It sounds like something you’d read in a novel: Concert
pianist falls in love at first sight with Episcopalian priest
who proposes on second date; couple marry, uproot and
dedicate their lives to serving the poor in inner-city
Washington, D.C.
But this is no bestseller – at least not yet – and the
52-year-old protagonist, instead of being fictional, lives
off a dirt drive in Culpeper, just 72 miles from the streets
where she spent 22 years in ministry.
Mary Lyman Jackson’s story is one of adventure, of hope and
of love. It’s a story of saving and being saved. And, more
than anything, it’s a story filled with chapter after chapter
of deep faith.
A Southern start
Photographs hang like personalized wallpaper in Mary’s large
country home off U.S. Route 29. The former president and CEO
of Exodus Youth Services, Inc., has a tangible memory of
seemingly everything: the apron signed by Julia Child for her
mother; a program from the funeral of a friend; banners
carried during her days working with the poor in the nation’s
capital.
Mary’s southern upbringing – she was born in Savannah, Ga. –
dictates that she offer any visitor a bite to eat, and the
fresh gingerbread hints at her skills as a gourmet cook, a
talent passed down from her adoptive mother. Mary was the
oldest of her parents’ four children, and the arts –
especially the piano – took center stage in her life at an
early age. Mary’s natural talent on the keyboard ensured that
the instrument would be defining in her life.
“(The piano) was my experience of God,” said Mary, a Catholic
convert who was raised Episcopalian. “If you can play
anything you can hear, you know there’s something much more
powerful in life than you.”
En route to a career as a concert pianist, Mary pursued her
love of the ivory keys at Chatham Hall Boarding School in
Chatham, Va., followed by Eastman School of Music in
Rochester, N.Y.
Her big plans screeched to a halt, however, when she met
Logan Jackson, an Episcopalian priest, and fell
instantaneously in love. Mary at once gave up her musical
ambition in favor of a vocation as a wife and mother in a
country parish outside Louisville, Ky.
But a quiet life was not what God had in store for the
couple. After the birth of three children – Mercer, Kemper
and Walter – Mary and Logan received similar “visions” from
God telling them in no uncertain terms that they must begin
ministering to the poor.
“God spoke to (Logan) and gave him a vision of helping poor
children,” Mary said. “At the same time God had given me a
vision of children in pain.”
Within a week the couple, their three children and their nine
dogs had “up and left” their comfortable parish life in
search of a new, uncertain one.
An Exodus
In 1985, the family moved to Washington, D.C., and Mary and
Logan began developing Exodus. Without a clue as to what they
were doing, the couple hit the streets, looking for the
materially and spiritually poor in the personas of runaways,
abandoned children, gang members, AIDS victims – you name it.
They purchased a big house off of Military Road in Washington
that became headquarters for their ministry.
“It was just the two of us,” Mary said. “We went to the
poorest places; we went to the most dangerous places. We were
so eager to accept God’s call, to seek His kingdom first. We
believed that God would take care of us.”
In 1989, though, things changed dramatically when Logan was
diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease.
“He literally in a couple of months went from being a jock to
(being) paralyzed from the neck down,” Mary said. She cared
for him full time, even bringing him on the streets in a
wheelchair. At the same time, she cared for her daughter,
Kemper, who had been diagnosed with the autoimmune disease
lupus.
With Logan’s diagnosis, Mary’s role in Exodus became
increasingly pronounced. She stopped teaching at the
Washington Conservatory of Music and stopped instructing 26
private students.
“I gave it up and worked full time for the ministry,” she
said, though it was not without reluctance. “God had to work
in my life. He had to show me that the first shall be last,
the last shall be first, and to really be a true leader you
have to serve.”
Logan died in June 1993, one year after the entire family
converted to Catholicism.
“I didn’t know how I was going to go on,” Mary said. “I
prayed all the time. God really took care of me.”
A new beginning
Drowning in sorrow after Logan’s death, Mary said it was the
people on the streets whom she was trying to save that ended
up saving her. These homeless and poor were not her clients,
but her friends, her family. They told their “Sister Mary”
that it was time to pick herself up and get back to work.
For the next 14 years Mary raised her children and continued
to work on the streets of Washington, attracting widespread
attention. Those in the ministry trained more than 37,000
volunteers to assist in Exodus’ four-part mission of
evangelization, catechesis, prayer and social outreach. Once
Exodus had helped more than 20,000 of the “poorest of the
poor,” Mary said they stopped counting.
Paulist Father Bruce Nieli, who served with Mary for three
years, referred to her as a modern-day St. Paul.
“She really has a universal sense of devotion of sensitivity
and hospitality,” Father Nieli said. “Like St. Paul she is
able to reach out to different cultures, different ethnic
groups, different lifestyles and to make them all feel at
home in Christ.”
Mary found her way back to the piano, composing and recording
five pieces for her CD “The Joyful Mysteries.” The music
seems to flow directly from her heart into the listener’s
soul and each track is dedicated to a different family
member.
The next chapter
In 2007, Exodus shut down due to increasingly dangerous
conditions. Unable to turn to her piano because of a car
accident that resulted in a permanent wrist injury, Mary has
instead begun to write her life story – what she hopes will
be an instrument with which to teach.
“It’s what God wants me to do now,” she said.
The book is in the works, but Mary is fighting the clock. She
recently was diagnosed with a terminal case of scleroderma, a
disease that hardens the skin. Having watched Logan die,
however, she is no longer afraid of passing from this life
into the next.
“When he died I knew heaven was for real because part of me
is up there with him,” Mary said. “I am not afraid of death
now. I see it can be peaceful.”
She now writes for hours a day, working on the memoir that
she called “a testimony of joy and faith and love in the
midst of suffering.”
Without a doubt, Mary’s life has been filled with suffering.
As Father Nieli said: “She’s embraced the cross.”
But because she has had the love of her family and God, Mary
has no regrets.
“I have a full life because I have been given this deep
knowledge that Jesus loves me,” she said. “And knowing that
Jesus loves you, you really don’t need anything else.”
