The Story of the Spirit Pin

By Nancy Johnson

The Story of the Spirit Pin is a tale about seeking perpetual peace on Earth to protect the most vulnerable population - the individual.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098032807

Nancy Johnson

A native of Chicago’s South Side, Nancy Johnson worked for more than a decade as an Emmy-nominated, award-winning television journalist at CBS and ABC affiliates nationwide. A graduate of Northwestern University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she lives in downtown Chicago and manages brand communications for a large nonprofit. Her first book, The Kindest Lie, was a Book of the Month Club selection and a Target Book Club pick.

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Chapter 1

Daniel Lyons

October 1992

Daniel Lyons could not stop thinking about that remarkable day. It’s the last day of the Summer River Festival held on the Hudson River the previous August. That day convinced Daniel that who he was, and everything he had been, had a reason.

Daniel is a Native American Indian. His tribe is the Onandaga, indigenous to the northeast. His reservation of people lived on the east end of Long Island.

He is an artisan of glass, specializing in prisms. The store he owns in South Hampton displays his prisms and a large array of crystals. He believes in the power of crystals.

Daniel has a cousin by the name of Rosa Angeles, who lives with her family in Hoboken, New Jersey. Rosa had invited Daniel to participate in the Summer River Festival. She wanted him to set up a booth displaying his prisms and crystals. This didn’t sit well with Daniel for three reasons. Number one, I hate New York City during the summer most of all. Everyone from the metropolitan tristate area leaves the city during the summer. I’m supposed to come into that hellhole in August? For one week? Number two, I hate crowds. Number three, I bottomed out on peyote right there at the Holland Tunnel. Bad memories.

But Rosa was a very persuasive woman, Daniel, this is a festival of love and hope for a better, cleaner, more peaceful world. Our ancestors would want you to be there. Your father would want you there.

He built himself some display units; and when he got to Hoboken the Friday before the festival, he was informed that number seven was to be his booth. Ah, booth number seven. This is a good omen. Seven is my lucky number. Did Rosa know that? I wonder. Maybe I’ll sell enough to buy myself that Jeep.

The Summer River Festival of 1992 was the first of many more to come. It started off slowly but eventually became spectacular. The last day, Saturday, turned out to be highly successful on both sides: the Manhattan side and the Hoboken side. Listen, man, Daniel thought to himself, the crowds are really cool. People are into it. The events are interesting too electric cars, solar power, wind power, hydropower, recycling techniques, every kind of food known to humankind all over the world. The music is moving.

Bands on either side of the river took turns playing. A sound system relayed the beat to the other side.

So today, a crisp fall day in October, Daniel Lyons eyed his two prisms with pride. These two prisms are a masterpiece I will give to the world to commemorate the last day of the Summer River Festival. The two prisms stood twenty feet tall and weighed a ton. This night he and two friends would drive into Manhattan and Hoboken, leaving a prism on either side of the river; each one on a special spot could be the holiest place on earth. I know enough to go and stand there time after time to be renewed. But other people will not know. That is why I must put the prisms there, to designate the spot for others, Daniel said.

He looked at the clock and decided to break for tea. As he put the pot on to boil, his mind went over his thoughts as he had done one thousand times recently. So this is why I had to suffer. This is why I was born a poor, distraught Indian, only to grow up to be a wild, angry young man. This is why I was sent to fight that war in Asia and come back drug addicted and suicidal. This is why. To build prisms for the holy places. The prisms will stand tall and clean at night. During the days of sun, of light, the sun’s rays will penetrate the prisms and produce rainbows that will dance across the waters. It is as if light is the spirit, the miraculous breath. The prism is the body, the person. And the rainbows are the body’s gifts to the universe. For so long, I lived my life like an empty shell on a suicide mission. I couldn’t care less if I lived or died most moments. Then in moments of clarity, I only cared about myself. My needs. My desires. But that week in August filled my deep dark empty soul, and that last day gave me a reason to live: the children.

One month earlier, Daniel’s neighbor Blimp Schmidt, a cross-country independent trucker who owned his own rig, decided to come over to Daniel’s backyard and see what the Indian was up to now. He’d seen Daniel working day and night on one weird project after another. This one topped all. Yo, Daniel, you are one crazy Injun. What the hell are you building there?

