Thoughts on Celebrity Funerals / Jeff Heidkamp (Minneapolis, MN)

It's been interesting watching the reactions to Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett.  I grew up in a very conservative home, so I literally had no exposure to Jackson or Fawcett. 

I was at Costco yesterday and found a DVD with a bunch of Michael Jackson music videos for 8 bucks, and thought I'd pick it up (my wife nixed the boxed set of Charlie's Angels reruns, however).  The production is obviously dated, but I found that several of them were quite moving- particularly "Black or White" and "You are not alone".  At first they seem corny, but he seemed to have that knack for putting universal issues in very broad, approachable terms. 

What really interests me about the remarkable public response to these deaths is the degree to which both Jackson and Fawcett clearly connect to flawed aspects of humanity.  With no judgment intended, it is impossible to think about Jackson without thinking of the rather public personal unraveling in his later years.  And I don't think it takes Jesus to think that while there is something harmless about the sex-symbol status of a Farrah Fawcett, there is also something of misogyny at work in that persona.

And yet, both figures are beloved, and in a way that seems to me to reflect something good rather than bad about society.  I can't imagine not being moved by the image of Jackson's daughter weeping and proclaiming, against all public sentiment, that she loved her dad and was glad he was her father.  And while I know less about Fawcett, her courageous battle with cancer resounds with so many struggles I've watched even in my relatively short life.

Perhaps there is something important about faith in all this.  We look at Jackson and Fawcett and we see ourselves- yes, we are flawed.  Yes, there are things about us that are deeply embarrassing.  There are responses in us, sexual or otherwise, that at times we'd rather not admit to.  And yet we are capable of courage, beauty, love, and compassion, even in the midst of our flaws.

And, perhaps, this insistence is something of the reflection of the divine within us.  We will not be owned by our flaws, by our mistakes, or our personal demons.  We are made for something larger, something better, something infinite.  There is an almost messianic streak in some of Jackson's music- heal the world, we are the world, we don't want to be alone.  I wonder if some of that resonates in everyone.