Joanna Wiebe

These are some things I wrote between the ages of seven and twelve.

Give me more food

for this fire

that leaps out

of its cell

free and amused.

Joanna Wiebe, June 17, 2006, Princeton, New Jersey

I wrote this poem while at a Fellowship in Prayer conference at Princeton. This event was life-changing for me. I learned to love the act of prayer, and I learned more deeply just exactly what prayer is in my life. Basically, anything I do with my body.

As I recall, by the end of the event, I felt truly educated, and liberated, and . . . hot. It was a very warm weekend at the University and the rooms were not air conditioned.  I met persons of dozens of faiths from around the world, and danced, sang, meditated, walked the labyrinth, participated in a Taize service,  chanted — and prayed in the traditional ways I learned as a child, too…”Our father…” and the blessings before meals, and more.

The photo is a shot of a redbud in the crevice of a limestone wall of a house my friend Liz rented for awhile in Lawrence, Kansas. It is said this house was lived in once by famous beat poets and writers, and before that, a Swedish immigrant farm family.  I visited Liz a couple of years ago in mid-April, and the buds opened that weekend.

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