Prisms for the holy places, Daniel answered. He liked Blimp well enough. Blimp was a Vietnam vet like him. A family man. He was a hard worker, and he usually minded his own business. Daniel knew also that Blimp was in awe of Daniel’s work as a sculptor; but like many people Blimp could never get it together to say so.

Blimp, as tall and skinny as a rail, got his name in junior high because he was even skinnier back then. He said, The holy places? What the hell? You goin’ religious on me?

As Daniel stood on his scaffold eleven feet in the air, he bellowed, Blimp, if I’m a crazy Injun because I’m enlightened and in tune with higher power, what does that make you?

Got me, man, Blimp tucked his tee shirt in his pants and continued, but listen, man, don’t get so sensitive on me and go losing your sense of humor. I guess you haven’t been smoking them funny cigarettes.

Daniel didn’t answer. Blimp, sensing he may have insulted Daniel, said, Well, I guess if you’re a crazy Injun and you know more than I do, then I guess I’m just an ignorant honky. Blimp expected Daniel to laugh. He didn’t. This guy’s a strange duck, Blimp thought.

Daniel called down, Hey, Blimp, hand me the fine sandpaper. Ya mind?

Fine sandpaper. Fine sandpaper. Blimp was looking around.

It’s next to the chisel on the bench, Daniel instructed.

Oh yeah. Got it. Blimp handed Daniel the sandpaper by climbing up the scaffold’s ladder.

Blimp noticed the rainbow cast against the back door of his house. He looked back at the prisms. Must say this is a piece of work. It’s cool. Ya know, Dan, I read and saw the news about the festival and the stuff that happened there. You buy it?

Daniel answered, I was there. I experienced it firsthand. It’s real. Daniel changed the sandpaper on his handheld Black & Decker.

Blimp asked, What is all this about the Spirit Pin? My kids are into it. The school says it’s cool, ya know. It’s not a Communist plot or CIA shit, is it?

This made Daniel laugh. Blimp, what are you doing the week of October 12?

Blimp answered, Preparing for the Columbus Day storewide sales like every other full-blooded American.

Daniel looked at his neighbor. You’re kidding, right?

Blimp shook the scaffolding. Of course I’m kidding, you fuckin’ moron. I’ve lived next door to you for fifteen years, I’ve been in group therapy with you down at the VA, and you still don’t know when I’m kidding?

Daniel yelled, Well, give me a straight answer then, pale face! What the fuck are you doing October 10th and 11th, maybe the 12th?

Why am I afraid to answer that question? Blimp thought for a second. Let’s see. You know that every other week, I run a truckload of Long Island ducks for distribution out in Los Angeles, and every other week I’m pretty much free. So let’s see. This week I’m off. Next week—wait. You got a calendar?

Yeah, on my kitchen door next to my stove.

Blimp went in and came back. It just so happens I have off and nothing else planned for that week. What’s up? Blimp shielded his eyes from the sun as he looked up at Daniel running his hand over the surface of the giant prism.

Daniel stopped, How about being part of history?

Blimp acted annoyed. You want my rig, don’t ya?

Yup.

Blimp asked, For what?

Daniel didn’t answer. Instead, he asked, Can these two prisms fit in your truck?

Easily. We’d have to get Ralph and his lift over here.

Daniel got down from the scaffold. I’ll call him now. Daniel started for the kitchen phone.

Dan, don’t call him at work. He’s union. They don’t like it when the union boys get phone calls. He’s home at five o’clock. Call him then.

Ralph was another guy from the Vietnam group who met every Wednesday evening at the VA, where they spoke, shared, cried, laughed about active wartime duty and how they now cope with the world. Blimp began to get excited. The boys were going to get together and do something. He got the same feeling when they planned fishing trips around Shelter Island or hunting trips upstate.

Daniel sat down with a soda and handed a beer to Blimp. Daniel looked up at his life’s masterpiece, his apex. I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. October 10th in the afternoon, well, it’ll be after five, I guess. We’ll get Ralphie over here with his lift. I’ll spend the whole day before wrapping the prisms. When Ralphie gets here, we’ll pack the prisms in your truck. We’ll have a good meal. Lots of carbo.

Antonio’s, man. Blimp took a swig of his beer.

