Overcome Evil with Good

READINGS   Romans 12:9-21 and an Excerpt from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems by Joy Harjo

This is the house that Whitney built, she said in an interview in 2021. It turns out that Dolly Parton used some of the royalties from the song I Will Always Love You to purchase an entire block in a black neighborhood now called 12 South Studios in Nashville. and this studio and her philosophy about how she would show up in the world, her intentionality about bringing others along. Her leadership and mentorship shaped and will continue to shape generations of Nashville's musical community. She called the property Whitney's house because you might remember when the film came out in 1992, the film Bodyguard and I Will Always Love You played nonstop. Dolly earned an estimated $12 million in royalties just in the 90s from that song.

What a joy to let all of these Dolly stories find us this week in this hard time when I know at least for me some days it feels difficult to see some light pushing through these stormy clouds. Dolly was so happy and hopeful and wasn't stopped by the haters and those who dismissed her and continued to underestimate her at every turn because of how she looked.

Dolly grew up so poor as one of 12 children. I I had to do some more digging because I could not believe that they were so poor that they ate squirrels and groundhogs steeped in deep poverty in rural Tennessee in a cabin on the river. Singing into tin cans, being fueled by grit and her sense of humor, she got her big break at the Grand Old Opry at 13 in 1959. And she kept on even as America continued to question her legitimacy, even after proving herself time and time again. I found an interview in 1978 that kind of broke my heart from journalist Barbara Walters who inquired of her and I quote, "Dolly, where I come from, would I have called you a hillbilly?" Dolly replied, "If you had have, it would have been something very natural, but I probably would have kicked you in the shins or something."

She went on, "We were a very proud people. People with a lot of class, country class, but a great deal of class." And she said, "Most of my people were not that educated, but they were very intelligent. Good common sense. Horse sense we called it." she said. As the interview kept on, Barbara Walters asked Dolly if she lives in her imagination. And then Dolly goes on to tell a story. I want to try to tell a fairy tale on you. She said, "Once upon a time there was a little girl and her name was Dolly Parton and she lived in a small town in the mountains which she loved because it was a comfort, because she knew there was love and security there. But she was a child and very curious and she wanted all the things that she had been impressed with the fairy tales of Mother Goose and Cinderella and the lost slipper. Well, I guess she kind of wanted to find the other slipper in a sort of way. So, she worked hard and she dreamed a lot and one day it came true.

She was a fairy princess and she lived happily ever after. Dolly wasn't shaken by this disrespect. Years later, she said, "People have thought the joke was on me, but it's actually been on the public. I know exactly what I'm doing." Parton said, "I'm very real where it counts." She was what modern no nomenclature describes of many women too much. with her big hair and bold clothes, her jokes and her willingness to perform with anyone and everyone, singing for a good run alongside the Muppets. But even when others wanted to make her feel ashamed, she was proud, telling the media time and time again that she came from a proud people and that coming from poverty doesn't make someone dumb or unworthy. She contained her pain and composted it into goodness, new life, new opportunities for others previously discounted.

Many did not know what to do with her indifference to their need to make her feel bad. Continually labeled uncultured, she would laugh and crank out some of the best art in musical history. She used her hard history to heal not just her own heart and life, but that of others. She wrote and spoke of her first deep hurt as the times she was mocked and made fun of because of her clothes, rags that her mom stitched together. But she wasn't bitter. And you know, she turned that experience into a most beautiful song. Which one? The Coat of Many Colors.

I could go on and on about Dolly. What I want to celebrate and lift up today is that she used her power for good. And to do that, she had to be unflapable, anchored in her truth, sure of who she was, knowing the winds of cultural trends would not move her. She once said, and there's so many Dolly-isms, we could just have sermons upon sermons about that. Storms make trees deeper roots. Dolly knew and accepted her role in raising up what could come from choices that are geared toward the common good.

And she claimed that role. She saw what could happen, what new energy fields would open because of how she used her freedom, how she used her power. Which gets me to one of my most important points. Dolly amassed a fortune in her lifetime, an estimation of around $450 million or more. and she was the main investor and visionary behind Dollywood. She was an author, a savvy businesswoman. I learned from Jackie this week she has an entire housewear line with and I had to look it up cuz I couldn't believe it. Dolly stuff. Guitar shape mini skillets, pot holder tongs, rolling pins, butterfly mason jars, gingham check tablecloths.

But here's the thing. She could have been a billionaire and she chose not to be. And that is among the things I am pondering this week because the root of the word evil used here in Paul's letter to this to the community the churches in Rome is kakas referring to inner malice being foul and rottened poison where it flows out beyond the initial thing. It refers to disharmony, disturbance, or incompleteness, simply a spiritual waste product. And if you haven't already gotten there in your mind, the Greek word kakeake refers to human excrement and derives from the protoindian European root kaka. Okay, so that's where we get it. Evil is literally uncontained kaka rooted in ego. fear, greed, envy, hate, woundedness. It's all of those things without boundaries, disturbances that have not been contained and need to be. What we are seeing on the highest level is kaka all over. I know you're with me. We can act like it doesn't exist, and progressive Christians do this sometimes. or we can acknowledge it and figure out how to contain it.

Dolly could have easily turned her history into take that I deserve it kind of mentality, but she didn't. She could have judged others for the way they judged her, but she didn't. She could have been even richer, but instead she to chose to contain the impulses for more and more and more.

She believed in abundance, spilling and spreading her goodness all around, doing good at every turn, being instrumental in supporting so many good things like you might remember the Covid 19 Moderna vaccine and many other things.

Part of how we overcome evil with good is by being willing to take responsibility for our choices. The big ones and the small ones. What do we do with the positions we have, the platforms we hold, the power we possess? Do we allow our own disharmony to spill out and cause pain? There is so much kaka out and about right now. How can we contain it in ourselves? Right? In part because too many people are looking for someone else to do it to contain it. How do we choose that for ourselves?

Dolly invites us to see each choice as a superpower to take what has been handed to us and to find a way to shine in all of our full colors and to bring others along with us. That's why I picked this poem from Joy Harjo where we read that one spark of kindness made an opening in the darkness and then all of the people stumbling around in the dark suddenly had just a little light. All it took was just one person, one decision, one choice, claiming their role, claiming their power in the whole scheme of things. And then everything shifts because someone suddenly everyone began working together to make a ladder to get everyone higher and closer to the light.

Overcoming evil is choosing each moment as a chance to make something stronger, better, more whole, containing it. So beloved of God, let us overcome all of this evil with our goodness. Let us be like Dolly. Let our love be genuine. Let us hold fast to what is good, loving one another with mutual affection. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil by choosing good. Let us claim each choice as a power to shift the whole field of possibilities. Dolly said, "We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails. Overcome all of this with good." May it be so.