Dolly Parton & Divine Diversity
Those who are exiled teach us what love really is.
This essay is based on a Pride sermon from June 19, 2022 at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in San Francisco, CA.
I was just a few years out of college when I saw Dolly for the first time. My coworker Dave had invited me to see her at the Hollywood Bowl. Dave was, as he called himself, my “big gay uncle.” I was in the slow process of coming out at the time, and he invited me to things that he thought would be fun for me. He knew I loved music, so he took me to a lot of concerts.
One day at work, he put a ticket on my desk and said, “Next Friday, I’m taking you somewhere funky.” We ended up going to see Prince.
A little while later, “Next Friday, I’m taking you somewhere fabulous.” We were going to Dolly.
So, I put my line-dancing boots and cowboy hat on. I really didn’t know what to expect.
But it turned to be a magical evening.
The moment I remember most was when Dolly did a giddy gallop onto the stage in this white, glittery outfit. She looked absolutely stunning—truly like a rhinestone angel. She sat down on a stool, started pluckin’ away on her little autoharp, and told us a story about growing up in her tiny home in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee.
Suddenly, this sea of 18,000 people hushed themselves into silence. All attention focused on her quiet voice.
As I looked around, I saw so many different types of people, all enraptured by this woman.
I looked at Dave and his friends with these big grins on their faces. I looked at two guys sitting near me — one with his arm around his partner, another with his arm around his wife.
Here were so many different ways of living and being and loving — and somehow they could all come together for Dolly.
As she talked about home, I have to say it truly felt like home. And that was something I desperately needed.
Just a few months earlier, I’d made the decision to leave an evangelical church that had been part of my life for many years. This was after I’d had a conversation with a pastor—a man I’d trusted for quite sometime—and shared with him that I supported same-sex marriage.
That memory is etched inside me. We were standing under a streetlamp on a warm Sunday night, and after I told him, he looked at me, laughed at me, and said, “Wow, Sam, I thought you were a smart guy.”
I’m sure I chuckled to ease the tension, but in that moment, I felt a community that I’d trusted suddenly turn on me — all with a laugh and a smile. I walked away, down a silent street to my car, and felt a new emptiness had slowly crept into my body.
Nothing feels worse than a place and a people telling you that they embody unconditional love, then turn around and tell you that there is something about you that is undeserving of that love (and telling you that you’re not very smart either.)
For months, I felt spiritually homeless, but then Dolly gave me something different — a place that looked and felt like home.
Over the past several years, it has seemed as though the world has becoming more of a home for queer people.
We’ve seen the right to marriage enshrined in law. We see more and more LGBTQ characters in the stories we share as a culture. We see Pride celebrations popping up in even the smallest of towns across our nation.
But recently that path of progress has taken a detour.
We now have a law in Florida that limits discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms, and has unearthed the old, false narratives of queer people grooming children.
In mid-June 2022, a group of Proud Boys wearing AK-47 shirts stormed into a Drag Queen Storytime in San Lorenzo, just right over in the East Bay. After she was called a “pedophile” and an “it,” Panda Dulce, the featured queen, hid in the back office while the sheriff came to escort the protestors out of the building. (Like the queen she is, Panda came back and finished her book for those kids!)
Just weeks later, following the reversal of Roe v. Wade, Justice Clarence Thomas called on the court to overrule the watershed Obergefell v. Hodges case that established the right of same-sex couples to marry, calling it “demonstrably erroneous.”
And at my church building in San Francisco, we’ve had our Pride flag torn down not once, but twice in one month for a grand total of three times this year. That’s in San Francisco.
Right now, we live in a world that would rather ban drag queens than pass substantial legislation to respond to gun violence. Many people can stomach the death of children more than a person who expresses their gender differently.
That is how othered the queer community is—and that is terrifying.
Queer people are being told they don’t belong. Or to put it another way, they’re being forced back into exile.
There’s a story about exile in the Bible—the story of Joseph. If you don’t know the story, then you definitely need to learn your musicals… But here’s a quick recap.