Daniel said, Yeah, Antonio’s, whatever. We’ll have a good meal. Then around midnight, no drinking.

No, no drinking. Blimp took another swig of beer.

Daniel put his sunglasses on. At midnight, we’ll take off for downtown Manhattan.

You, me, and Ralphie? Blimp asked.

Yeah, answered Daniel.

Blimp paused. Gee, let me figure. It may be tight. It may be tight. We’ll have to put the prisms one on top of the other. That okay?

Daniel answered, Sure, man, I’ll wrap them good. Got any extra blankets and shit?

Yeah, I got some. Not a lot but some, Blimp answered and then asked, How do you plan to mount this wherever we bring it?

Daniel smiled. My nephew belongs to a Hispanic gang in Hoboken, and he’s in tight with the cops too, so I met with them all three or four times already. They’re already digging a foundation, and they’ll lay the cement at midnight. All we have to do is get there before the cement dries.

Blimp thought. The cops. Who’s going to take care of the cops? He then asked Daniel.

Daniel’s answer shocked him. Three detectives who work downtown buy weed from me. Daniel eyed Blimp, who was deeply opposed to marijuana. He even had a Say No to Drugs sticker on his van. Blimp finished his beer. And we wonder why this country is going to the dogs.

Want another beer? Daniel asked.

Yeah, got one? Daniel returned with another beer for Blimp.

They were silent for a while, just staring at the prisms and the rainbows. Blimp spoke with his hands, Amazing, huh, how light goes through glass made in such a way and creates all those colors?

Daniel answered, And people doubt their own spirits.

Blimp said, What has one got to do with the other? A prism breaks down light into colors, right?

Daniel answered, Right, the prism helps you to see the unseen.

Oh, here we go. You got a joint lit in the kitchen?

No, man, I don’t get high anymore, anyway. Been too busy. I’ve been high on the truth. Daniel tapped his knee with the soda can.

And what’s the truth, wise man? Blimp laughed.

Daniel stretched. The truth is there is a God. The truth is there are reasons for things. The truth is God is within us and without us. God is in that prism. He’s in you. He’s in my soda can.

Oh, cut the shit, man. Blimp emptied his second beer.

Blimp, I see you being carted off to church on Sundays. What do you go for?

I’m a God-fearing man. I believe in God, Blimp answered.

God fearing? Daniel asked.

Yeah, like if there’s a hell, I ain’t going.

Daniel laughed. Blimp, don’t you want to know God? Don’t you want to know your spirit? The light within you?

Blimp sat and thought staring at the rainbow resting on his back door. He said, Remember that story I told the group about being in Cambodia and all in one night one guy standing next to me had his head blown off and then another guy walking in front of me stepped on a mine? Both blown away off the face of the earth and me inches away. Remember?

Daniel leaned on his knees, holding a bottle in his hands, shaking his head. I remember.

Dan, I never told anyone the rest of the story, but that night I must have slept for about an hour, and that was only out of exhaustion. Blimp looked at Daniel and said, I had a dream about those guys. They were laughing, having a good time. It scared the hell out of me. I woke up and got up to have a cigarette. I could see the sun rising over the fields, ya know? Big, man. I had this feeling that gripped me. Blimp grabbed his chest. I forgot myself. I could have been anything or anyone anywhere. I was somewhere up in the sky looking at myself down below. I can’t explain it. The feeling was bigger than the sun I was looking at. Bigger and more real, ya know?

Daniel shook his head. Yeah, I know. I know.

Blimp, still holding on to his chest, said, That’s it?

Daniel answered, That’s it.

Ralph agreed half-heartedly to the mission. Can’t you get a permit first, Dan? I mean, can’t you get in touch with the Parks Department?

I’m working on it, Dan lied. It’s difficult being an artist and having to deal with non-artists to complete projects.

Ralph was suspicious. You’re working on it? How’s that?

I’m working on it.

The day of reckoning came. Daniel and Blimp spent all day wrapping the prisms. At twilight, Ralph drove up with his lift. Blimp bellowed, What took you so long?

Ralph didn’t answer. Daniel didn’t say hello to Ralph; he just squeezed his shoulder affectionately. The energy was high. Blimp, Ralph said, pull your truck over here.

