By Sharon Abercrombie
Staff writer

She’s only 26 years old, but already Mary Perez has an accomplished resume — teacher, catechist, classical guitarist, clarinetist, ukulele strummer, dancer, and budding flutist. In August she began a significant addition to her biography — candidate in religious life.

Perez, who was born in Walnut Creek and grew up in El Dorado Hills, moved to the Motherhouse of the Mission San Jose Dominicans in Fremont on Aug. 29. She will spend three years in formation before taking vows.

Her decision to explore religious life has been in the making since 2001 when, as a Stanford University undergrad, she selected Mission San Jose Dominican Sister Gloria Marie Jones, the Catholic campus minister, as her spiritual director.

Perez credits Sister Gloria Marie, who now heads the Dominican community, for being a supportive spiritual companion who created opportunities “for me to delve into my faith at a deep level.” Going deep, she uncovered the small, whispering call to a religious vocation.

“I felt a pull in my heart towards becoming a Sister, but knew it wasn’t the right time,” she said recently. In retrospect, she realizes the tug was just one of many divine invitations which “were like bread crumbs God has been dropping along the way.”

Experiences this past January proved to be a watershed for definitive decision making. She traveled to Chiapas, Mexico, with three U.S. novices, a Mexican candidate and two women who like herself were exploring the possibility of religious life.

They spent a week with four Mission San Jose Dominicans at their Comunidad de San Martin de Porres in San Cristobal de las Casas. The visit was both soul and heart expanding. “I was very much struck by the inter-connectedness of all of us. God loves and cares for us all equally, despite what our societies may tell us about who is important.”

Perez said she realized that everyone is linked by their own actions and the actions of others. “Honoring our natural resources here, honors the resources there — exploiting our resources here, exploits the resources here,” she said. “My heart has been touched to bear witness to the direct cause-effect relationship that the actions of the privileged can have on others around the world.”

The poverty in Chiapas was visibly palpable, but it was “the people’s beauty, their deep faith, their voice for justice, their hope for peace” that touched her most.

Chiapas was not her first immersion in Latin American life. While at Stanford, Perez researched her senior thesis by going to Chile to study the Cueca, Chile’s national dance which has roots in both African and indigenous traditions. This concluded her major in ethno-musicology in which she designed her own program that included dance, music, and cultural anthropology.

It was the dream major for Perez, who began learning guitar at age 11 from her mom, a language arts teacher and vice principal at Holy Trinity School in El Dorado Hills.

After graduation she landed a summer internship at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. as an assistant to the director of the Smithsonian’s Folkways Recordings division. She helped organize the museum’s annual July 4 Folk Festival which, in 2005, focused on Latino music in Latin America and the U.S.

The event brought musicians to the Mall to share their styles of music with one another and to reach larger audiences. “I like being able to cross borders with music,” she said.

Her next adventure took her to Memphis, Tennessee, where she enrolled in the LaSallian Association of New Catholic Educators’ two-year master’s program for young people at Christian Brothers University. Students taught in local Catholic schools while working on their master’s degrees and living in a spiritual community. Perez liked the practice of praying in community and sharing her colleagues’ common goal of bringing Christ’s teachings to inner city children.

Graduate studies completed, Perez wanted to return to California. She contacted Dominican Sister Rose Marie Hennessy, principal of St. Elizabeth School in Oakland, about a teaching position. There was an opening in the school’s special education program and Perez was offered the job, teaching in the Mother Pia building, named after Mother Pia Backes, the pioneering European Dominican who brought her community’s charism to San Francisco in 1876.

During Perez’s reception as a candidate in the community in August, Dominican Sister Helen Im, vocation director, acknowledged that Perez is “very much connected with the missionary spirit of Mother Pia. Indeed because of that innate spirit to go to the frontiers, Mary actually felt alive teaching in communities very different from her home community.

“In Chiapas where she let the Mayas touch her heart, she experienced that deep-felt sense of knowing as to what her life is for . . . she found the courage to say ‘yes,’ to be touched by love and never be the same; yes to be given for others.”

Now nearly two months into her new life, Mary Perez is finding it “pretty fun, a blessing to share in this life with the Sisters.”

It is also busy. She is studying the life of St. Dominic, the four pillars of Dominican spirituality (prayer, study, community and ministry), Catholic social teaching, and Christology. She’s taking the latter at Santa Clara University.

Ever the curious musician, she is also studying a new instrument — the flute.

And she continues to use her teaching skills during a weekly faith formation class with third graders at St. Joseph School in Fremont. Naturally, one of her two guitars goes along “so that we can offer praises to God through song.”

“The classroom is a sacred place to open eyes, hearts and minds. I aim to do that in any classroom I’m teaching in.”

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