We Should Talk More About Dying, Cause You Will
When folks use a famous funeral or celebrity death such as Rosalynn Carter’s to tell the world what they really think, believe them.
Mounting the pulpit at the Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church in Atlanta, Jason Carter explained of Rosalynn Carter, “My grandmother doesn’t need a eulogy; her life was a sermon.”
It’s a line that’s been used in countless memorial services and even more sermons, seminars, and motivational sayings because a great truth is delivered in a simple saying. Most folks have been to the funeral where the person laid out at the front becomes in death a sinless saint according to the words flowing over the casket and into the gathered mourners. If we are fortunate, we get to attend the celebration of life of someone who had far more to praise than the allotted time allows.
This service was the latter. Most tributes are not what Rosalynn Carter got, of course. A front row of all the living first ladies per the departed’s specific request, a former and the sitting President of The United States of America, Trisha Yearwood and Garth Brooks performing, live streaming to the world; while the mechanics of the tribute were familiar there is of course an elevated sense when it is someone as universally respected as Rosalynn Carter.
