The holiness of Dolly Parton

Like millions of others, I found myself surprisingly saddened, even to the point of tears, by the death of Dolly Parton.

Of course, like those same millions of people, I was a huge fan of this woman with an outsized musical talent. She was a regular voice on the radio from my earliest years; I vividly remember eating cereal as a 13-year-old on a school morning and hearing her plaintive cri de coeur, “Jolene,” on the pink, plug-in, Bakelite radio that sat atop  our kitchen counter. Around that time, I also remember catching her on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson, when I would kiss my parents good night, as they sat propped up in bed watching Johnny and Dolly.

Dolly was a firm fixture in pop culture throughout my teenage years with tuneful hits like “I Will Always Love You” and “Here You Come Again” in the 1970s. And a few years later, “9 to 5” (the film but even more the song) summed up a whole era of office work when I was working in an office myself. 

Her gossamer voice spoke, or sang, for itself; but growing up, I was only dimly aware of her prodigious  writing talent: she composed over 3,000 songs, many of them covered by other artists. And I enjoyed her sunny disposition and, especially, her confidently pushing back against people who would reduce her to a cartoon. (See her gently demolish Barbara Walters’ trademark “tough questions” with a smile.) She had a way with words too, which could rival Oscar Wilde: “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap” is one of my favorite lines that let you know she was in on the joke.

But only later in life did I become aware of her tremendous charity and big heart: giving away thousands of books through her “Imagination Library” to children in need (and babies: I love the idea of babies getting free books); offering charity to the people in Sevier County, Tenn., her hometown; quietly helping a struggling singer or artist or writer or anyone; and being an early supporter of the L.G.B.T.Q. community, when that could prove deeply unpopular.

The universal mourning, I think, comes from that last quality, which you could call charity or compassion and that I will call holiness. Having read a few dozen retrospectives, what becomes obvious is a deep Christian faith that led to tremendous kindness and charity, usually behind the scenes. So I think one of the reasons that we mourn her so much is that holiness is naturally appealing.

And that reminds me of someone else.

She would resist the comparisons, of course, but think of how often we find Jesus being pursued by crowds. In the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark, for example, we read of Jesus’s “fame” spreading throughout Galilee, and crowds waiting at his door in Capernaum. Later he proves so popular that he has to “withdraw” from the crowds.

It’s not just the healing that people wanted from Jesus. It was the innate, often unconscious, desire to be near holiness: to be near compassion, near acceptance, basically, near love. This is one reason people gravitated towards people like St. John Paul II, St. Teresa of Calcutta and Pope Francis. Holiness calls to us. It’s a quality of the divine and is one way that God draws us closer.

I think we saw in Dolly Parton something more than talent, something more than wit and something more than even charity; we saw holiness.

Thank you, Dolly, for helping me to see what it means to be a Christian. May you rest in peace with the God you loved, honored and served so well.