We all want something.  Probably we all want different things, but there are some universal desires that can properly be called needs, and they’re not just essentials like food and shelter.  We need to know that our lives have value to ourselves and others, and that we are capable of giving and receiving love.  This is not simple, however, and the quest can often be uncertain or destructive.  Understanding does not always come easily; some of the greatest mysteries are the human urges that we carry within ourselves.

                                       --from The World Is a Waiting Lover

            Trebbe Johnson of Thompson, PA is a poet and video-maker and a “passionate explorer of outer as well as inner frontiers”.  “The World Is a Waiting Lover: Desire and the Quest for the Beloved” is not a self-help book, although many people will draw guidance from it.  It is a personal story of one woman’s striving and an examination of human needs and desires seen in the light of myth and belief and measured by the standards of modern psychology.  Trebbe confronts the yearning to “live with fearless authenticity” and to find links within life’s conflicting drives.

            “The World Is a Waiting Lover” has its origin in Trebbe’s infatuation with a much younger man who had told her of his love.  She was already well-schooled in human interaction and the search for meaning, and happily married, but a new attraction beckoned her.  From this experience (which could easily have wrecked the life of a less insightful individual) she came to see longing everywhere.  Her new book draws on many sources of myth and tradition, from classical Greek legend to the Indian deity Krishna and the temptation of Jesus in the desert, to a consideration of physical beauty inspired by the image of the actress Myrna Loy.

            For those seeking practical guidance, Trebbe Johnson conducts excursions into the natural world and into the unfinished parts of the human psyche.  Her Vision Arrow vision quests are literally trips into a wilderness (the Arizona desert, Rocky Mountains, the Burren of Ireland, the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania), with a mixture of solitude and sharing, “withdrawing from the community into wild nature in order to gain clarity and receive insight”.

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On December 13^th OFF THE PAGE turns to literature for young people when Lee Welles of Corning visits to tell about “Gaia Girls Enter the Earth”, a new book that begins a series on friendship, courage and trust, and protection of the natural environment.