light of a clear blue morning

Ki Tavo 5786

Our Torah portions last week and this week, are amongst my favorites. Last week- Ki Teitzei, “when you go out” and this week, Ki Tavo,”when you come back in”.  They offer the Israelites practical instructions for life on the other side of this journey: life as a community, in the land, in covenant with God. Our portion this week asks us to consider what we do with what we have been given— how we will respond when we find ourselves at home, with an abundant harvest. 

The portion begins with the ritual of bikkurim, the bringing of the first fruits. The Israelites are told that when they enter the land, plant their fields, and harvest their crops, they are to bring the first fruits before God and make this declaration:

My father was a wandering Aramean. He went down to Egypt with a small household and lived there as a stranger. There he became a great and mighty nation, many in number. The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us, imposing cruel labor upon us. We cried out to Adonai, the God of our ancestors, and Adonai heard our voice and saw our suffering, our hardship, and our oppression. Adonai brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great awe-inspiring deeds, signs, and wonders. God brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And now, I bring the first fruits of the soil that You, Adonai, have given me.Then you shall set it down before Adonai your God and bow low before Adonai your God.

And then comes something that I find particularly striking. The ritual doesn't end with gratitude. The next verse reads: 

“And you shall enjoy, together with the Levite and the stranger in your midst, all the bounty that Adonai your God has bestowed upon you and your household.”

The harvest is something we have received, but it is not something we are meant to keep entirely for ourselves.There is something very simple about this idea: we are given something, we recognize that we have been given it, and then we find a way to share it. And what’s more: in that moment of abundance, we remember where we came from. 

This text has been on my mind over the last several days, as I have lingered in the remarkable remembrances of Dolly Parton, whom I have always loved and admired.

In 1976, Dolly was driving home after ending the professional relationship she had maintained for seven years with country music star Porter Wagoner. It was a difficult moment. She had made the decision to leave a partnership that had been enormously important to her career, and she was stepping into an uncertain future. She recalled driving home in a rainstorm, when suddenly the clouds parted and sunlight came through. Somewhere on that drive came the words for a new song: “Light of a Clear Blue Morning.”

In a 2020 interview with PrideSource, Dolly described the song as her “song of deliverance” during a period of personal darkness. She said:

“When I wrote it, it just kind of delivered me, brought me into the light. So it is a song of deliverance; it is a song of light and hope.”

And then she said something that I keep coming back to:

“It makes me feel better to be able to write those kinds of songs, to uplift somebody else, and in turn, by teaching, I am taught; by helping, I am helped.”

The song helped Dolly find her way through a difficult moment. And then she gave the song away, and it became a source of light for other people.

I received something.

I recognize that I have received it.

And then I find a way to bring it forward.

Dolly had spent a lifetime gathering an extraordinary harvest: songs, stories, performances, opportunities, money, influence, and an enormous amount of love from people who felt that she had somehow spoken directly to them.But perhaps one of the clearest examples of what she did with that harvest is not one of her songs at all, but rather, with books. Dolly founded the Imagination Library in 1995, inspired in part by her own childhood. Her own father did not learn to read, and books were not part of her childhood in the way they are for many of us. So she created a program that gives children a free, age-appropriate book every month from birth through age five. Like that biblical declaration, “My father was a wandering Aramean…,” Dolly Parton brought her father’s story into the lives of millions of children, not by simply memorializing what he had lacked, but by transforming that lack into a gift. “My father couldn't do either,” she once said of reading and writing, “and I've often wondered how that affected his dreams.” The Imagination Library, she explained, was one way she could give back: “I could help children chase their dreams.”

And perhaps that is part of what the Torah means when it says, “the soil which You, Adonai, have given me.”The first fruits are not simply a reward for hard work. They are a reminder that even what we have worked hard to cultivate comes to us through a world that we did not create ourselves.

We inherit.

And then we have the opportunity to pass something on.

This idea has taken on a different weight for me this week because of Dolly's death.

Earlier this year, when Dolly released a new recording of “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” for her 80th birthday, she described the song in a different way than she had fifty years earlier. She said that she had written it during “a season when I was searching for hope,” and that fifty years later, the message still felt just as true. But now, this new version would be her way of “using what I’ve been blessed with to shine a little light forward.” Proceeds from the re-release of that song were earmarked for pediatric cancer research at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee

I was talking this week with my friend Michael Wolf, who is an ER doctor at that hospital in Nashville, about what Dolly meant to the city where she was so deeply woven into the culture. Michael described how solemn it was in Nashville over the last few days– and Dolly’s unique ability to unite people. You didn't have to agree with her, or with each other, to exist in the same space. Her whole vibe, as he put it, was that “we’re all people and that people are complicated and hold many things at once.” He described seeing people wearing MAGA hats or shirts with Confederate flags standing in close quarters with people wearing Pride flags, people who are visibly trans or non-binary, people of different ages, races, political views, and economic backgrounds.

Everyone claimed Dolly as their own.

Perhaps the light Dolly left wasn't simply an opinion or a political position or even a particular set of beliefs. It was a space in which complicated people could still recognize the humanity in one another.

Michael also shared one of his favorite memories of Dolly with me.

He was sitting at the Ryman Auditorium during the pandemic, shortly after being among the first people in the country to receive a COVID vaccine. They had gathered because they wanted to show people that vaccination might be a way out of lockdown.

Dolly had made tremendous donations to Vanderbilt and other institutions supporting vaccine research. And at this event, she sang a version of “Jolene” in which “Jolene” had been replaced by the word “vaccine.”

She had a voice, and a platform (and money), and she used it all for good. 

She took what she had been given and found ways to make it useful to someone else.

And now she is gone.

Which raises a different question: what happens to the light when the person who carried it is no longer here?

There is a beautiful Jewish tradition that comes to mind in thinking about that question. 

In the Talmud, we encounter the idea that there are 36 righteous people in every generation who greet the Divine Presence each day. Later Jewish tradition develops this into the idea of the tzadikim nistarim, the hidden righteous ones: people whose goodness is sustaining the world, even though we don't know who they are.

The heart of our tradition is wise, and I think the message here is that some of the goodness that sustains us may be invisible.

We may not know where it came from.

We may not know who made it possible.

We may simply find ourselves living inside the blessing of something that someone else did.

And I think that is what happens with a life like Dolly's.

Dolly Parton was not exactly a hidden person. She was, in fact, one of the most recognizable people in the world.

But her goodness was like a lamp that she shone upon the world. 

A child opens a book through the Imagination Library.

Someone decides to take a chance on their own talent because Dolly showed them what it could look like to be successful without losing your generosity.

Someone opens a door for someone else because Dolly once opened a door for them.

And eventually, we may not even recognize where that light came from.

The source of the light disappears, but the radiance remains.

Maybe that is one way of understanding the hidden righteous ones. The people who sustain us may not be the people we know or remember. Their goodness has simply become part of the world we inhabit.

And I can't think of a more beautiful way to live out the words of Ki Tavo.

The Torah asks us to recognize our harvest.

To remember that what we have was given to us.

And then to share it.

***

So perhaps the question for us this Shabbat is not only what will we leave behind when our lives are over.

What have we received that has made our lives more hopeful and connected?

What light have we received that we now have a responsibility to carry forward?

Or perhaps even more simply:

What will we bring forward, so that it might become a lasting blessing for others?