“Day of the Dead”
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, 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 2020.
Janna and her husband, Scott Hooker, also play continue to play music together, finding new folks to play with here. She is also enjoying having time to cultivate a regular writing practice.
She is honored to be speaking to the congregation and is grateful to be invited to share reflections through an existential/feminist perspective. 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.