Got a problem? The Dolly Mama is here for you. You can find her by writing us here.
Dear Dolly,
Can you have too many flashlights? I think I have about 12. One in the bedside table. One in the kitchen cabinet corner. One where the candles lie along with the matches. I have lived through too many power outages. My part of the world, upstate New York, is famous. When the power goes out upstate, so does the water. Then the toilet, then the cooking, then our tempers. I read the scripture about how the light shines in the darkness and the darkness doesn’t overcome it. I also read that everything that is now hidden will be revealed. But what about long, dark nights? What’s good about them?
Dear Flashlight,
I thought you had a lot of flashlights. Can’t you just use them judiciously and also stock a lot of candles? Or are you asking for something more serious? Are you wondering about your lost lightness of being and your increasing doom, scrolling apocalyptic addiction to the darkness? If the latter, get a therapist or see a pastor. If the former, get over it. If a combination of the two, take this advice. Everything dark that happens contains its own light. I don’t just mean silver lining, happy horse……poop. Or false optimism. Or even humming the tune about “keep-on-the-sunny-side” kind of music. I mean embracing the dark and squeezing its gift from it. The stars. The waiting. The patience. The stories you get to tell about peeing outside. Many women use a funnel and keep it alongside their candle pantry. The strength you found that you didn’t know you had. The readiness you have for the next lightning strike. The fact that you’re not a wimp. You are ONE WHO GETS THROUGH THINGS.
Dolly
Dear Dolly,
Someone told me that if you are a child and have parents that are difficult, you can still find your way in life if another adult makes a positive touch on your life. A teacher, coach, Sunday School teacher, storekeeper on the block. Do you think that is true? Does everybody need a good childhood? Or will good mentoring do?
Dear Seeker of a Positive Touch,
Mentoring is absolutely essential even if you do have good parents. And we all have complex relationships with our mentors and our mentees – in the same way that we have those complex relationships with our parents. We love/hate them. We revere/dislike them. They could never do enough for us. And gradually, over time, we find ourselves growing up and often growing beyond our mentors or parents or teachers. And then we learn to respect them as the people they are—people with great strength and also often great weakness. We humanize our parents and our mentors. If we don’t, we won’t humanize ourselves.
John Osoff, the biographer of President Joseph Biden, says that the secret to the relationship between Obama and Biden was the way each thought he was the mentor of the other. I know this trick very well from lots of personal experience. Mutual mentoring becomes our goal in life – and when we find ourselves, if we are lucky enough, to be diapering our mother or father, we remember to give thanks that they diapered us. We give thanks for all that they were and all that they weren’t, in order to gives ourselves the same tender pat on our own back.
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.