Nancy Johnston
The Book of Nancy
Preface
When I was in Sunday School at the First Baptist Church of Welch, West Virginia, I asked the teacher “Why did the Bible end? If the Bible was God talking to the people were all the lessons over?” I don’t remember exactly what was said except that the Bible is the book of sacred writings accepted by Christians as coming from God to guide the religious practices of humans and their life on earth. Now I have a chance to write a new book for the Bible. This additional book will describe memories of spiritual things, an experience as an adolescent, and a description of a spiritual mentor, and provide a road map of my spiritual growing. The road map details 7 decades of my own personal spiritual lessons, including those things that I no longer believe, and includes “forks in the road” and “dangerous curves,” as well as rainbows and examples where I was able to guide others on the same spiritual path.
Chapter 1: The Baptist Chronicles
As an introduction to who I am, I will insert some of the “I am From Poem” that has changed a bit since the original assignment. Here’s where it all started.
I am from Saami reindeer herders from Finland some 14,000 years ago (according to my National Genographic DNA sample). I am from Alice Evalou and Alice Ora and Margaret Alice. I am Nancy Alice.
I am from the sunflower fields of Kansas (Mom) and the mountains of the Ozarks in Arkansas (Dad) and the plains of southern Indiana. All lands of the Cherokee, Shawnee, and the Kanawha First Nations people.
I was born on the banks of the Kanwha River in WV and the mountains and creeks and the “slicky place” where I spent countless hours chasing crawdads and building dams and getting so cold my legs were red.
This spiritual autobiography gives me the opportunity to explain what I no longer believe about certain teachings or learnings as I look back over my spiritual growing.
For example, I don’t believe anymore that I came from my parents or even those reindeer herders back in the Ice Age. I actually believe that each of us comes THROUGH our parents. Kahlil Gibran writes in The Prophet, when asked to speak of “children,” that children are gifts of the universe. I do carry my parents’ and siblings’ DNA, but I now believe I came from the Great Mysterious and have the joy to uncover my own meaning, purpose and place on the earth.
The Baptist Chronicles cover roughly the years from my birth to age 23. Milestones will be described and lessons learned. It all started in Sunday School and vacation Bible school, going to church every Sunday, attending summer Bible lessons even in Vandervoort, Arkansas, where I learned to sing “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.” I do still believe this metaphor of sharing wisdom and joy all over, no matter where I am.
I remember believing that God was an older man with flowing robes and a long white beard and that he could see inside of me just like Santa Claus. (“He knows when you have been good or bad so be good for goodness’ sake!”)
I was a member of the Baptist Youth Fellowship (BYF) and the adult choir, and went to Camp Cowan, a summer Baptist camp for teens in the summer. I learned all the books of the Bible and could open to Psalms by going to the middle of the text. One year, at age 12, I came home from that experience ready to get baptized in the baptismal font in the front of my church just like Jesus did for John the Baptist in the Sea of Galilee. I attended a Baptist college in West Virginia and had my wedding at the Baptist church where my early experiences took place.
Chapter 2 The Quaker Years
As a result of the birth of my first son, I came to know of Lehigh Valley Monthly Meeting and thus began the Quaker Years. Knowing and learning of Mary Dyer, an early Quaker in 1700s Boston, and that “God was revealed to her daily in a personal manner,” opened up a whole new, unknown to me as possible, spiritual path.
I read books in the library on the meaning of life and joined a Quaker book club. I was assigned to report on a biography of Bayard Rustin and presented that to the Meeting one First Day. I even had the amazing opportunity to shake hands with Bayard Rustin when he presented a lecture at Lafayette College.
In 1986, two years after the birth of my second son, I wrote my letter of convincement to become a member of the Religious Society of Friends and to raise my sons in a place that would teach them the option of pacifism, allowing them to learn about conscientious objector status as they reached the age of deciding about becoming a soldier.
It was easy to believe in a “creator of life” since every day of my professional career as a maternal-newborn pediatric nurse I witnessed the miracle of birth. With my new learning of seeing that of God in everyone, even my enemies, I started to release the idea of God being an old man in choir robes up in the clouds. Instead, God was inside me and around me and became “The Great Mysterious.”
I experienced a year- long workshop sponsored by Bucks Quarter entitled “Spiritual Formation.” This involved reading and discussing with fellow Quakers all things spiritual. The meetings took place in breathtakingly beautiful historic Quaker meetings across Bucks County. I felt, especially at Plumstead Meeting, that I could turn around and see William Penn sitting on the bench right behind me. The readings, discussions, and assignments triggered in me a movement toward agnosticism, a belief in something outside of me that created the universe but was based on the laws of nature and not man-made laws or even the idea of immaculate conception, resurrection, heaven, sin, etc.
I have just finished my 36th year as a Quaker. I have taught First Day School, made coffee for Hospitality, been Recording Clerk, and served on the Nominating Committee, and I am just now feeling that I can see what being a Quaker is.
My new beliefs are in line with Dr. Wayne Dyer’s thinking in a book called The Shift: Taking Your Life from Ambition to Meaning. He says “I conclude that everything is energy: it’s all vibration at a variety of frequencies. The faster the vibration, the closer one is to Spirit and understanding where we came from.” This thought process triggers me to continue to “seek for my own truth” as I enter the middle of my 8th decade on earth. So, the journey continues.