We just went along with it....what about wondering?

New to the world of Australia in the last few years...

1) Bag your own groceries. The bagger at checkout made famous by David Letterman and which was a staple of the service industry at grocery stores is basically gone and certainly will be gone by 2030. The stores put in extra cash registers to speed us along, and in-a-rush customers complied. 

2) We bring our own bags or else have to pay for the luxury of using one of the store's plastic bags. 

3) Rental trolleys and gym lockers. What used to be free, the use of grocery carts and trolleys became rentable per use. We bring a $2 coin and pay for the luxury.

4) The Technology of Fitbit and Apple Watch reminded oldies of Dick Tracy's communication device that became real and allowed people not only to check their heart rates but also to run computer programs and read emails and monitor their sleep patterns. 

5) While we are on technological advances, what about Siri and Amazon Echo? They are ever listening and available to assist us with finding our routes, finding our diaries, and answering anything about which we might be wondering.

Simply put, we don't wonder any longer. If you want to know the price of rice in Taiwan in the year 1954 or the latest NFL score from today, just ask Siri. If you want to hear your playlist in reverse order, just ask Alexis; she can turn on the lights in the house, while you are at it. How far away is the moon? Just ask. Who was the 9th president of the USA, just ask. Wonder? Don't bother... the information is a question away. 

When I was a kid, I was a happy reader of the World Book Encyclopedia. My parents had bought the 1961 version of the 20-volume set and had an annual 'subscription' to the "Yearbook" which added new information to the compilation and which included a sticker we were to place in the regular listings.  Everything I needed to know about space travel or the country of Argentina, about Sigmund Freud or the circulatory system of a human was all there in the World Books. 

If something was beyond my capacity to find it, there was a woman less than two miles from my house who would help. She worked as the librarian and could find almost anything I needed to know using the Dewey Decimal system or something. She was a knowledge-magician. 

Wondering is a human need. It leads to imagination. It leads to creativity. It leads to more, not less. I miss wondering. In fact, I make myself wonder sometimes. Intentional ignorance can be a bad thing, but leaving yourself without information allows rest to the brain and resets the rhythm of our mind. 

John Jacob Niles took a song sung by a child revivalist in North Carolina. Her name was Annie Morgan. Her family was dirt poor and were about to be kicked out of the little village. Niles wrote the carol later which would be made famous by Mahalia Jackson. The story behind "I wonder as I wander" is here told by Brad Walton.  The story of the song is here.    Wondering is good. And the words of this Christmas carol, rewritten by Niles, identify the traveling poor revivalist family with the birth of the baby Jesus in a similarly poor village like Bethlehem.

"I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor or'ry people like you and like I"

Here's Vanessa Williams singing it too. Click here. 

And Linda Ronstadt:  Click here 

I like wondering. 

I like this carol.

I like the songs of the season.

I'm so glad that Yeshua, the Jewish Messiah, foretold by the Jewish prophets in the Jewish Scriptures, identifies with each of us. In our humanity. In our needs. In our desperation for the presence of God. 

Merry Messiah-mas!