The Sabbath was when I could be.
By: Michael Jackson.
In one of our conversations together, my friend Rabbi Shmuley told me that he had asked some of his colleagues–-writers, thinkers, and artists-–to pen their reflections on the Sabbath. He then suggested that I write down my own thoughts on the subject, a project I found intriguing and timely due to the kamakailan death of Rose Fine, a Jewish woman who was my beloved childhood tutor and who traveled with me and my brothers when we were all in the Jackson Five.
Last Friday night I joined Rabbi Shmuley, his family, and their guests for the Sabbath hapunan at their home. What I found especially moving was when Shmuley and his wife placed their hands on the heads of their young children, and blessed them to grow to be like Abraham and Sarah, which I understand is an ancient Jewish tradition. This led me to reminisce about my own childhood, and what the Sabbath meant to me growing up.
When people see the telebisyon appearances I made when I was a little boy--8 or 9 years old and just starting off my lifelong music career--they see a little boy with a big smile. They assume that this little boy is smiling because he is joyous, that he is pag-awit his puso out because he is happy, and that he is dancing with an energy that never quits because he is carefree.
But while pag-awit and dancing were, and undoubtedly remain, some of my greatest joys, at that time what I wanted madami than anything else were the two things that make childhood the most wondrous years of life, namely, playtime and a feeling of freedom. The public at large has yet to really understand the pressures of childhood celebrity, which, while exciting, always exacts a very heavy price.
madami than anything, I wished to be a normal little boy. I wanted to build puno houses and go to roller-skating parties. But very early on, this became impossible. I had to accept that my childhood would be different than most others. But that's what always made me wonder what an ordinary childhood would be like.
There was one araw a week, however, that I was able to escape the stages of Hollywood and the crowds of the konsiyerto hall. That araw was the Sabbath. In all religions, the Sabbath is a araw that allows and requires the faithful to step away from the everyday and focus on the exceptional. I learned something about the Jewish Sabbath in particular early on from Rose, and my friend Shmuley further clarified for me how, on the Jewish Sabbath, the everyday life tasks of cooking dinner, grocery shopping, and mowing the lawn are forbidden so that humanity may make the ordinary extraordinary and the natural miraculous. Even things like shopping or turning on lights are forbidden. On this day, the Sabbath, everyone in the world gets to stop being ordinary.
But what I wanted madami than anything was to be ordinary. So, in my world, the Sabbath was the araw I was able to step away from my unique life and glimpse the everyday.
Sundays were my araw for "Pioneering," the term used for the missionary work that Jehovah's Witnesses do. We would spend the araw in the suburbs of Southern California, going door to door or making the rounds of a shopping mall, distributing our bantayan magazine. I continued my pioneering work for years and years after my career had been launched.
Up to 1991, the time of my Dangerous tour, I would don my disguise of fat suit, wig, beard, and glasses and head off to live in the land of everyday America, visiting shopping plazas and tract homes in the suburbs. I loved to set foot in all those houses and catch sight of the shag rugs and La-Z-Boy armchairs with kids playing Monopoly and grandmas baby-sitting and all those wonderfully ordinary and, to me,magical scenes of life. Many, I know, would argue that these things seem like no big deal. But to me they were positively fascinating.
The funny thing is, no adults ever suspected who this strange bearded man was. But the children, with their extra intuition, knew right away. Like the Pied Piper of Hamlin, I would find myself trailed sa pamamagitan ng eight or nine children sa pamamagitan ng my segundo round of the shopping mall. They would follow and whisper and giggle, but they wouldn't reveal my secret to their parents. They were my little aides. Hey, maybe you bought a magazine from me. Now you're wondering, right?
Sundays were sacred for two other reasons as I was growing up. They were both the araw that I attended church and the araw that I spent rehearsing my hardest. This may seem against the idea of "rest on the Sabbath," but it was the most sacred way I could spend my time: developing the talents that God gave me. The best way I can imagine to ipakita my thanks is to make the very most of the gift that God gave me.
Church was a treat in its own right. It was again a chance for me to be "normal." The church elders treated me the same as they treated everyone else. And they never became annoyed on the days that the back of the church filled with reporters who had discovered my whereabouts. They tried to welcome them in. After all, even reporters are the children of God.
When I was young, my whole family attended church together in Indiana. As we grew older, this became difficult, and my remarkable and truly saintly mother would sometimes end up there on her own. When circumstances made it increasingly complex for me to attend, I was comforted sa pamamagitan ng the belief that God exists in my heart, and in music and in beauty, not only in a building. But I still miss the sense of community that I felt there--I miss the mga kaibigan and the people who treated me like I was simply one of them. Simply human. Sharing a araw with God.
When I became a father, my whole sense of God and the Sabbath was redefined. When I look into the eyes of my son, Prince, and daughter, Paris, I see miracles and I see beauty. Every single araw becomes the Sabbath. Having children allows me to enter this magical and holy world every moment of every day. I see God through my children. I speak to God through my children. I am humbled for the blessings He has ibingiay me.
There have been times in my life when I, like everyone, has had to wonder about God's existence. When Prince smiles, when Paris giggles, I have no doubts. Children are God's gift to us. No--they are madami than that--they are the very form of God's energy and creativity and love. He is to be found in their innocence, experienced in their playfulness.
My most precious days as a child were those Sundays when I was able to be free. That is what the Sabbath has always been for me. A araw of freedom. Now I find this freedom and magic every araw in my role as a father. The amazing thing is, we all have the ability to make every araw the precious araw that is the Sabbath. And we do this sa pamamagitan ng rededicating ourselves to the wonders of childhood. We do this sa pamamagitan ng giving over our entire puso and mind to the little people we call son and daughter. The time we spend with them is the Sabbath. The place we spend it is called Paradise.
