When keeping faith, note Dolly Parton's lyrics: 'Everything's gonna be all right'

Editor's note: As part of our commitment to foster civil conversations in Viewpoints, we're inviting faith leaders to submit edited versions of their homilies that transcend religion, with messages that can appeal to people of all faith traditions. 

Like many Oklahomans, I was raised to honor the sacredness of scripture and the sainthood of Dolly Parton. A favorite has always been "Light of Clear Blue Morning." Go listen to it, and then come back.

The story of how Dolly wrote it is as magical as the song itself. Dolly said she penned it in 1974, just after ending her long-standing professional relationship with Porter Wagoner. As Dolly tells it, “As I left his office ... it began to rain, so did I. I cried. Not so much out of a sense of loss, but from the pain that almost always comes with change. It has a sad kind of freedom. Then I began to sing a song to myself. It's been a long dark night, and I've been waiting for the morning ... Everything's going to be all right that's been all wrong ... I swear to you on my life as I said that the sky cleared up, it stopped raining, the sun came out, and before I got home, I had completely written the song.” It was as if she went from being caught in a tornado to walking on a rainbow in the blink of an eye.

We desperately want that for ourselves. We want someone to wake us up from this nightmare and say, “Your kid doesn’t need to practice active shooter drills. Christian nationalists aren’t trying to end democracy. The former president didn’t really steal top secret documents.”

It might help to know that when Dolly wrote "Light of a Clear Blue Morning," everything wasn’t all right. The separation from Wagoner would be a bitter legal fight, involving a million-dollar settlement and him waging a smear campaign against her.

Dolly had a sense that she still had miles to go because the lyrics are telling: “everything’s gonna be all right,” not “everything’s all right.” To think about this theologically, the lyrics tell us about Dolly’s faith.

Faith is often misunderstood as “believing the right things,” but Hebrews 11:1 defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen.” This is very different from, “Faith is assent to developed doctrine and dogma.” Faith is confidence that in the here-and-now, when all hell is breaking loose, the promises of God for peace and justice can be trusted.

Scholars are not exactly sure about the original authorship or audience of Hebrews, but it is clearly written to a weary people. At one point they are encouraged to, “lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees.”

Our hard-hearted governor’s refusal to grant clemency for the penitent, the ban on Red Flag laws going into effect, the relentless attacks on public schools, and new punishments for abortion providers makes it easy to think that the current is too strong for us to swim against. Just like the original audience of Hebrews, we are weary. Like Dolly, we have miles and miles to go.

But we must remember that faith is a declaration to God and to one another that, “It's been a long dark night, it’s been a long hard fight,” but "everything's gonna be all right; It’s gonna be OK.”

Keep the faith, friends. The light of a clear, blue morning will break through, so let’s work until it does.

The Rev. Lori Allen Walke is senior minister at Mayflower Congregational United Church of Christ.  

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: What Dolly Parton's lyrics say about keeping faith