Common Sense Reborn

Remembering Dolly

¹⁷Whaterver is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from GOD our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow. (James 1:17)

I have a friend from my previous line of work that constantly sends me breaking news articles. He seems to think I care about every celebrity that passes away, which for the most part, I do not. But when he sent me the breaking news that Dolly Parton had passed away on Tuesday, it literally took a gasp out of me. I have had my head buried in the sand for some current events. I was unaware that Dolly had been diagnosed with cancer, so the news came as a complete shock for me. And at just 80 years old, she seemed like she had a long life ahead of her. Like many of the social media pages I follow, I could think of at least one 80 year old I would have taken the news of their passing much better.

Like many in the world, I threw on the “This is Dolly Parton” playlist on my way home Tuesday evening. I have to admit, as much as I thought I was a fan of Dolly Parton, there were really only three songs she released that anchored that following. Those songs are the iconic “9 to 5“, “Islands in the Stream“, and “Jolene“. I appreciate that she wrote “I Will Always Love You”, but Whitney Houston’s rendition of this song was the one I grew up on. Many of Dolly’s older tracks are classic country music, which is not my fancy. However, I discovered new gems on Tuesday evening, including “Coat of Many Colors” and “My Tennessee Mountain Home”. That last one really pulled at my heart strings the next two days. Dolly has a special place in my heart because the two matriarchs my family lost last year were big fans of her music. I had included “9 to 5” and “Islands in the Stream” in my mother’s playlist for her Celebration of Life. I could not help but think of the excitement in Heaven as Dolly walked through those gates and pictured my mother and my wife’s grandmother being one of the ones to embrace Dolly with a warm hug, thanking her for the music and memories she helped create and for the life well lived.

What I discovered this week was what a huge influence this woman was. I was, frankly, completely unaware of her philanthropic work, including her “Imagination Library” which has donated over 300 million books to children around the world. Her faith was solid, she was ahead of her time in standing up for the LGBTQ community, famously telling Andy Warhol in a 1984 article for Interview magazine, “To me, people are people… I don’t judge people“. Dolly loved everyone, truly embodying the commandment from Jesus Christ to love our neighbors, all of them.

John Pavlovitz, who I have become a big fan of lately, quickly penned a post on his substack to rebuke the maga cult who was lifting up Dolly as one of their own. In his article titled, “No, MAGA, Dolly Was Not One Of You”, Pavlovitz wrote these powerful words:

“Unlike you, she loved without qualifiers, catches, caveats, or conditions. Her love did not come with strings or theological hoops or political litmus tests. In Dolly’s no one had to stand outside or prove their worth or earn her decency.” Click this hyperlink to read the entire article. I highly recommend it.

My family and I are extremely excited for October. Back in January, as my closest friends and I lingered in the parking lot of Bayside Community Church after my mother’s Celebration, we committed to finally putting a plan in place for a “Friends Reunion”. This trip is a rebirth of a short-lived tradition that had fizzled out two decades ago. During my senior year of high school, my closest friends and I had chosen to forgo the more popular Senior Trip and instead rented a cabin in the mountains of Franklin, TN. For three years in a row, we all made an annual trip back to the “Bearable Lodge” and then life happened, and for the next twenty-five years, we had never been able to get this group of friends back together. My mom’s passing brought us all together for one day, and we planted the seeds for a reunion trip this year. One of the wives in this group found an amazing Air B&B in Sevierville, TN. We had already planned a day at Dollywood, as many of us have never been. Now I have learned this week that this city is the birthplace of Dolly Parton, and on Wednesday, I saw news articles about the growing tribute to Dolly at the statue that sits in front of their historic courthouse. In another act that could only have been from God, two weeks prior while shopping at Wal-Mart (which I wrote about in my last post) my oldest daughter had picked out a “Dolly” t-shirt, with the plans to wear it when we went to Dollywood. However, with the icons passing, my daughter adorned this shirt on Wednesday in her honor. My office all wore pink on Wednesday, as a tribute to Dolly.

Dolly Parton is the type of Christian Jesus prayed for to carry His cross. She did it time and time again. Google “why Dolly Parton is the type of Christian every Christian should strive to be” and read AI’s summary of her radical love and acceptance of all people, her philanthropy, and her unapologetic faith in God. While she shot to stardom in classic country music, in her later years, she appeared on tracks across all genres. So many artists wanted Dolly’s iconic voice on their albums. But for me, my favorites will always be when she provided a remix to some of my favorite Christian tracks. for King & Country gave a heartfelt tribute to Dolly on their social media, writing “Your love for us was so unexpected, and your kindness and love for the world was extraordinary.” When she added her voice to their song, “God Only Knows“, she sings the chorus at the very end of the song, and her ‘matter-of-fact’ way of speaking the final line of that song is powerful. “There’s a kind of love that GOD only knows”. That is the kind of love Dolly Parton embodied and lived. A love without judgement. A love without boundaries. A love without conditions. A love for all people. A love for her neighbor, which included everyone.

I was going to share that song below, but last night, I watched another country star make a powerful statement about that same kind of love after he wrapped up his week of hosting “Jimmy Kimmel’s Late Show”. Jelly Roll’s opening monologue on Thursday night is one that everyone needs to watch. It is a powerful reminder of the type of Christian we are all called to be. You can watch it now by clicking the image below, and if, for some reason, the video is not available (I have noticed in some of my archived posts, these videos become “no longer available”), you can watch it by clicking here. God bless you all.