What Dolly Parton’s death taught me about faith, aging with purpose, and giving it all away
The death of Dolly hit me hard, and I know I’m not alone in this. Maybe it was because there’d been no long runway of decline — no AI-doctored photos quietly pulling at our emotions these last few months — so none of us saw it coming. Like it does with so many public figures we’ve loved from a distance, the news hit like something I’d never touched but was always touched by. Then came the flat, empty feeling — like a birthday balloon that’s lost its air overnight, for no reason I could name.
You didn’t have to be a devotee to feel her impact. One interview, one concert clip, one movie crossing your path, and you were swept up. This week I watched the tributes pile on — personal stories from friends and strangers alike.
I’m not a TV watcher, but I reversed course to understand what was so captivating about her. I watched Steel Magnolias, 9 to 5, loads of interviews spanning 60 years — Oprah, the late-night circuit, honors like the Kennedy Center’s Lifetime Achievement Award — and the essence of her began to emerge, the way a shape emerges from a block of marble as it’s chipped away. Here’s my conclusion: Dolly Parton was a saint hiding in rhinestones and cowboy boots. That’s not just pretty prose. Think about what a saint actually is.
We usually don’t hear about a saint until they have gone through the arduous process of being voted in. The early saints were typically the martyrs, put to death for refusing to deny their belief in Christ. Today’s chosen saints are doers — Mother Teresa of Calcutta, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, Carlo Acutis, the Italian fifteen year old who brought eucharistic miracles to the world’s attention using the power of the internet, and Pier Giorgio Frassati, the mountain climber who devoted his life to serving the poor. Saints have two things in common: fierce devotion to God, and a bold commitment to serving others in big and bold ways.
Now move over and make room for one more: a woman in rhinestones and cowboy boots.
Dolly’s reverence for God rarely announced itself. It showed up sideways, the way it does in “Coat of Many Colors” — a song she could have told a hundred different ways and chose instead to link to Joseph’s coat in Genesis. Her service to others showed up just as quietly, in the stories that follow — the kind she never called generosity, because to her, it was just what you did.
I don’t need to retell the stories that are so familiar. 11 siblings, dirt poor upbringing in the Tennessee mountains — the kind of story that usually stops at “rags to riches” and calls itself finished. “I’m proud of my hillbilly, white trash background,” she said once, adding that it was exactly what kept her humble and good. What we should look for, and what is seen in every saint, is the transformation of her heart during her rise to stardom. This is where the real richness of Dolly’s story lies because she didn’t become something other than what she was — she became more by giving more.
You’ve heard the expression “God loves a cheerful giver.” If you watch interviews of Dolly she spilled over in cheerfulness not just in giving but in all of life. Whatever the topic, whatever the question, she answered it like she was your favorite aunt — the one who could do no wrong, always spoke what’s right, and kept a mountain of playfulness up her sleeve. There’s a particular kind of humor she had too — one where she could laugh at herself endlessly without ever making someone else the punchline. That’s rarer than it sounds, and it’s part of what let people of every stripe feel safe around her. In a social media post, her sister Stella said,
“Dolly loved the world and everyone in it. I would criticize and complain about them and she would laugh and say, ‘shoot Tedda, we’ve got more important things to do than worry about their silly asses.’ She was right and she proved it everyday.” — Stella Parton
It’s rare to find a superstar this free of ego, with down home humor laced all the way into the kindness.
One Christmas, her father gathered all twelve children together and told them he wanted to buy their mother a wedding ring — something they’d never been able to afford — but it would mean no other gifts that year. Dolly would later call it her best Christmas ever: watching the joy on her mother’s face, knowing they’d all worked together to give her that gift. When she was poor, she was rich in the ways that counted. And later, when she became financially rich, she measured her wealth the same way. “I always count my blessings more than I count my money,” she said once — and she proved it, giving away her own spunk and talent as freely as she gave away money.
She preferred to fill needs where she saw them quietly and endlessly, never looking for credit for any of it. My spiritual director has a phrase for this: preach the Bible without ever talking about it. That’s exactly what Dolly did — when someone once asked how she practiced her faith, she brushed it off. “My music was more my ministry than a job,” she said once — plainly, not as a performance of piety. Action speaks louder than words, and she proved it over and over rather than saying it. What’s remarkable is that at the level of stardom she reached, ego so easily could have crept in and taken over. Instead, she stayed remarkably, stubbornly real.
If Dolly could hear that I was writing a book about drawing closer to God, I suspect she’d tilt her head and ask, “What is there to talk about?” Be kind, do good things, think about others. End of story. In a way, she’d already answered that question herself in song. “Coat of Many Colors” could have gone in any direction — a story about a coat, about being poor, about a mother’s love, told a hundred different ways. Instead she chose, without ever preaching it, to link her own hand-me-down coat to Joseph’s. That she made that choice and never once called it a faith song says everything about how she carried her belief: not as something to explain, but as something to live inside of.