2013 Hal Brook Perry Award
Mary C. Earle
Episcopal priest, writer, poet, spiritual director and retreat leader. Through word and example, you have blessed, comforted and strengthened countless people with the grace God makes available to everyone in any circumstance.
Following completion of your Master of Divinity at Seminary of the Southwest in 1987, you served parishes in the Diocese of West Texas. The onset of a life-threatening illness 18 years ago changed the focus and expression of your ministry to this day. You replaced the busy life of a parish priest with what has become your great gift of teaching and writing.
Your online courses for your alma mater were routinely filled with students eager for your wisdom. You served as author-in-residence at The Work+Shop, a ministry of St. Mark’s, San Antonio, committed to the spiritual life for lay people. You lead ecumenical workshops at Oblate School of Theology such as Tending the Divine Habitat of the Body. Your gifts as teacher were recognized when you received the Durstan R McDonald Teaching Award at your seminary in 2003.
Author of six books and co-author of two, you have given us your insight into Celtic Spirituality, the desert mothers, and perhaps most needed, the relationship between our bodies, illness, and the spiritual life.
You have shown the depth of your faith in the face of debilitating illness and profound loss, and you have truthfully and generously shared your hard won wisdom and holy perspective on our relationship to God and to ourselves. One colleague has said of you that in your small frame you somehow manage to convey both a prophet’s fearless commitment to truth-telling as necessary medicine and a mother’s gentle love of all that is miraculous in its ordinariness, the small and particular creatures and plants and humans of south Texas. Your dear friend, Hal Brook Perry, surely must smile on this recognition of your faithful ministry to the Church and to her people.
We are pleased to present you with the 2013 Hal Brook Perry Distinguished Alumni Award.
Cynthia Briggs Kittredge R. Reid Morgan III
Dean and President Alumni Association President
