Joanna Wiebe

As I sleep, come to me and

we’ll pretend everything, we’ll eat

mushrooms and fly, we’ll see winged horses,

ride them singing. Will you be open to me?

I want to be:

two streams flowing together

over a grassy plain, into one;

the happy grass, so green;

the rabbits leaping in the birches,

the honeysuckle and the rose,

the grey gull resting on the shore,

the sighing tides,

the trees like God’s legs,

tall, strong and dark,

the soft grey sky,

like a comfortable blanket.

Everything plays, naturally, today.

Joanna Wiebe, June 21, 1989

Enjoying the snow in London, Ontario

“It is in our bodies that redemption takes place.” - M.C. Richards

In What Mennonites Believe, by J. C. Wenger, I read that it is the “Holy Spirit that graciously leads the new believer to higher ground spiritually and nudges him to respond to new understandings of God’s will”.  (I am re-reading this book to stay in touch with my Mennonite Brethren roots).

On the other hand, I also read that “Christians are weak because of their human nature (the ‘flesh’ with it’s evil tendencies). So Christians need worship for their own strengthening and upbuilding.”

This latter kind of thinking and believing has got me into much trouble in my life. Hating my “‘flesh’ with its evil tendencies”, I discovered myself hating myself, for the spirit is in the flesh and the flesh is in the spirit.

The way I see it, in all of us, matter constantly becomes spirit and spirit constantly becomes matter, and the whole process is holy.

When my soul finally breaks away with its “incommunicable load of consciousness” (Tielhard de Chardin, in his Phenomenon of Man), the sacred flesh will become cosmic trash, ready for recycling.

Everything is holy.