Happy mid-week! Don’t forget you have until Thursday eventide to leave a comment to get your name in the hat to win a copy of Kathleen Fuller’s upcoming release A Man of His Word. Check out contest instructions HERE.

You know I can’t let Michael Jackson’s memorial pass without comment. I know people are sick of MJ. Up until Tuesday, I was to. I’m totally ready for the world and Entertainment Tonight to move on. BUT…the memorial was good. Long? Yes. Indulgent? Absolutely. Perfect? Pretty darn close. I could go on and on about the logistics, the blend of art, entertainment, and funeral, but I won’t.  But I would like to offer up a defense for those of us who guiltlessly, proudly sat through two-and-a-half hours of one elaborate sendoff to a pop star who often wore things that resembled my eighth grade band uniform.

First of all, and I’ve rattled on about this before, but I am so drawn to things where community spontaneously emerges. It happened with the death of Princess Diana, for example. I was at my grandmother’s house sleeping on her horrible twin bed that some salesman obviously named Vinnie the Mooch sold to one unsuspecting widow. I went to bed that night knowing my grandmother would never let me sleep on the couch, but yet I couldn’t tell her her newest purchase was an abomination to my required eight hours. She comes in my room and tells me that Diana had been badly injured. We bonded over that awful thought. At her age, she cared about the news. At my age, I cared about this news. I went to bed with no faith in the mattress beneath me, but with absolute faith that ladies named Princess Diana did not die in car wrecks. When I woke up the next morning, my grandma gave me the news. Toaster Strudels would be for breakfast. And our Lady Di had not made it. More bonding ensued. And then we bonded with the world. Me, being the pop culture junkie, I watched and read about it for weeks and weeks. Since they were still talking about it and printing the stories, I was obviously not alone. Community. There were people out there I didn’t even know who felt the same way I did.

Then 9/11. I sat on the couch for a solid week. Not in a depressive state. I just couldn’t tear away from the news. The images. I had to see the updates. Hear the stories. See the people. Capture the moment in history. I was not alone. No one could look away. The world was united in this awful, nightmare of an event. All of us paranoid, all of us angry, all of us sad, all of us proud of our country and the everyday heroes who emerged. All of us touched to this event in some six-degrees-of-the Trade-Center sort of way. “I work with a guy whose brother…”  “My neighbor’s son…”  Community. Tribes. Village. And we were the village people, though weirdly connected.

Fast forward to 2009. Michael Jackson. Everyone knows him. Okay, maybe Kathleen’s Amish don’t, but besides them, those Middle Easterners who live in caves, and my friend’s crazy aunt Shirley, everyone knows him. And that connects us. When I see hundreds of people gathered in a hospital parking lot to dance and sing, like this is just how Americans act, I get interested. And happy. And when I see people gather around MJ’s childhood home to have a spontaneous party and vigil, I think there’s power there. And strange behavior like love, acceptance, and a tolerance for white boys who can’t dance that hearkens back to the days when families hung out together on their front porch and sang and picked after working the cotton. Like when people would pull over on the side of the road to help someone else and not do so knowing they had a seventy percent chance of turning up next in the obits.

I sat on my couch today and watched the memorial because I knew millions of other people were as well. And because it made me smile to see people gathered in churches, movie theaters, and a giant arena named after an office supply store, holding hands, singing together, and waving their arms in the air like it was church, no matter who saw. Many of those people probably hadn’t stepped foot in a church in years–ever–but today they got church. And they got compassion from being around people who understood them. Who got it that he was a hero to them. Who understood what it was like to hang on to “I’ll Be There” when your dad walked out. Or that you still get misty eyed when you hear “Heal the World” and recall at one time, before you became an accountant,  you wanted to save the world.  Or that you, too, had a sparkling glove until your brother threw it out the car window on that ride to Boise. Or you remember your first seventh grade dance and how you tried to show off by doing the moonwalk. Or that you too wonder what happens to a guy’s head when he goes from black to white and takes to wearing lipstick that really isn’t his shade.  Bonding. Connections. Similarities. It’s what makes it okay to reach out and sway with the people on either side of you, even though you wouldn’t so much as spare them a glance if you had been with them on an elevator the day before.

So I know there was a lot of “Omigosh, stop the MJ madness” today and in previous days. But whether he was saint or sinner, tragically misunderstood, or truly one bedazzled rhinestone away from insanity, I don’t know. He had a shady past, and that had people shaking their fingers in shame today. And even though I wouldn’t let my nephew so much as step on Michael Jackson’s doorstep, I really don’t care about any of that in his death. Because I loved almost every minute of today’s memorial. I sang out loud with Mariah and the choirs. Lionel Richie had me shaking my head and saying amen to his song “Jesus is Love.”  I hung on to every word Queen Latifah spoke on behalf of Maya Angelou, even though we all know poetry and I usually prefer not to intermingle. I spent the entire time discussing the event with strangers on Facebook and having a texting watch party with my equally enamored friend Sal, who was gonna die if they didn’t sing “We Are The World.”  When do you get a chance to do that? Never.  And yeah, I get the complaints that America is screwed up if we go all out for the death of a messed up and possibly criminal pop star, but not our war heroes and those who die for valiant or holy causes. But here’s where I disagree. Because I know today, for those of us not related to the man, was about… entertainment. It wasn’t idol worship or a slap in the face to obviously worthier heroes. It was just simple fun. And it made me smile. I got to see Stevie Wonder. I saw people raising their hands to the sky during a hymn. In a world where I cannot mention God in class, I saw CNN broadcast Christian worship. I saw Janet Jackson in clothes. That fit. I saw Jesus and God mentioned 100 times on national television, broadcasted on dozens of channels. All over the world. Even to those orange-suited prisoners in the Philippines. And I bonded with millions, who like me, just wanted to hear some good music, see some dancing, and spend some time with a world that was a little smaller. A little nicer. And a little more sparkly.

JEN