One of the loveliest stories I have heard about the late Dolly Parton relates to her childhood in Tennessee. In an interview she described how she discovered her trademark flamboyant and confident style. She lived with her parents and siblings in a small cabin in the Great Smokey mountains. She recalls one day going into town with her mother and there encountering a woman with big blonde hair, red lips, high heels and large breasts. Her mother described the woman unflatteringly as a ‘tramp’ but Dolly said she thought she was beautiful. She wanted to look like that.
I love this story. The appeal for me is the way Dolly took that which the world labelled ‘tramp’ and in her own life transformed it into something truly extraordinary and beautiful and, yes, faithful. It is perfectly Biblical. The stuff of Christ and of holiness.
It is said that you don’t find out what people think of someone until they die. It’s also considered bad form to criticise the dead. So you might expect nice things to be said after a life has ended. Or, at worst, silence. But the degree of love and admiration that met the death of Dolly Parton last week has been quite phenomenal. Praise of her has not been universal but it almost has. Even the Royal Family caught the mood and got involved. She was truly loved. Adored even.
I’ve always been a bit of a fan – but I didn’t know much about the extent or depth of her humanitarian work until this last week. When my kids were little we used to listen to her in the car – can’t beat a bit of ‘Nine to Five’ or ‘Jolene’ on the school run. But, full disclosure here, we also listened to Tammy Wynette and Celine Dion. I knew she had a reputation for generosity, using her wealth to help others, but only recently grasped the incredible extent of it. I admired her support of the gay and trans community, because that could have cost her dearly in the conservative ‘Country’ world she inhabited. I loved her droll sense of humour (see left) which maybe made it easier for her to get away with saying things others might not have felt they could. But it took a while for the introvert in me to really grasp the extent to which her over the top look was a tribute to and a celebration of the freedom in God she embraced.
A few comments in these last few days have really made me pay attention to her legacy. One social media reflection said simply ‘I’d feel so much differently about Christianity if more Christians were like Dolly Parton’. Another said that if Christians were like Dolly, he might go to church. Were these fair comments? Probably not. Understandable? I think so.
These comments and others like them remind me of something Gandhi, a Hindu, said about Christianity and Christians. He said: ‘I know of no one who has done more for humanity than Jesus. In fact, there is nothing wrong with Christianity … The trouble is with you Christians. You do not begin to live up to your own teachings’. Gandhi was so filled with respect and admiration for the person of Jesus, and considered him such a great teacher, that the behaviour of some Christians truly disappointed him. He advised Hindus that their study would be incomplete without a study of Jesus’ life and message.
Too often we depend on people of good faith who are not Christians to hold up a mirror to us and remind us who we really are, who Jesus calls us to be. What these people on social media were saying, what Gandhi was saying, is simply that Christians have not always lived up to the faith we profess. We have not been holy as our Father in heaven is holy. We need people to remind us of what real holiness looks like, to point to Jesus, the Word of God, and to his kingdom of love and grace. It’s all around us but, blinded by the injustice and cruelty and suffering so many of us plough through every day, we can’t see it – it needs to be pointed out to us. Look here, here is Jesus at work; look over there – there is the Kingdom of God in action. Here’s a glimpse of the light, of what goodness looks like. Follow it. This is the work of saints.
Because the people who remind us where to seek the light of God – they are the saints of our time. We just don’t expect them to look like Dolly.
In traditional Christian belief, a saint is a person who is recognized by the church as having this exceptional degree of holiness, because of their actions, their teachings, their martyrdom (by which I mean witness but which is a word usually associated with death). And we’re indeed inclined with our modern imagination to think of a saint as some medieval figure staring off into the middle distance in a stained glass window in a quiet and beautiful church somewhere. They may present as somehow remote from the world, garlanded with a halo. Even Jesus as an infant is often seen in icons with a halo. A saintly toddler! I guess Mary might have had something to say about that.
Holiness is about engaging, not withdrawing. Like God, it is in its essence relational.
St Peter? Lived a long time ago, long beard, flowing robes, devoted to Jesus, died a gruesome death. St Stephen? Not so old, but lived a long time ago, flowing robes, devoted to Jesus, died a gruesome death. And so on. These icons of our Christian story deserve our love and respect, but we mustn’t get into the way of thinking their witness is a bygone story and beyond our mortal aspirations. Saints can seem untouched and untouchable. A light that burns so brightly it must burn out quickly and tragically. And yet, and here’s the rub, we are all called to be holy, All of us. In Leviticus God charges the nation of Israel to be holy as he is holy. Significantly the charge God gives to be holy is in the context of many, many rules on how to live in community with each other, with animals, with the land and the wider created order.
Holiness is specifically – and this is the point – set in the content of our relationships. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells his followers to be perfect as their father in heaven is perfect. This command too is set in the context of guidance on social conduct – in what is known as the ‘hard’ teachings murder, hating, lying, oath-taking, forgiveness, adultery and so on. Holiness is set specifically in the context how to live in relationship with God, with creation, with one another. Holiness exists as relationship with God and God’s world. Holiness is about engaging, not withdrawing. Like God, it is in its essence relational.
We can be tempted to think of holiness in terms of personal devotion – reading the bible, prayer life, quiet time, alms giving, our communal worship. They all matter – they truly do. They are the shape of holiness; they are there to enable holiness, to enable connection with God. But they are not the thing itself.
Holiness is what flows from that connection – when love flows through us to a world beyond us. Holiness comes when human love responds to divine love. Holiness comes from an authentic relationship with God and God’s creation – nothing more, nothing less. I’ll go further – one cannot possibly be holy, one cannot be a saint, in isolation. If I try to do that the danger is that even personal holiness can just be something else to do with me, about me. About my salvation. Holiness then becomes selfish, self-absorbed.
Holiness must look beyond itself in order to be itself. The Pharisees were considered holy and they practiced a categorical apartness; in the story of the Good Samaritan their holiness manifest itself in walking past the dying man, protecting their individual purity by not touching his unclean body. The Good Samaritan touched that bleeding and dirty man – saved him, saved the one who was his enemy – that was holiness. Love reaching beyond itself.
Holiness is about revealing in our life and deeds something of the self-giving nature of God. It is about getting our hands dirty. Nothing short of that.
Holiness is about revealing in our life and deeds something of the self-giving nature of God.
Some of the commentaries on Dolly Parton’s death that I follow didn’t really make reference to her faith. The News Agents podcast celebrated her ‘moral north star’ which was so attractive and forged in her childhood shaped itself by poverty. That was a fair comment but they did a disservice to her by failing to note that her life and work was shaped by her Christian faith. It drove her philanthropy, her application of her gifts and the wealth created, to the good of others, especially the vulnerable. She was who she was, all the evidence suggests, and she said as much, because of Jesus Christ.
She also said, “I always felt responsible to God that I was supposed to be doing something for God. I still feel like that, and I’m still doing it, trying to. Sinning all the way, but trying my best, and asking forgiveness seventy times seven.” She would never have described herself as a saint – she said as much. I guess she meant she stumbled, she swore a bit, she maybe hurt others – we all do – she got things wrong and tried again. The Bible is full of such people, Being a saint isn’t about being perfect; it’s about being perfectly, lovingly, generously human. I think she was. It is about setting a loving example. I believe she did.
Thank you for reading – I look forward to hearing your thoughts!