Ralph, Daniel, and Blimp went to work. It took three hours to pack the prisms and the lift.

As Blimp locked the doors, Ralph said, Antonio’s.

Blimp asked, We have time to shower?

Ralph said, You can shower. I’m just washing up and going to eat.

Daniel said, Be at Antonio’s in fifteen minutes.

Blimp answered, Roger, and ran back to the house.

Twenty minutes later, they were at a booth at Antonio’s with a pitcher of Coke in front of them. Spaghetti, veal parmigiana, garlic bread, and salad filled them up ready for takeoff.

The three grown men squeezed into the front seat. Daniel said, I called the kids. They won’t pour the cement until we pull up with the truck. It’s ten thirty. Blimp, you think we can make it into Manhattan by twelve thirty?

Sure, chief. Shouldn’t be much traffic.

At twelve thirty-five, the truck pulled up to the site next to Battery Park. No one was there. Slowly, one by one, teenaged boys with weird haircuts and leather jackets appeared. Coming around the bend from the park, one dozen of them walked, patrolling the area. They walked in a straight line. As they walked, their heads turned first left, then right, and then up. Repeat. Not one looked in the same direction at one time. They became the eyes of the city, patrolling against the violence.

Hardly a word was spoken. The first prism took one hour to put in place. Five of the boys stayed with it until daylight while the rest sat in the back of the truck through the Holland Tunnel over to Hoboken.

Everything went smoothly. Daniel, Blimp, and Ralph took off and in no time found themselves sitting in a diner in Queens, eating pancakes and drinking coffee. Blimp and Daniel talked on and on. Ralph sat silently, thinking how relieved he was that they didn’t get arrested and that it wasn’t his truck they were driving.

Chapter 2

Kadeeja

Summer 1991

"My name is Kadeeja. I am fifty-seven years old, and I live in South Africa. I know nothing else but South Africa. I do not read. I have not had a bad life. I am told I am not free. I know. But sometimes, most times, I don’t care. I never cared much except for feeling good. I never wanted much. My mother would say, ‘Kadeeja only talks and walks when she has to.’ When I was a child becoming a woman, I always caused a stir walking through my village. I know why. I am tall, six feet. I have big eyes, a long neck. My skin is a shiny black. I walked with rhythm and grace, still do, like the way the grasslands ripple in the wind. The villagers call me Butterfly. I made them stop. I am Kadeeja. They would also call me Beautiful. I made them stop also. I was not the only beautiful girl in the village. But I caused the most attention.

"I never worried. People get upset over things. I get up, do my share of work, and go to sleep when the day is done. That’s all. When I married and the children came, I started working for a white family a few miles away. When I first went to her house, I was shocked at the size and all its things. Day after day, I went there to clean. I could bring my two boys and daughter with me. She let me do that. I cleaned her house and watched her two children sometimes when the hired white woman teacher from England wasn’t there. That is how my children learned to read well. The teacher taught my children about words and thoughts and books—things I couldn’t. After a while, I began to have feelings of want. I lost myself in that house for a while. For thirty years, I worked there. For a while, I hated coming home to my house made of tin. My house was always so gray and dusty compared to this big house. But I learned how to plant flowers and fix up my own home. The white woman gave me a vase once. It was from Europe. Hand-painted porcelain. It was deeply hidden in a closet one day when we were cleaning. She gave it to me. She saw how happy I was that every time we cleaned out closets, she gave me everything she didn’t want. She was going to throw them in the garbage. So I brought things to my house, and soon I was Kadeeja again. Satisfied. How many things can you have anyway?

"My one son ran away from South Africa in 1973 when he was seventeen. I got a letter from him two years later from America. Boston. My two other children read it to me. They were mad he left South Africa. ‘We have work to do here. You cannot run,’ they would say. But in the letter, he said he was studying at Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a scholarship. The Nigerian embassy and another group supporting African students gave it to him after some tests. He began to study biology. He said he would learn all he could and come back to help South Africa. I began to listen to my children about the African Liberation Party. The leader was put in jail. But his wife kept us alive with her spirit. His spirit and her spirit were one with the movement. Like I said, l learned about it from my children. When you are like me, satisfied, then freedom exists within you. I just do my work and relax by looking at the sunset every night. Behind my home, there is nothing but the African land since I live on the outskirts of the village. The sun sets directly behind my house. The sun comes to South Africa to sleep at night. The big, big orange ball sinks down and falls asleep right there, behind my house.

