‘We poured everything” into that house. Fran from Altadena was standing outside the remains of her home, destroyed by the most recent California fires, speaking to a reporter. “I don’t even know what I’m doing,” she said, apologetic for going through a litany of the people she cared for — her family, her neighbors, their community. “We haven’t even slept. We’re staying in a hotel. We have nowhere to go. We don’t know what we’re doing.” And yet, on one of her worst days, she has her priorities straight better than some of us — most of us? — do on our best days.
Fran appeared on social media the same day the funeral service for former president Jimmy Carter was held in Washington, D.C. At the service, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, as you may have heard or seen yourself, sang John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Talk of no Heaven and no religion seemed jarring in what is meant to be a Christian church, Washington’s National Cathedral. That natural response aside, the most charitable view of the song is that it’s an anthem for unity and peace. And apparently it was a favorite song of Carter’s, who was well known to be a professing Christian. But what the song extols ail us as Americans broadly and deeply: radical individualism, humanism, and a secular leaning.
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