Got a problem? The Dolly Mama’s got your back! For your own personal dose of irreverent words of wisdom, you can contact her here.
Dear Dolly Mama,
Why did my friend send $2,000 to the Philippines to help a child in need? Why did my other friend continue an online dating relationship for six months with someone and really enjoy it? Why did she give money to him? Why did he take it from her in the first place? Why are older people particularly susceptible?
Dear Scam,
You may or may not remember that Richard Nixon faked his photo with the Apollo. It became known internationally as “Deep Fake.”
Why the Apollo fake? Because he wanted to be intimate with them and the next big thing to being intimate was making believe he was.
A Nixon Deepfake, a ‘Moon Disaster’ Speech, and an Information Ecosystem At Risk
For a lot of people, religion is just a deep fake. Instead of calling for the sweet hour of prayer, they call for the sweet odor of prayer.
The reason we trust in God — and even pray — is not that we “believe” in God. We just so much want a powerful positive in our experience that we consent to deny the evidence. Of course, your friend spent $2,000 on a scam about a needy child. She really wanted to help that child. It was a bargain to feel that good.
Of course, your other friend fell in love by phone. Don’t you remember how happy she was every time she described her new beau? It was worth the $500 she sent him for his birthday. He had even sent her flowers. Who else had done that for a long time? Why wouldn’t older people like to trust that somebody gave a good lick about them? How lonely can it be in a nursing home?
Did you ever buy diet pills? Did you ever lie about your looks online or in a dating app? Did you ever tell a white lie when you were a reference for someone?
When it comes to wanting to believe really good things and wanting to think at least God likes you, scams are reaches for the sacred. That’s why so many people agree to getting tricked.
Plus, there’s always the possibility of serious, powerful goodness existing – even at the heart of the universe. Why deny the minority possibility and turn it into something hoarser than it already is?
I know where to place my bets. Check out Pascal’s wager if you want more evidence.
Einstein is said to have remarked: There are two kinds of people. Those who don’t believe in miracles and those to whom everything is a miracle. I am the latter.
However, if you get this message in your inbox, do not call Pascal. Don’t bother God. Call the FBI.
“This message is to inform you that SSA and legal enforcement agency is filing a legal words against your name and your Social Security number for the fraudulent activities and arrest warrant has also been issued on your name for money laundering and the investigative team of our department is investigating you and your family to get more information about your arrest warrant in case file from United States government give me a press one for more information before we download your case into the courthouse thank you press one now…”.
My friend just sent it to me asking if I could top this. Nope, I can’t.
Dolly Mama Advice on Finding Purpose in Life
Dear Dolly Mama,
My get up and go has got up and went. I find it hard to get out of bed in the morning. I don’t feel like anyone would miss me if I weren’t here. Plus, I’m not here. I sign my postcards, “Having great time, wish I was here.” And I don’t even send them. No one wants to hear from me. And no one especially wants to hear from someone like me who has no purpose in life. How can I find purpose and is it wrong to find purpose just to get someone to like you?
Purpose in Life
Dear Purpose,
Your mother believed in willpower. If you just tried hard enough, you could surely find a reason for your existence. She also believed in perseverance, the school of hard knocks, and keeping on keeping on. She was an authoritarian. She had the authority of a culture behind her. That homogeneous culture also believed in hard work, willpower, purpose, and keeping on keeping on. If your get up got up and went, it was your own damn fault.
She lived before we knew that the system was rigged. She lived before the Internet. She lived before an elected president said he was going to destroy the post office so he wouldn’t lose the election. She lived before moral apoplexy. She was born before moral injury was a household word.
Maybe not in your house? Moral injury is when you’ve been hurt so much by lies that you don’t try anymore. You begin to think everything is a lie. Even if most things are, that doesn’t mean everything is.
“The best thing you can do with sadness is learn from it.” Merlyn, King Arthur’s wise advisor, said that. Or at least storyteller T.S. White thought so. Victor Frankel even more famously argued that suffering has no answer. We’ll never know why. “It’s not the suffering. It’s what we do with it.”
I am just too ornery to let the liars have me as well as all the money. Thus, here is my purpose in life.
Shift who gets to tell the story. Expose the liars. Tell the truth and do so humbly. Otherwise, you’re just like them.
Who is the Dolly Mama?
The Dolly Mama is a spiritual version of Dear Abby. Her intention is to combine the irreverence of Dolly Parton with the surrender and non-attachment beloved by Buddhists. She wants to let go of what can’t be fixed – in either self or others – and fix what can by applying the balm of humor.
She is a spiritual handyperson, a soul mechanic, a repairer of broken appliances. Every now and then the combination of letting go and hanging on achieves sufficient balance for an improvement in spiritual posture, stronger spine and personal peace. The Dolly Mama is not her day job. By day, she works as an ordained United Church of Christ and American Baptist pastor of a regular, if edgy, congregation.