Jack of Harts

I’ve got a large family, and that means I’ve been to a lot of funerals. Most of them have been funerals, but some have been Celebrations of Life. And honestly, all of them have at least some aspect of a Celebration of Life. But I’ve never been to one either as long or as energetic as the Celebration of Life I saw yesterday.

The people who went to remember Charlie Kirk really were celebrating his life, and they started with the kind of evangelical hours-long worship service that my reserved Scandinavian family would never do. I just turned it on and listened to praise and worship music for hours and loved it. Pastors and other people came to speak, and it was great. A true Celebration of Life by people who have known him for a decade or more. And with tens of thousands in the stadium, more tens of thousands next door, and I was one of nearly one hundred thousand people watching just on the one stream I was logged into. I haven’t seen the full numbers yet, but they were saying millions at the time. I don’t know how much of that was them pumping up the numbers and how much of that was actual reporting they were getting in real time. I have no doubt we will get an answer or five on that question in the days ahead.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of the end of the event, when the actual politicians started talking. Some of them were better than others. Trump was amazingly funny with his self-deprecation, saying how Charlie would probably disapprove about his unwillingness to forgive. And while some were more forgiving than others, some of the speakers made certain to say that they were going to bring justice. My reserved Northern Minnesota upbringing wasn’t fully approving of all that, but I can see why a lot of people loved it. And his wife’s speech was amazing.

It was an amazing celebration in the end, filled with praise and worship and people telling stories about Charlie Kirk. It was good and it was beautiful, and I’m very happy I turned it on and watched it.