I'm Still Recovering

I'm still recovering from yesterday's memorial service for MJ, but I was so elated to see the Jackson family and the African American community as a whole offer definite push back to the prevailing media portrayals of Michael as a troubled celebrity whose fame was in decline. Yes, he may have accumulated a great deal of debt; yes, many in the white mainstream believed that he had committed criminal acts against (at least) two young boys, and yes, this same mainstream society was itself disturbed by the results of his cosmetic surgeries. But those of us who love him, and love his music and his spirit, united yesterday to pay tribute to his creativity and his generosity to all people, but particularly to children in Africa and around the world, and his determination to celebrate life despite the tensions created by the pressures of celebrity. Kenny Ortega and organizers of the ceremony, along with those many famous others who performed and spoke yesterday provided an immensely powerful message: that Michael as an individual and as an artist, and the Jackson family as a whole, remained grounded in the still fertile spiritual traditions of black religious worship, from the first hymn performed by the Andrae Crouch Choir, "Soon and Very Soon," and the first invocation given by Reverend Lucius Smith, through Reverend Al Sharpton's very emotional eulogy, to the final blessing Smith gave before sending us all back out into the larger world to continue celebrating our blackness. We heard the Church say Amen in Lionel Ritchie's performance of "Jesus Is Love," in Jennifer Hudson's version of "Will You Be There," and in the concluding performance of the song that Michael and Lionel wrote together, "We Are The World." We felt not only the deep mourning of Mariah Carey, Usher, Jermaine and Marlon Jackson, but also their own rich beginnings as successful and loved entertainers in the black church tradition, in the places where they first performed and first also experienced the beauty and power of singing for others. We heard Church when Martin Luther King III and Bernice King addressed the congregation, and we saw the political legacy of the black church recognized in Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee's announcement of the resolution to be introduced in the U.S. Congress by the Congressional Black Caucus. We saw people of many different backgrounds share in that rich tradition as they also performed in dance and song throughout the service, giving evidence that not only black people found inspiration in Michael's example. In addition, and closely connected to that spiritual awareness of a community and a tradition that historically has helped, and continues today to help, people of African descent survive political, social and economic inequality and oppression, we were reminded of the personal fulfillment Michael found as a father to the three children who are now being raised by his mother Katherine when we heard Paris Katherine speak about missing her Daddy. I will be singing along to his and his brothers' songs in my car and in the shower for the rest of the month, for the rest of my life, celebrating the beauty and power of black spirituality and the richness of African Diasporic culture.