As If Called Back by Our Love
“The loved ones we call the dead
depart from us and for a while
are absent. And then as if
called back by our love, they come
near us again. They enter our dreams.
We feel they have been near us
when we have not thought of them.
They are simply here, simply waiting
while we are distracted among
our obligations. At last
it comes to us: They live now
in the permanent world.
We are the absent ones.”
-The Loved Ones, by Wendell Berry
(August 5, 1934 – August 31, 2026)
It has felt like an early All Saints these past few weeks as we have communally mourned so many of the bright, beautiful souls that brought joy, depth, and poetic meaning into our lives.
Two of these faithful saints are Dolly Parton and Wendell Berry. As if stars on opposite sides of the solar system, their lives took remarkably different routes. The difference in the amount of rhinestone, hairspray, or farming equipment alone explains the divergence of their paths.
Even so, the soulfulness of their melodic words and lived example have long anchored us in the holy minutiae of a grounded, daily being.
Dolly was a prolific singer, songwriter, and entrepreneur. Among many other causes that she helped to champion, Dolly gave generously to childhood education and literacy by starting in her home Sevier County in Tennessee. This impact rippled from there, having gifted over 330 million books to children under 5 in the US and around the world.
Wendell was a cherished author, poet, environmentalist, and agrarian advocate. Though he lived with a strict absence of modern technology (not even using tractors to plow his fields), his stewardship of the soil beneath his feet impacted how people around the world considered the soil beneath theirs.
Both taught us how to love expansively and leave behind what needs to be left. Both wrote verses that bear repeating to the millionth time. Both captured so well the waymarkers along this journey from life to death to life.
As United Methodists, we take great hope in the communion of saints who are held in God’s great love, just as we are held. In these days let us hold their lives, mourn their deaths, and be led forward by their own words:
Testament
By Wendell Berry
And now to the Abyss I pass
Of that Unfathomable Grass...
1.
Dear relatives and friends, when my last breath
Grows large and free in air, don't call it death --
A word to enrich the undertaker and inspire
His surly art of imitating life; conspire
Against him. Say that my body cannot now
Be improved upon; it has no fault to show
To the sly cosmetician. Say that my flesh
Has a perfect compliance with the grass
Truer than any it could have striven for.
You will recognize the earth in me, as before
I wished to know it in myself: my earth
That has been my care and faithful charge from birth,
And toward which all my sorrows were surely bound,
And all my hopes. Say that I have found
A good solution, and am on my way
To the roots. And say I have left my native clay
At last, to be a traveler; that too will be so.
Traveler to where? Say you don't know.
2.
But do not let your ignorance
Of my spirit's whereabouts dismay
You, or overwhelm your thoughts.
Be careful not to say
Anything too final. Whatever
Is unsure is possible, and life is bigger
Than flesh. Beyond reach of thought
Let imagination figure
Your hope. That will be generous
To me and to yourselves. Why settle
For some know-it-all's despair
When the dead may dance to the fiddle
Hereafter, for all anybody knows?
And remember that the Heavenly soil
Need not be too rich to please
One who was happy in Port Royal.
I may be already heading back,
A new and better man, toward
That town. The thought's unreasonable,
But so is life, thank the Lord!
3.
So treat me, even dead,
As a man who has a place
To go, and something to do.
Don't muck up my face
With wax and powder and rouge
As one would prettify
An unalterable fact
To give bitterness the lie.
Admit the native earth
My body is and will be,
Admit its freedom and
Its changeability.
Dress me in the clothes
I wore in the day's round.
Lay me in a wooden box.
Put the box in the ground.
4.
Beneath this stone a Berry is planted
In his home land, as he wanted.
He has come to the gathering of his kin,
Among whom some were worthy men,
Farmers mostly, who lived by hand,
But one was a cobbler from Ireland,
Another played the eternal fool
By riding on a circus mule
To be remembered in grateful laughter
Longer than the rest. After
Doing that they had to do
They are at ease here. Let all of you
Who yet for pain find force and voice
Look on their peace, and rejoice.
“Light of a Clear Blue Morning”
by Dolly Parton (January 19, 1946 – August 25, 2026)
Thank you, Wendell, Dolly, and all those in the great communion of saints whose beautiful lives have guided the way. We will ever strive to love people as Dolly loved and to love creation as Wendell loved.
It is now our turn;
it is now our beautiful lives that guide the way;
we share what has been shared with us, and all for love’s sake.