song for theme #1A Humbly Unsure:

                                                                  “The Doubt” by Stephen P. Cook

to be sung to the tune of “The Weight” by Berry, Stipe, Buck, Mill / The Band

Made it here Sunday morning¹

But a war rages inside

To many questions I’ve no answers

And my beliefs often collide

Oh my God can you show me

Where I can find certainty²?

He looked at me and held my hand

And said “Seek humility!” ³  

Honk if you love Jesus⁴

Don’t if you’re unsure⁵

Honk if you love Jesus

Oh, Oh, Oh

I’ve got the doubt back in me

Humble Mother Teresa⁶

Helped the poor for seventy years

A candidate for sainthood

Her soul was full of fears

Jesus God Mary where are you

Inside I feel a lack there of

She touched me and whispered

“Find me in your love”

Honk if you love Jesus

Don’t if you’re unsure

Honk if you love Jesus

Oh, Oh, Oh

I’ve got the doubt back in me

I seek love⁷ and belonging

To be part of a greater whole

I’m a small imperfect creature⁸

But have trouble playing that role

How can I find peace

Lose myself, become truly free?

From within comes an answer:

Don’t preach, don’t judge, just be

Honk if you love Jesus

Don’t if you’re unsure

Honk if you love Jesus

Oh, Oh, Oh

I’ve got the doubt back in me⁹

SONG—NOTES / COMMENTS     (this song is part of the author’s personal story)

1—This song is dedicated to seekers who typically spend Sunday mornings in church, especially to children in Sunday school—

     which the author recalls regularly attending (from age three) and often being confused!

2—Think certainty is to be found in science and math? Given physicists’ uncertainty principle, how chaos theory limits

      predictions, inherent uncertainty in measurement, and Gödel's theorem from math, think again!

3—All of us are born demanding attention and being admonished with commands in the form of black and white simple

     certainties: “Do this…Don’t do that…!” As we grow up we slowly realize that everything does not revolve around us: we are a

     small part of a complex whole, one depicted with many shades of gray!

4—One of the first songs the author sang, proclaims, “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so!” This song’s “Jesus”  

      need not refer to a manifestation of God. Consider a heart metaphor:  If “Jesus” represents the best inside every heart, “Satan”  

      is the worst. (Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, and Emerson’s “common heart” in “The Over-Soul” can be viewed similarly.) 

5—With apologies to a Unitarian Universalist (UU) bumper sticker proclaiming: “Honk if You are Not Sure!”

6—Mother Teresa (1910-1997) experienced a “dark night of the soul” which lasted for many years.

7—“Real love is caring about the happiness of another person without any thought of what we might get for ourselves.” Greg Baer

8—One might even say, “To be human, is to be imperfect!”     9—This song metaphorically figures in this book’s ending.

Comment: This theme’s open-minded, non-judgmental, tentative mindset girds you against mental stress that others might suffer from contradictory beliefs they hold or beliefs which might otherwise threaten their worldview. This striving for internal consistency is behind the discomfort cognitive dissonance can produce.