Sister Teresa Jackson
“God always wins,” says Sister Teresa Jackson with an ironic smile. She is referring to how she argued long and hard with God while discerning her vocation. In the end, it was crystal clear where she belonged.
Sister Teresa Jackson grew up in the San Francisco Bay area of California without any particular faith tradition. She joined a Baptist church while in college and remained a steady member of Baptist congregations through graduate school and into her early career. Though she enjoyed her progressive church, one day “it wasn’t enough anymore. I wanted to go deeper.” Soon she came across a brochure for a summer course in “Catechetics, Liturgy, and Spirituality” and decided to enroll, even though the course was hosted at a Catholic school. After six weeks of staring open-jawed and amazed at the richness of sacramental theology, she was hooked. A year and several more classes later, on the 5th Sunday of Lent, she attended her first Catholic Mass. This, she realized, was the unknown thing for which she had been searching. “It kind of scared me,” she says, “but of course God had other ideas.”
Shortly after entering the church through RCIA in 1992, Sister Teresa began having entirely unwelcome yet very persistent thoughts about vocation and religious life. Working at that time in mental health in San Jose, she says that she could see herself going through the stages of death in her thinking about vocations: “Denial, bargaining, anger...” She had become Catholic, but religious life seemed like too much.
Sister Teresa leads a retreat at Spirit Center. |
After participating in a “monastic living experience” in Cottonwood, Idaho, she realized quickly that St. Gertrude’s was her home. Several more visits later, she quit her job, said goodbye to friends, and moved from the bustling Bay Area to the Monastery for good. Despite the radical change, she knew this was where she belonged.
Sister Teresa made final profession in 2000 and began working with the Monastery’s retreat ministry. As part of an outreach program she travelled across Idaho, Washington and Oregon facilitating retreats as well as organizing meaningful experiences for often overlooked groups – parish secretaries and women pastors, for example – at the Monastery. She also began to co-chair the oblate program with Jeannette Kelley. In 2007-8, Sister Teresa earned her Certificate in Monastic Studies from St. John’s University in Minnesota and returned to take on a new role as volunteer director and finally vocations director in 2010.
“The Passion of the Earth” project is one of Sister Teresa’s most well-known accomplishments. Musing over Brian Swimme’s new cosmology and the Monastery’s outdoor Stations of the Cross, she wanted to create something that merged the two. The text of “The Passion of the Earth” was the result. After writing the story, she consulted with Melanie Weidner on artwork to match. The delight on Sister Teresa’s face is obvious as she speaks of working back-and-forth long-distance with Melanie on the project, seeing sketches and writing back: “That’s exactly what I had envisioned! It’s perfect!” The two installed the project, which combines text blocks with fabric mandalas, in a custom-designed space in the then-brand new Spirit Center. It remains hanging over the stairs to the lower level on the main floor of the Spirit Center.
When asked about the challenges of coordinating oblates, volunteers, and vocations, Sister Teresa responds, “I’m the membership director...the commonality [amongst oblates, volunteers, and vocation-seekers] is people who want a greater connection with the Monastery.” In addition, “not everyone knows what they’re looking for when they come here. You can’t put people in a box.” She sees her ministry as “a way for the Monastery to share our way of life, a set of values that the world needs right now.” In the past, volunteers may simply have been an extra pair of hands, oblates something of “a fan club or auxiliary.” That view has changed. These lay-people are now considered integral elements of the Monastery community, people who find ways of living monastic values outside professed monastic life. However God draws people to the Benedictine way of life, it seems, “God always wins.”
Hear the Mountain West Voices interview with Sister Teresa.
Read Sister Teresa's "Our Daily Life" Blog