Broadway extras sing their hearts out between shifts waiting tables and tending bar and you’ll find people who are as talented as those who have top 40 hits. Their songs and art are as captivating as any million-dollar-budget show. That said, Michael Jackson was an extraordinary talent – one that shaped generations – and fact that cannot be ignored.
But, as both the entertainment and the “hard news” stations focus on his death – wrangling and speculating about what will happen to Michael’s kids and his fortune and what he did and did not do behind closed doors at the Neverland Ranch – the coverage has missed something that his sister Janet shared at the 2009 BET Awards Ceremony. Addressing the audience in what clearly appeared to be deep sorrow she said, “To you, Michael is an icon. To us, Michael is family and he will live forever in our hearts.”
To you Michael is an Icon. The words made me pause and ask myself, “An Icon of what?” Icon is defined most simply as “an image or a representation” of something. What is that “something” that he represented for you? How has that informed your response to his life and his death? What happens when we view someone as less than human, treating them like a representation rather than a person?
Makes me wonder how anyone receiving that kind of attention could ever feel seen at all.
posted July 7, 2009 at 9:54 am
Joan, Personally, I feel much like you do..well, almost exactly!
I myself have tried to figure out why, WHY?, has this hit me as hard as it seems to have..What I have come up with is this; that his music literally MOVES me..it brings me to a place that I can’t seem to otherwise.
With his earlier music, that place would be at home in Queens with my brothers. In those years, it was just “us”, a sibling ‘clan’, if you will, of 4, me as the eldest watching these two brothers just a smidge beneath me in age. The soft spoken mild manner of MJ was much like my brother that I lost just over a year ago. So, I have come to see that the earlier years of music bring me back to a special time in my life where I can hear and see my two brothers. Sometimes I have to turn off the radio or tv when I hear it as it is too profound and I may not be up to it emotionally when it comes on randomly as it does right now with the media.
The later years of music (80′s) bring me to a place of being a very young single mother of two daughters. They are fond memories, yet a struggle to find my place in a world that seemed to be all couples. For the most part, it is all pleasant and happy and dancing, as music has been and still is an integral part of my spirit and has carried through with my children, one a dancer, one a guitarist.
So, icon to what?..good question, but I think that answer will be different for everyone. None of this media attention has surprised me too much, except when I saw the ‘hard news” was covering it all as well. Then you realize that it is a business and I guess they must!lol.
On a more serious note, and in closing, I have to say that after losing 5 loved ones in a year and a half, two of them being a Mom and a brother, I continue as I still grief, to come up with the same thought…
For ME, It is all about WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND…that’s it!
what do we leave behind..what good have we left in this world?
And I guess to that I can also think of MJ.
Thanks for your provocative post!
Leanne