Forty Days In the Wilderness Wandering

<p>Mapping moments of deep attention and wonder <em>Forty Days in the Wilderness Wandering </em>invites its readers to contemplate the natural world sacred wilderness and devotional wandering through the 2020 Lenten season and the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.</p><p>Largely composed in conjunction with walks through Wisconsin's national forests and state parks the collection began as a Lenten intention - a creative response to Muthupandiyan's desire to find the divine in a world that has largely destroyed wilderness - the natural places which within many religious traditions devotional wandering has historically occurred.</p><p><br></p><p>Several days into the project however the themes of wilderness and devotional wandering took on new depth and urgency while the COVID-19 pandemic took hold and the world began collectively negotiating its way through various spiritual emotional and physical deserts of solitude bewilderment alienation and fear.</p><p><br></p><p>Each of the poems and illustrations included within this collection was written and drawn during the first forty-five days of quarantine. The collection serves as a writer's journal on the deep wilderness and profound time of spiritual formation that humanity entered as the pandemic took hold. Read together they chart a poetic apogee from joy to grief exultation to death desire to love without hope.</p><p>Poems and illustrations from this collection have also appeared in <em>Chitro Magazine </em>and the anthology</p><p><em>Sheltering With Poems: Community and Connection During Covid </em>(Bent Paddle Press)</p>