FROM THE ARCHIVES: HAPPY WANDERING:

A Christmas carol of Appalachian origin captures a lot about what's singularly wonderful about what happened the first Christmas day:

I wonder as I wander out under the sky

How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die

For poor on'ry people like you and like I

I wonder as I wander out under the sky

There's nothing worse than subjecting poetry--especially beautiful songs--to analysis.  But here's a few words on each of the three lines:

1) To be human is to wonder and wander. The being who wonders can't be fully at home in the cosmos the scientists can otherwise, perhaps, perfectly describe. There's nothing more wonderful than he being who wanders (and knows it) "under the sky." So even Jesus was quite literally born "on the road."

2) He was born, for one thing, on the road to death.

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