ABSTRACT
This riff or mini chapter begins with the war in Heaven. Paradise Lost (1667) establishes or vividly illustrates the paradigm for a theology of ambiguous wandering and wondering. The two distinct activities play a paired role, for better or for worse, which can establish a fruitful partnership greatly enhancing religious or spiritual experience, but—as with Milton’s minor devils debating the finer points of providence, foreknowledge, fate, and free will—they also constitute a pairing that can go endlessly, disastrously, wrong. Wandering in Milton’s vision of a world fallen into sin reflects a departure from pagan theologies where Olympian gods wander at will. No pagan god proved more footloose than Odin—aka Wodin or Wotan—the supreme Germanic deity, the Teutonic god of frenzy and poetry, and a Dionysian wanderer to beware of. Carl Jung sees in Wodin the restless, destructive spirit afoot in the rise of Hitler. Wandering and wondering, however, also leads in multiple directions: in religious miracle (as represented in a North Carolina evangelical song), in Reynolds Price’s personal brand of “outlaw” Christianity, or, secularized, in the reflective composure of Alexander Pope’s landscape garden in Twickenham.
