After an incredibly long break, the Random Shuffle is back. Each week (or whenever I darn well feel like it, apparently) I put my music collection on shuffle mode and talk about the songs that come up.

I'm less interested in giving a simple review of each song than I am in the personal emotions and memories these songs conjure. I prefer to talk about music as an experience rather than something to be measured scientifically.

“Wayfaring Stranger” – Natalie Merchant
From The House Carpenter’s Daughter

I don’t talk about my religious views much, if at all, in my writing. Partially, this is because of the old saying about never talking in public about religion and politics. Never has that adage been clearer than on the Internet. Rare is the blog that talks about either of those two topics without quick and severe muckraking from all sides of the sphere.

Look no further than the comments section of Blogcritics to see what I’m talking about.

But I also don’t talk about religion because matters of the heart and soul are so deeply personal to me. I simply can’t talk about them here. I can only share so much of myself in the random openness of the blogosphere. Religion and spirituality isn’t some commodity to haplessly toss about. It isn’t something I can fit onto a t-shirt, or inside a necklace or into a simple post.

It is too big. Too personal. Too important.

It is difficult, then, to write about a song with such spiritual significance. “Wayfaring Stranger” comes from a long line of old religious and spiritual songs. Songs from the hills and the plains. Songs from the people. Folk songs.

What I love about this song is how that even though it is a religious song, and even a specifically religious song, it is at the same time nearly universal.

Certainly there are words and imagery that people of the Christian faith hold dear. Words like “I want to wear a crown of glory” and “I’m going there to see my savior” seem to adhere to a certain brand of religion.

Yet other verses and words are more vague, and thus more universal. In the end, aren’t all of us wayfaring strangers? Aren’t we all simply wanderers on this world for a little while?

We have all lost, or will lose, people close to us. I suspect it is comforting to think that we will meet them again once we “cross over Jordan” whether in some spiritual plane or infinity.

And that to me is what makes this song so special. Better than some specific description of my own personal religious experience, “Wayfaring Stranger” can speak to us all on some level.