“Prone to Wander” and the Freedom of Wandering
This refrain, repeated three times in Mack Wilber’s rendition of “Come Thou Fount” and originally penned by the 18th-century Christian, Robert Robinson, chokes me up every time I sing it.
In high school, my choir sang Mack Wilber’s “Come Thou Fount” at the old tabernacle on Temple Square. The acapella voices harmonized below the domed ceiling and vibrated my skin, giving me chills, and then the words, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love,” came from me and flooded out with the rest of the teenagers and string instruments and those words spoke to my soul. There was something about that sentence.
Recently, I sang these words again during a stake conference where my friend’s son gave his farewell talk. Again, these words choked me up and while the whole song is beautifully arranged, it’s these words that catch on my soul on the way out.
Why? What is it about this sentence that speaks to my emotions? “Come Thou Fount” is a song about breaking. It’s a song about being tamed and bound and imprisoned for God. “Fetter” and “bind” and “seal” are words of restraint – but the words that speak to my soul are “wander,” “feel,” “leave,” and “love.” Words of freedom.
Why? Why this sentence? After contemplating this question for the past few weeks, I wonder if it’s because this sentence exposes me for who I am. And it’s taken me a long, long time to accept that. From the time I was seventeen, these words have told me something true about myself: I’m prone to wander, I’m prone to feel like a wanderer, and I’m prone to leave the God I love.
Wanderers do not fit well into the theology of the LDS church.I grew up with this idea that righteousness was achieved by holding to an imaginary iron rod while walking on a straight and narrow path next to deep ravines full of wandering and weeping and wailing humans with gnashing teeth – cling tightly! Step carefully! Always be afraid. This idea never sat well with me. It was dreadful imagining myself walking through life clinging to a rigid, cold, steal rod through mists of darkness while people I loved fell into the ravines.
But every once in a while, I’d wander away. I’d leave that imagery behind and wander. I’d stop listening to prophets and parents and teachers and I’d end up in houses where parents were drug addicts. In those houses, I witnessed children who I fell in love with and situations that informed my decision to become a foster parent, one who could love addicted parents and their children. I found myself learning from my friend’s gay brother who described a life I hadn’t ever considered before. I found myself at funerals of suicide victims, in courtrooms, and in places where wanderers, I discovered, were just like me.
I’m prone to wander away from the scriptures that raised me and taught me and comforted me. Oh, I feel it. I feel that wanderer inside me, pulling me away from the texts that only tell stories about certain people and ignore the rest. I feel it when the rigidity of conformity feels like fetters made by ancient men to control me and keep me from wandering. . . but my wanderings have uncovered precious wisdom, compassion, and experience for me.
While writing this piece, I noticed that the rest of the words in “Come Thou Fount” are alarmingly violent. In the song, the narrator begs God to seal, bind, and constrain them in imaginary fetters. The singer asks God to let “thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee.” As if the wandering heart is the evil thing. Of course, this is not literal, just like the iron rod is not literal, but the imagery of iron cuffs clamping around my ankles, bruising my skin, and capturing my wandering heart, preventing me from running is frightening.
But then, there’s the refrain, like a declaration of freedom: “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.” The truth of this line for me shines through the rest. I am prone to wander through the world without the bindings of patriarchal imagery where I can imagine God as the blossoming clover that covers my path. I feel that wild, dancing woman inside me. And the last part of the phrase, “prone to leave the God I love,” is placed with reverence.
And as I sang these last words with my stake a couple weeks ago, I knew they were true too: I’ve left the god I love. I love this God of sealings and bindings and iron rods and narrow paths. I love this god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is the God of my childhood, a Heavenly Father who loves me. But I left him.
And for the first time since I left, I cried for what I lost.
For more discussion about wandering, read Tirza’s poem, “When Wandering is Seeking.”
Photo by 
Michal Kmeť on Unsplash
