March 2008

At the age of 19, current Nashua, New Hampshire, resident Mary Johnson began her training as a nun for Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious order founded by Mother Teresa in 1950 that is active in more than 130 countries. Members of the order take vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and devote their lives to giving “wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor.” The decision to dedicate her life to God was not a difficult one for Johnson to make. “I was very much in love with God, and I found the whole idea of loving people who are on the margins very appealing,” she explains. “I felt called.”

Answering that call placed Johnson on a path that led to two decades of intense training, study, and prayer, as well as social work with shut-ins, gypsies, refugees, prisoners, and the homeless in such places as the Bronx, New York; Washington, DC; Winnipeg, Ontario, Canada; and Rome, Italy. Spending a total of 15 years in Rome, Johnson became involved in training other nuns but her main duties were focused on the formation of missionaries throughout Europe. In time, she became one of the nuns most trusted by Mother Teresa, who assigned to Johnson the revision of the order’s governing document, the Constitutions. “Mother Teresa was an extraordinarily focused person, sincere in everything she did and determined to love God with her whole heart and soul,” relates Johnson. “I admired her greatly.”

Johnson’s high regard for Mother Teresa was one of the many things that made her decision to leave the order a difficult one. It was a decision based on a complex series of reasons, but most prominent for Johnson was the unavoidable fact that her world view was shifting to one of a more secular nature. “The community was becoming more narrow minded, while I was becoming more broad minded,” explains Johnson, who told Mother Teresa about her decision to leave in the spring of 1997. “It is not easy to disappoint one of the world’s most admired women,” she admits.

 Having recently received a master of fine arts in creative writing from Goddard College in Vermont, Johnson is currently working on a memoir about the 20 years she spent as a missionary, and the internal transformation she experienced that affected her outlook on life and her opinion of organized religion. “I believe that telling my story can bring hope to many people who struggle with questions of faith, meaning, and religiously-imposed guilt,” says Johnson, who is looking forward to spending four weeks at MacDowell in March working on her book. “You reach a very special place when you don’t have to deal with the distractions of daily life,” she says. “That’s what I’m hoping for at MacDowell.”

Johnson will read from her work-in-progress at March’s MacDowell Downtown presentation, and will also take questions from audience members. Tentatively entitled An Unquenchable Thirst: One Woman’s Extraordinary Journey Through Faith, Hope, and Clarity, Johnson’s memoir is scheduled to be released by Spiegel & Grau, a division of Random House, in the fall of 2009.