Joseph is born into a big family. He’s his dad’s favorite son, and his dad loves him so much that he gives him a colorful coat as a gift. I’m sure he looked fabulous, completely fashionable. But Joseph quickly finds out that he’s different from the rest of his family. He has this amazing ability to dream and interpret dreams. This threatens his brothers, who end up kicking him out the family and leaving him for dead.
He’s exiled from the family he loves. He’s told he’s not wanted and that he doesn’t belong.
Eventually, Joseph is rescued and discovers that his gift — the thing that makes him different — is precisely what saves him and saves others, too. He hears a dream and sees a coming famine, so he prepares for it. He leads his people to stockpile food for years, and when things get tough, he’s all set. But his family isn’t. They’re starving, and they come to him in desperation.
But then something happens at the end of this story…
It is Joseph — the tossed-out, the forgotten, the exiled — that cares for his family and shows them a new home.
While this world seems to still be deciding on who can make their home in it, queer people everywhere have been busy making new types of homes of their own.
Homes of chosen families tightly bound together by nothing more than the simple strands of love and acceptance.
Homes in bars where people are just safe to sit and talk and be themselves apart from the boxes the world puts us in.
Homes in communities — like cycling clubs and choruses — that have dreamt up their own sets of rites and rituals that connect themselves with Spirit that dwells among them.
Homes at drag shows where folks are free from the shackles of expectation and instead witness the limitless power and creativity of the Divine as it’s celebrated with confetti and a catwalk.
And all of these homes that queer people have created are a protest that demands that all people — not just queer people — are invited to God’s fabulous party.
And I believe these homes point us to a new dream:
A dream in which all people can discover the liberating, spiritual gift that every inch of who we are is grounded in the very essence of God and we are already woven together in all of our diversity and desires.
The story of Joseph ends with his father coming to see him and returning his colorful coat.
Just like Dolly’s “Coat of Many Colors” given to her by her mama and worn in spite of the bullies of her school, Joseph gets back this coat that celebrates him, protects him, and makes him feel like home.
It’s kind of like our Pride flag.
This flag is a coat of many colors — a symbol that wraps queer people protection and celebrates difference. I remember when I first came out, how safe and proud I felt in bars, restaurants, and businesses that waved that flag. When I saw it, I knew that I would find at least little bit of home there.
In just the last few years, our coat has gotten some new patches: pink, blue, and white to represent our trans brothers, sisters, and siblings; and black and brown to not only honor queer people of color, but to recognize that the journey of liberation, including all the freedom and privilege that we enjoy now, even the ways our churches has changed, comes from the bravery of trans women of color who demanded that their exile be over.
All of those patches form an arrow pointing right towards the future, towards the dream of liberation for all people, no matter their sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
Right now, we are in a time of great change and evolution in this country and this world. I’ve heard many people say that they feel like the fabric of society is being torn apart.
And I think they’re right.
These days the fabric of this world is being stretched, not to destroy it, but so more beautiful threads of more beautiful people can be woven into those gaps. The threads that have been tossed out, discarded, forgotten… They’re being woven back into the tapestry of humanity, making it more beautiful than it has ever been before.
Gilbert Baker — the San Francisco man who designed that original rainbow flag — tells us this: “The fabric of freedom is an open weave with spaces left for us to insert our own versions of the story.”
No matter what anyone says, every thread deserves to be there.
You deserve to be there.
You are God’s dream for this world.
A world that is vibrant, colorful, and gorgeous.
A world where we can look at one another and say, “Hey, that is someone made in the image of God and they’re fabulous.” Not just to our friends, not just to our family, but to every single person we see.
A world where each us — no matter who we are, where we come from, what we believe, or how we love — has a place that feels like home.
Whatever powers might try to exile any of God’s children, may we be the dreamers and may we be weavers of this world.
To my queer siblings, may you know from the core of who you are that you are loved by the God of this Universe and you are God’s dream for Creation. Let no one tell you otherwise.
And may all of us, in whatever corner of this world God has placed us in, may we continue to stretch the tapestry of Creation and weave it back together with grace — every beautiful thread, every wonderful face, every precious person—in the name of liberation and love.
And may we walk our journeys with this blessing:
I hope life treats you kind.
I hope you have all that you ever dreamed of.
I wish you joy and happiness.
But above all this, I wish you love.
