“What You Pay Attention to Grows”
Reverend Janna Nelson was ordained by the First Existentialist Congregation of Atlanta in 1999, where she was an active member for decades before moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico six years ago to be closer to her large family. She is a retired elementary school teacher and preschool director who enjoys children and who learns as much from them as they do from her. She was doing singing with a sister in classrooms in a local school until the pandemic closed schools down in March. She and her husband Scott Hooker performed for decades in the Atlanta area and continue to play jazz in Albuquerque.
She is honored to be speaking to the congregation and is grateful to be invited to share reflections through an existential/feminist perspective, going back to source material and discovering new feminist writers. She had personal experiences as a young person that stirred ideas about life that she later found expressed by these writers and thinkers. These ideas and concepts continue to be a touchstone for a way to live life more fully, with all its complexity and grief and uncertainty, to participate in freedom from oppression and alienation of all kinds, a way to keep moving forward, to help build something good, to participate in healing. A way to still live in the moment, to find lightness, to cultivate curiosity, to let in beauty, to grow and expand, to connect with others, while living in these challenging and sometimes frightening times.