When it comes to the circus that was Anna Nicole Smith, it was hard not to stand from the sidelines and look, lust, laugh, gawk, and mock. Now in her death, the frenzy will likely continue.Yet, God's Politics' Diana Butler Bass steps back from the ruckus and dares to make an important, though hardly considered, observation:
On most days, it probably would not have occurred to me to think about Anna Nicole’s death theologically. However, as it happened, (the day of Smith's death) was not “most days” in the Bass household. February 8 marks the anniversary of my daughter’s baptism. Nine years ago, we stood at the altar of Calvary Episcopal Church in Memphis, Tennessee, and claimed the promises of grace for our newborn, bathing Emma in the water of God. After the service, dozens of friends came to our house for a party and showered her with small gifts to remember her baptism. Every February 8 since, we have held a “baptism birthday” party for Emma. We light the baptism candle and read the baptism liturgy together...Read Bass' entire article here.
As the television blared every detail of Anna Nicole’s life and death, titillating viewers with lurid tales of her paramours and drug use, I could only think of those baptism vows. A woman dies. A mother leaves behind a child. She was not a joke; she was a wounded sister in the human family. Yet even in death, she is offered little respect for her innate dignity, her humanity.
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