Somehow, I feel as if we’re all diminished by this sad news.  I will offer my prayers for them and their families tonight and this Sunday.

He was 50 and she was 62.

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Farrah Fawcett’s death was not unexpected as she’d been battling cancer for a long time.  That both happened on the same day is a remarkable coincidence.

I’m only 28.  Guess how old I felt waiting for MTV to knock off its usual line up and play some classic MJ videos… :/

But yeah, while it saddens me that MJ and Farah have passed on (Farah’s a bit too old school for me), as far as Michael Jackson is concerned, I think it got summed up best another blog I read when the blogger said he didn’t know quite what to feel given everything Michael’s been through. 

Slightly edited by elf.

Mainly I feel saddened, for a variety of complex reasons.

Somehow, I feel as if we’re all diminished by this sad news.

I think many feel the same way. Your choice of words gave me cause to read Donne’s meditation 17, and for that I am thankful.

I am sad for the deaths of both Farrah and Michael.  However, their fame does not differentiate them in the slightest from the deaths of my dear friend Gary who died last year at the age of 53, my girl friend from college Karen who died of cancer at the age of 32, and the many losses that we all have known over the years. 

Their deaths are publicized, that is all.

I hope both, and particularly Michael Jackson, find peace in the next Kingdom.  It seems to have eluded him here.

I wonder, exactly, how we are “all diminished,” according to several of the TI9 bloggers above. Dick

Farrah’s death was expected but still sad, of course. We girls all envied her hair and resented her now famous poster in just about every red-blooded American male’s home! MJ’s death really caught me off-guard. I grew up listening to the Jacksons, watching their cartoons, etc. Michael was about 6 years older than I. So, death starts coming for celebs of my generation, which is sobering.

Heh, the aerobics craze hit when I was in high school and we had to devise routines in groups for Phys. Ed. My group used MJ’s “Rock With You” for our routine. And “Thriller” hit the charts when I was in college. Suddenly, dances at the Student Union became a lot more fun.

Rest in eternal peace, Michael and Farrah. May your troubled soul be healed and made perfect, Michael.

Hi Richard Hoover:

RE: “I wonder, exactly, how we are “all diminished,” according to several of the TI9 bloggers above.”

I believe WoCoNation above referred to one of my favorite authors, who wrote the wonderful Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, on the occasion of a dire illness in which he believed—[and almost did]—that he would die.  You may be asking for something else, but just in case otherwise . . .

One of the meditations was upon hearing a bell tolling in the village as Donne lay on his sick bed—and he then reflected on the various meanings of bells, including the tolling of the bell when someone dies.  It is a gorgeous meditation, known for this striking passage, which hopefully explains what Cennydd and WoCoNation meant:

The bell doth toll for him, that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute, that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God.  Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises?  But who takes off his eye from a comet, when that breaks out? who bends not his ear to any bell, which upon any occasion rings?  But who can remove it from that bell, which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were;  any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

I can’t help—now that I’m on a roll—but mention that in the running for the most beautiful three sentences in the English language are these two, from the same meditation:

“The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does, belongs to all.  When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingraffed into that body, whereof I am a member.  And when she buries a man, that action concerns me; all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another . . . “

Sometimes I can’t help but cry over the beauty of certain passages from Beethoven or Rachmaninoff or Grieg, but that passage . . . it’s the same thing, only using words rather than notes for its language of the heart.

Sarah,
I love that Donne meditation, too. I based my mother’s eulogy on it, quoted several passages, and made sure that the church bells were rung when her body was brought into the church. It IS about continuity and how a death affects us all, especially as Christians.

I often think of my life as a soundtrack and MJ’s songs were prominent during some of the happiest days of my life. I truly hope he has found his eternal happiness.

The celebrity status of these otherwise very much far from perfect individuals is the only reason why we pause with their passing. I am reminded of an interview by Bill Moyers of the great historian Barbara Tuchman. I went and found the part pertaining to our loss as a nation of the concept of hero:

Tuchman - I was at a seminar some time ago, a few weeks ago, really, down at the Smithsonian. They held a conference or whatever on the subject of the hero, because it with the 50th anniversary of Superman. And I guess I should have realized that this was what it was about, tha the level would not be exactly my idea of a hero. And it certainly was not. It was quite wierd, what they considered heroes. The real hero of the discussion was this little girl who’d fallen down a well, and everybody was rescuing her. I mean, after all, she didn’t do anything to make herself a hero. She was just in the news. And other heroes they discussed were Elvis Presley and somebody called, which I had never heard of, the Mayflower Madam. Who was that?

Moyers - She was a woman who ran a brothel near my apartment in New York City.

Tuchman - Yes, but why was she a hero? I don’t know. But they were confusing, as I tried to say finally, standing up and getting totally fed up - that they were confusing - celebrity and notoriety with the word hero. Well, they said, this was pop heroes, pop culture. Since this is what public opinion takes as heroes, then that is what a hero should be.

Well, this discussion was really - it was really scary, this definition of hero. Fortunately, I had taken the precaution of looking up the word hero, according to the dictionary before I went down there. And one of the attributes of a hero, according to a dictionary, apart from being originally half-mortal and half-divine and performing deeds of valor was a person of nobility of purpose. And I quoted it in this seminar, which everybody thought was rather extraneous to the whole problem of Superman, etc. But the change in the recognition of the nature of a hero, compared to what you and I were brought up to consider a hero, was just as scary as the acceptance nowadays of the corruption of the moral sense.

