Jackson & Fawcett:

Pop culture lost two significant icons this past week. Michael Jackson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_jackson) and Farrah Fawcett (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farrah_Fawcett) have each left a legacy behind them that anyone above the age of 20 understands (to some degree).

I've heard quite a bit of chatter attempting to mitigate our nation's focus on these two iconoclasts. For many, our nation's mourning the loss of these pop-culture figures is a demonstration of shallowness. Surely there are better lives to remember; bigger situations that should command our attention; more compelling news to follow.

Of course that is true. I don't know anyone that would say Michael Jackson's death is as important as Iran's current political struggles...but yet they find themselves going through a sort of grieving...a sense of loss. Charlie's Angels wasn't even a good TV show....and yet Farrah Fawcett is deeply missed and grieved.

I think the grief and sense of loss is over the era and emotions that they represent. I'm 37 and grew up listening to M. Jackson and watching (sometimes) Charlie's Angels. When I remember those years - I realize just how old I am...how much the world has changed.....how much I over-romanticize the "good-old-days." It can become easy to get sucked into an emotional catharsis comparing then to now...longing for days gone by.

There is some good learning here on many levels.

1. We are all people who live in and through culture. Culture permeates our existence like air in our lungs. We have no choice - it simply is.
2. We all have markers - totem poles - memories that effectively embody or capture what that particular time was about.
3. Those markers take on an almost mythological value because of all they represent.
4. When our icons, markers, totems, etc... leave us (death, decay, change, etc..) we grieve the loss of what was....the familiar......security.

The poem I posted earlier asks God to "re-brand" us in Him. I like that idea. Not that brands are bad...or celebrities bad....but that we who follow Jesus are to be identified by something deeper and more profound than our "love and/or connection" to Princess Di, Michael Jackson, or all that they represent.

We operate in culture and I love it. We also live according to a reality that is separate from our ever-changing culture. We are in this world but not of this world.....