"Now our leader is freed. I danced for days before and after. Dance, dance. The whole of South Africa danced. The earth shook. Now the black people—we can vote. I vote. I listen to my children. I vote for what they vote for, or else they are mad.

"My son came back from Boston. A doctor of science, he said. He helps people grow their own food and things like that. He works with the government on plans for South Africa. But not only South Africa because he goes to other place like Washington to talk to others and get ideas on how to save Earth. I didn’t know it had to be saved. There is so much I don’t know. I do know the sun sleeps in my backyard. I sing it to sleep every night. I do know that I love God because he gives me all I need to be satisfied.

"My neighbors and friends get mad at me often because I am not like them at all. I don’t show my feelings, but I know that what they are lacking is patience. They are angry and full of fear. I know their anger at apartheid is justified, but they are killing themselves with the anger, and what good is it then? We South Africans must see the future as good for us. We mustn’t turn against ourselves out of fear. That is what the white man wants. We must remember we are like children who have lived with unreasonably strict parents. Now the parents say we have freedom without us ever knowing what it is. Our freedom and lack of knowledge combined cause frustration. We are anxious. Our anxiety and frustration cause fear. We think our freedom will be taken away from us. We must be patient and follow our leaders. It will not happen overnight. That is the sad part. Perhaps it will be our children’s children who will reap the benefits of the foundation we lay. So we live our lives with oppression and end it with sweat. At least we can take the opportunity to show God and man our earnestness. We must get rid of the fear, South Africa, and carry on with the plan of salvation.

"The sun rises, and the sun sets. For what reason, I do not know. I know I can be happy when I carry on in rhythm with nature. Not against it. We have come this far now. Apartheid must end. Because my skin is dark should not mean I do not eat as well as someone who has light skin. My son should not have had to run away to become a learned man. He tells me I must learn to read. For what? So that I will be filled with fear? He said knowledge will teach me fear and then give me the strength to conquer that fear. He wants me to come to America. He said the world is crazy everywhere. There is fear everywhere. Why? He said it is because people are afraid of themselves.

"So it is not only South Africa that is full of fear and anger. It is all over God’s Earth. To the people all over God’s Earth, I say that we must not be taken in by the propaganda of the evil ones. Kindness is strength, not weakness, and always know that for every action taken by you, there is a reaction.

I will go with my son Marcus back to America, and I will study about what I don’t know, maybe God and the sun, so that I may really know.

Kadeeja moved to Cambridge with her son Marcus. Marcus received a fellowship to study hydropower with two other scientists. Kadeeja didn’t leave the apartment alone for months. Petrified of the cars, buses, strange language, dress, and culture, she decided it best to stay home and weave tapestries. Eventually, Kadeeja began to teach tapestry to a young woman who attended Radcliffe, who in turn taught Kadeeja to read.

After two years of hard work, Kadeeja passed her GED. Quietly, she began her studies at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, specializing in liberal arts. Quietly, she went from class to class in her native dress, listening and absorbing information. Her head would hurt each night from studying, but eventually it didn’t hurt anymore, and Kadeeja ended her days the way Kadeeja liked best: satisfied.

Chapter 3

Liam Joseph Sullivan

Summer 1991

Liam Joseph Sullivan walked along the Ring of Kerry near his home in Kilgarvan, County Kerry, Ireland. The water lapped softly against the high cliffs of the ring that day. Liam decided to stay here on the land that his family owned for many generations. It was a small farm. All of his father’s siblings moved to America or Australia. His father always felt he was stuck with the farm.

Liam studied literature at Trinity College in Dublin and traveled all over the world, observing and writing. He covered the fighting in Beirut for a long time, but then he started to follow environmental groups. He had fallen in love with a Norwegian woman, who was an administrator with one group. The environmental sins he was exposed to changed his life.

After twenty years of trotting the globe, he began to yearn for his own home. He missed Ireland. His parents had passed on, and his brother and sisters had established lives of their own, so he went back to the farm. He built a new house. This new one had indoor plumbing. He began his life as an environmental activist using his