Nancy Pfaff Memoir—first page 9/16/11
As long as I can remember I’ve been searching. What I was searching for I couldn’t say for many years. My search was subdued and almost invisible until a Sunday school teacher shot holes in my simple faith the fall I turned thirteen. This marked an initiation into the darker side of life, a turning away from the light. That year our class of eighth graders was filled with high energy, every class was a chance to socialize with all my best friends and my new boyfriend, LeRoy Nutting. But that youthful simplicity and joy in my faith ended on that fateful Sunday in 1954 as Mrs. Decker launched into her “enlightened” teaching on the debunking of the Virgin Birth.
Now up until that day, I wasn’t any Bible expert, I hadn’t memorized more than two psalms and no bible verses, I had no opinion on other religions or who was in or who was out, what was acceptable and what was heresy, I just loved my little white bible with my name engraved in gold leaf—Nancy Lee Watson. My childlike assumption about what that bible contained was that it was full of good stories from a long time ago, and these stories were fun to enter into in my imagination—Daniel in the lion’s den (Hopeful, but doubting that my faith could stop the mouths of lions.); David and Goliath (Rejoicing in a child having conquered a giant.); and Jesus born in a stable in Bethlehem (Hopeful that there were families who loved each other and helped each other because my family was in constant fermentation from the disease of alcoholism.).
Whether these stories were literally true or legendary or inspired by God but not literally true or something else didn’t enter my thoughts. I simply believed them as they were written. What was important and essential was that these stories inspired a sense of radiance, revealed a sparkling cosmos bigger than the one I lived in day-to-day, stirred a sense of wonder that drew devotion out of my inner soul for this God who mysteriously became involved in lives and accomplished miracles. Sunday school, the bible, hymn singing all pointed to this light and luminous other world; and my undiscriminating heart resonated to its numinosity.
But back to Mrs. Decker, my weaver of evil spells. She was an overstuffed, middle-aged woman with unruly black hair, and an attitude that said, “I am so very informed and modern in my thinking!” She launched into her version of the birth of Christ, “Now the bible says that Mary was a virgin, and that God gave her Jesus in a miraculous happening, but we don’t have to accept this ancient and superstitious tale. Mary could easily have been a virgin, but contained within herself both male and female parts which could produce the child quite easily. We can see this in nature. Many plants have complete flowers with both male and female parts.”
Now growing up in a ranching and farming community, you would think that I was well acquainted with the reproductive process, but I was a town kid, and the only sexual sight I had witnessed was the castrating of the male calves at branding time when I visited Sandra Galeppi, a school mate who lived on a ranch. Oh another classmate and I had sneaked a medical book from my parents’ bookshelves, had perused various genital diagrams, found them disgusting, and decided we would never have intercourse, but just swim in a pool with our husband and get pregnant that way. That was the extent of my sexual thinking. So with Mrs. Decker tying the Virgin Mary to a plant which could reproduce itself sexually my mental acuity began to fade. My mind kind of tried to wrap around the words Mrs. Decker had sounded in my ears, but I couldn’t make sense of it. What punctured my resonating heart was that God didn’t do miracles; it was all ancient superstitious stuff, something out of the wilds of time when the inquisition burned people at the stake for being witches.
In this crisis of faith, fate marked me to forever search out the numinous and my relationship to it, although it would remain at an unconscious level for many years.
