|
Beloved Community,
Every August my family would drive from central Illinois to the Smokey Mountains of East Tennessee for a weeklong family vacation. Once we got to Dollywood I knew we were almost there.
I never thought I would shed tears over a celebrity’s passing, but yesterday I did. Then again, Dolly Parton wasn’t just a “celebrity.” She was a teacher and preacher, entrepreneur, humanitarian, advocate, feminist, and yes, she wasn’t too shabby of a singer, songwriter, and performer either. A saint among us.
She was, in so many ways, an evangelist (in the truest meaning of the word). Is there a better example of someone loving their neighbor? Sharing and showing the Good News of God’s love with everyone?
The outpouring of memories, shock, and gratitude spanned religious circles, political parties, and reached much farther than the mountains of her east Tennessee home, or even the U.S.
I think her death sparked such a collective grief because she truly represents the best of who we can be, especially as Christians. She embodied Christ’s generous, joyful, expansive love, and boy did that Divine light in her shine bright for the world to see (I think all those rhinestones might have helped it radiate a little farther). She saw that Divine spark in everyone. In her own words, “We’re all pieces of God and we all have that little God-light inside us…that’s how I accept everybody because I know that we’re all pieces of God.”
You’ve probably read the stories of the legacy of her impact: millions of books sent to children through her Imagination Library. A $1 million donation to COVID research that helped lead to the development of the Moderna vaccine. The many ways she stood with the LGBTQ community, especially those impacted by the AIDS epidemic. I hope you’ve read about how she invested in the people and children of Tennessee, including using her royalties from Whitney Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You” to support historically black neighborhoods in East Nashville. As the largest employer of Sevier County, Tennessee, she set an example of how workers should be treated. Long before celebrities made advocacy part of their public image, Dolly was singing about working women, poverty, injustice, and people the world too easily overlooked.
She once said, “I always ask God to work through me and let me be a light of some kind and help in this world.”
What a prayer. I hope her legacy invites us to recognize that Divine spark in ourselves, and look for it in everybody else. And then to use whatever gifts, resources, humor, compassion, creativity, and rhinestones we have to make that light shine a little brighter in this world.
In hope,
JV
| 