Sarah- With all the respect that I have always had for you, I must nevertheless ask if M.J.‘s death “diminishes us” beyond, say, those of Gary and Karen, to which Bill C.  refers in #8.  That seems to be the issue raised: are we diminished more by Jackson’s death than by 99.9 per cent of the others? Best.  Dick

Thanks very much for that Tuchman quotation, robroy.  Jackson and Fawcett were not heroes , but rather celebrities.  In the case of Jackson, my reflections are of what he could have been and what, instead, he did with his life.  I would not be surprised if the autopsy reveals he died of the damage he did do his body, or perhaps of drug dosages designed to alleviate that damage.  Tragic, much like the other pop star Elvis and his death.  For Jackson, a sad ending to a sad life.  RIP, both.

RE: ” I must nevertheless ask if M.J.‘s death “diminishes us” beyond, say, those of Gary and Karen, to which Bill C.  refers in #8.”

Not at all.

But this thread was concerning Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, and so I referred to them in response to your question about “how we are “all diminished,” as Donne mentions, concerning “any man’s death.”

I had thought your question was a serious one, and didn’t mean to offend in my quoting of Donne.  I didn’t realize that you were not asking a real question about how we are all diminished, but were instead making the point that the death of Jackson and Fawcett should not be noticed or acknowledged more than another’s.

RobRoy, just to be clear, in case someone thinks otherwise, in no way do I think of Jackson or Fawcett as a hero.  I kind of doubt anyone else here does either—but I could be wrong.  I’m just making that clear in case somehow my sadness for these two means that I’ve granted them hero status.

RE: “The celebrity status of these otherwise very much far from perfect individuals is the only reason why we pause with their passing.”

But isn’t that sort of an obvious assertion?  I mean—had I not known of my grandmother’s life—also a “very much far from perfect individual”—I wouldn’t have paused with her passing either.

I met Diane Knippers precisely one time—and when she died I certainly paused with her passing.  Don’t we generally pause with the passing of those whose lives somehow touched ours, even if not in a positive way?  And celebrities, whether scandalous or righteous do often intersect with our lives and build a web of connections and memories and associations.  I’ll confess that it’s hard for a certain Madonna song not to catapult me back to teenagedom.  ; > )

I had thought this thread was like any other obituary notice at T19 . . . fellow human beings pause for a moment of reflection and introspection and sorrow not only, sometimes, for a person’s death, but for the details of their lives.  And as approximately 6700 people died today in the US, it is hard to pause for the passing of all in general.  Besides, I prefer the specific in such things, rather than the general.

Rather than my turning this thread into a debate on whether two people are worthy to have a pause with their passing or which person’s death is or is not more diminishing to the island than another—or even the equality of all deaths and how nobody should be acknowledged more than another—I’ll move on.

Maybe turn on some Grieg . . . played by Rubinstein . . . or something.

Cheerio and good night.

Michael Jackson was a troubled soul for a very long time.  My cousin, who was a dancer in some of the video things Jackson did in the Eighties, told me that even back then, Jackson would get these panic attacks where he would freak out.  Wherever he went, his handlers had to have an empty “panic room” set up for him so that if he had a panic attack they could put him in there and he would eventually calm down.

I am personally struggling to cope with the adulation MJ is getting. I find it rather sad that our society idolises fame and fortune to such an extent that it is willing to overlook the most deplorable things. People on message boards and in the media are now treating MJ as some sort of hero, when in fact his life was a very sorry tale.

Fact is he was a tragic, mentally unwell man who -most likely-abused children. Of course non of us can prove this but just look at his close freindship with McCaulery Culkin who then went off the rails and lost it big time. Consider how he always had a boy -OF A CERTAIN AGE- hang round with him, lavishing gifts on them. Worse he admitted to sharing a bed and shower with them. Finally he used his fortune to settle out of court- not the behaviour of an innocent man. As one who has seen first hand what child abuse does to people - we should not downplay its significance. On that evidence he would not have been left alone with my children.

THat said it is not our job to judge MJ and we should hope he finds forgiveness. I do pray he might RIP but I stand a long way off from finding it appropriate to celebrate his life despite his undoubted talent. He was a sick man in many senses and his early demise is, in many ways, indicative of that. Was he penitent? What did he do to merit the praise of society- music aside.

I am reminded of the death of Diana, when people gushed about her and totally ignored the death of Mother Teresa…..said a lot to me about our society.

Thank you rugbyplaying priest for writing what I needed to read!
And reading John Donne much the better way to order our thoughts
for this day.

[Comment deleted by Elf]

[Comment deleted by Elf - please do not test the Elves Larry]

[There are plenty of places to vent and to fulminate - this is not one of them.  We would ask that commenters be careful how they express themselves within the comment policy and with Christian charity - Elf]

Thomas Merton, I think it was, commented once that the real saints (“heroes” in this discussion) were those an outsider wouldn’t notice, nor many of the more “notable” monks, as well. They did the laundry, worked the fields, cleaned bathrooms, and so on. The Fisherfolk had a song back in the day: Pulling the weeds, Lord, pulling the weeds. Living for your glory, pulling the weeds.

In a media age, we note fame and confuse it with glory. The former is ultimately a selfish thing: like Canon Harmon, these two passing leave me feeling a bit older. That’s about me, though, not about the deceased.

I have some thoughts on the how we relate to Jesus and how we relate to Celbrities at the Deacon’s Slant.

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

I disagreed with many of both of their actions but by all accounts, the deaths are beyond sad.  My prayers are with their families…