A life's purpose
As we all know, yesterday we lost one of the truly good people of this world. The great tzaddik Dolly Parton passed away at the age of 80. The tributes came pouring forth. From Hillary Clinton. From Miley Cyrus. From Eminem. From ordinary people from all walks of life. They imagined Dolly reunited with her beloved husband, Carl. They imagined Dolly meeting in the afterlife with Whitney Houston and making celestial music. The grief was palpable and real. It was not feigned. It was not engendered by social media influence. It was a recognition that a great soul had passed on to that undiscovered country from whence no one has returned.
Why? Why did Dolly have such an almost-universal effect on people, on strangers who knew her only from media, from records, from film? What was the source of her power, of her influence? For she did have power and influence. Yet she never used it for her own aggrandizement.
You may have, on driving down our highways and byways—and to our overseas readers, this is a uniquely American thing—seen the billboards from the Foundation for a Better Life: i.e., the "pass it on" ad campaign. Of course, Dolly featured in one. And this was it:
I would bet that 99% of people who say something like this don't mean it, at least not fully. They may find the good in most people. But there will always be exceptions. Because humanity is a fallen race, and some people willingly choose to do evil. And the desire to redeem this fallen race crashes against the need for justice for the harm wrought. And I do not write this to call them hypocrites. They are not. They are human, and have conflicting priorities: empathy, and morality. And I am one of them. My default is to give people the benefit of the doubt. But that can end quickly if they offend my moral sense.
I don't know if Dolly was that. I doubt she was. When she says "find the good in everybody", she believes it. She means it from the depths of her soul. She is like Gandhi in this sense. Her Christian faith as she practiced it taught her that no human being is beyond redemption. That no mortal human is ever beyond God's loving grace and forgiveness.
But—and since I don't know, this is just my thought experiment—I would wager that the corollary to that belief to her was that a sinning human being needed to choose to be redeemed. He or she needed to choose to surrender and accept God's love and mercy. God stands ready, Their arms open, waiting to accept you back from the dark wood in which you were lost. It was a choice. It was always a choice. You can choose love and acceptance. Or you can choose to exile yourself.
She will, as she wrote, always love you. But she can't make you love yourself. She can't make you see yourself as a sacred and unique human being, worthy of all the goodness this wondrous world can offer. She will never abandon you and leave you with nowhere to return. As long as you live, she will have hope that you will accept the love which is your birthright. That you will reject the lies with which the world is too filled. But she cannot choose for you. She cannot force you. You are blessed and cursed with free will. You have to choose.
What was the source of her power? Her utter, open, and fulsome humanity. Her acceptance of you as you are. You are perfect as the God in which she so fervently believed created you. Whether you were gay. Whether you were trans. Whether you spoke a different language, or worshipped a different God, or worshipped no god at all. This is why hundreds of millions mourn. She was the best of us. But she never believed herself to be better than anyone. She was a saint. She was a tzaddik. She was a pīr. She was a bodhisattva. She was a human who believed in humanity, in the core goodness of human nature, when all evidence argued to the contrary.
This is why we mourn her loss.
But she is not lost. Her memory will live on. Her works will live on. Her legacy will live and expand. Her vision of humanity will laugh, and eat well, and grow strong. And the world will see how beautiful that vision is.
Rest in power. Your journey is done. Ours continue. Vese en paz. Shantih.
Postscript
In lieu of flowers, please contribute to Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.
This librarian thanks you.