New Cincinnati Friends Meeting (CFM) member Dana Neal yearns to know the truth, especially spiritual truth, for herself. At five, when she asked her Missionary Baptist Sunday School Teachers where the Canaanites came from if Adam and Eve were the first people, she was shushed and told to rely on her faith. “Asking questions was frowned on,” she said. “Also in the non-denominational church I attended as an adult. I decided then I would undertake my own journey. I can’t believe it just because you tell me. That’s not really authentic and God will know I am faking it. I stopped trying to force myself into a religion where I felt alone, and tried being a better person, praying and having a relationship with God.”

Though imperfect, Dana’s childhood church provided a foundation of prayer and knowing God’s presence. “It's gotten me through some tough times.”

About eight years ago, she noticed the simple Meeting sign on Kenwood Road and the one in our yard about “All are welcome. I asked myself, ‘What is this? A community? A religion?’ I had no idea, but it piqued my interest. So I Googled Quakers and began reading. And discovered with the SPICES (testimonies of simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality and stewardship), Quakers pretty much believe what I do.”

Our early testimony of equality especially impressed Dana. “That was very progressive for the 1600s to say all men, women, and the races are equal. It must not have been easy for those early Quakers. They were so countercultural and obscure. George Fox had to have a strength of character, to believe strongly, and have a lot of integrity to found a community around that.”

Dana kept reading, joining a Quaker Reddit page. “I am not a person to jump into things, I have to research them first,” she confessed. “Eventually, I said I am not gonna fully know what they are about until I go to a meeting.”

So, just about a year ago, she mustered the courage to attend. “It was more than I thought it would be; I did not realize how the quietness would impact my life, how much I needed it, and how much it calmed me. I became a lot less reactive and happier in my spirit, more optimistic and positive. I started to meditate at home, realizing I didn't have to wait until Sunday.”

Already practicing affirmations, those began to “flow together and everything I have always known to be true was validated. I have always felt like a seeker, 100 percent,” Dana said.

Until age thirteen, Dana lived in Perry, Florida, “at the armpit,” she says, surrounded by family and hours at church. “I was in the children's choir, then the adult choir. I’d go to Sunday School, then church, then dinner after church. My grandma cooked in the kitchen and we'd be there four times a week and all day Sunday.” Her father, Clifford Henry, who died in 2015, earned a forestry degree in his native Jamaica, then a master’s degree in botany at University of Florida. He supervised the nearby forest for a papermill, eventually purchased by Procter & Gamble (P&G), where he was associate director for corporate responsibility. When Dana was thirteen, her immediate family moved to Cincinnati. Dana’s mother, Pamela Henry, served as senior health systems manager of North America Beauty, also for P&G.

Dana loves visiting old Florida, the slow pace driven by humidity, and she has fond memories of fishing and close-knit family. Just like Dana knew at age five there was more to spirituality than mere belief, she sensed at twelve that she wanted to own a business and loved to style hair. Her parents pushed for college, so Dana pursued a marketing degree from Ohio University. “I had a salon in my dorm room.” She graduated and moved to Atlanta for a promotions job with Regal Cinemas.

Corporate life did not agree with her entrepreneurial spirit. “IBM was next door and I watched as they laid off an entire floor of software engineers, who were forced to train their replacements. It was so cold. I watched them walk out with their boxes.” She observed the security she thought the corporate world offered vanish.

Dana worked three years in another salon before opening her own. After fifteen years, she recently closed the salon to focus on the resale business, which she’d done when her daughter Aarilyn, CFM’s childcare helper, was born. “I wanted a change of pace and I like finding items a new home, rescuing something from the landfill and the sustainability aspect,” she said. “I am a gardener and recycler, some of the same things Quakers believe in.”

“After six months attending [CFM],” Dana said, “I felt I was holding myself back by not becoming a member.” She enjoyed Jim Newby’s Quakerism class and looked forward to the clearness process. “I like that the meeting wants to make sure new members are on the same page and that you can ask for clearness for reasons other than membership.”

“People really have no idea, or misconceptions about Quakers,” she discovered as she talked about her new faith community with others. “They think we’re Amish or dress like the Quaker Oats guy. We are kinda bad at marketing.”

Linda Daigle’s persistence in reaching out to Dana and inviting her for a one-on-one heavily influenced her decision to stick around. “We were talking about deep topics in the first conversation and Linda said, ‘I’m a racist.’ I knew this was someone deep and honest that could look me in the face and say that. These are people, I thought, who can get down and dirty and do the real work and deal with the real topics most people can’t or don’t want to explore. It helps you face your own demons.” (Linda is part of CFM’s A Mighty Stream nurture group looking at personal and faith community bias, something we committed to as part of EquaSion’s interfaith activism for racial justice.)

“I’m gonna stick my foot in my mouth,” Dana said, “and I was so struck when I read in the handbook about how the meeting will disappoint me and I will disappoint the meeting. You’ve got to humble yourself and give people grace when they mess up and hope they will do the same.”

Vocal ministry, “when people speak what’s on their heart, really makes me feel so connected. So often they say things that have been on my mind all week. I get chills because it is so moving and touching.”

The silence of worship, Dana now understands, “is what gives Quakers the inner knowledge and strength to stand up for their beliefs no matter how difficult. The knowledge that we are all equal is unshakable. Quaker abolitionists got their strength from their connection with God and the direction of God . . . knowing there was something bigger they could lean on.”

Dana is grateful her daughter, Aarilyn, has had exposure to a faith community before she graduates and begins college, aiming for the Culinary Institute and a master’s degree in food science. “She sensed my disconnect with religion and, at least, she has been adjacent to my journey here, giving her a rock to stand on and somewhere to start that has been a positive and nurturing place. I’m glad she had the opportunity to develop skills working with children, being patient, empathetic, and cooperative. I know she will be welcome with Quakers.”

Since becoming a member, Dana looks forward to diving in deeper: “getting to know people, some of the groups and communities within the meeting. I want to be of service within the community.” And, as the mother of a graduating senior, she may need a shoulder or two to cry on as her only child begins her next chapter.

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