This Sunday the choir sings, I Wonder as I Wander, a mysterious weaving of “poor orn’ry people like you and like me” with our “stone hearts,” reaching toward the aching hope of the “light of heaven,” Emmanuel. This arrangement’s dissonant and ethereal tones echo the tension that lives deep within each of us – can ornery folk like us faithfully walk in the light?
The song’s history is traced back to Murphy, North Carolina. Today a picturesque Appalachian town, this crossroads was once home to Fort Butler, the central collecting place for Cherokee from the east before their forced removal west. More than 3,000 souls passed through Fort Butler to join tens of thousands of other Indigenous people on the dreadful journey known as the Trail of Tears.
In the early 1930’s Murphy city officials clashed with a family, the Morgans, whose lifestyle and overly zealous evangelistic efforts landed them on the other side of the law. Murphy’s town square, in addition to functioning as the Morgan’s chancel without walls and pulpit without canopy, became the unhoused family’s home. The city wanted them removed.
John Jacob Niles is credited with writing I Wonder as I Wander. Niles travelled through his home state of Kentucky and adjoining Appalachian region, transcribing folksongs he heard along the way. Niles writes of seeing Annie, “the tousled, unwashed blond, and very lovely” daughter of the Morgans, singing the folksong. Niles paid Annie to repeat the song several times until he was able to write down three verses along with the tune.
I Wonder as I Wander arose from one of humanity’s most tumultuous intersections – a poverty-enriched folksong of Appalachia grounded in a tormented land where mountains and sky witnessed the systematic dispossession of thousands of Cherokee, offering a glimpse of hope through its melancholic words and plaintive tune, “How Jesus the Savior did come for to die.”
The landscapes of our lives may go along paths that too cross intersections of pain and poverty, rejection and loss. We do not walk these paths alone. United with our diverse community of fellow-travelers, gathered from across the ages, we have hope that the One who came to die and still abides with us will guide us through the night.
Holy God, as often as we wander we are never beyond your sight. Even in our darkest night’s sky help us to remember by every star we see that Jesus, our Emmanuel, is with us.
This reflection was written by Shane McNary.