Kelley Coco was 16 when cancer invaded her body. Frightened, and searching for something, or someone, to hold on to, she journeyed from Boston to the Silver Lining Ranch in Aspen in the summer of 2000.
That’s when she met Andrea Jaeger.
Coco had no clue that Jaeger, at age 16, had been the second-ranked tennis player in the world, a pigtailed, 5-foot-5, 130-pound pixie who slammed winners from the baseline. Coco didn’t know that Jaeger escaped the insular world of professional tennis at age 19, searching for something more fulfilling in her life.
All Coco knew was she felt a warm glow when Jaeger flashed a smile and welcomed her with a sisterly hug.
I felt like I was the most special person in the world,” said Coco, now a Los Angeles-based producer for the Hallmark Channel whose non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma has been in remission for seven years. In September 2006, at age 41, Jaeger was ordained as a Dominican nun in the Episcopal Church. Coco was not the least bit surprised.
“It made perfect sense,” Coco said. “I had never met anybody else who really lived what they preached. But she lives it 100 percent.”
Wow! Thanks for this wonderful uplifting article. What a gift to the world Andrea Jaeger is!
Great story! I saw her featured on a news show several months back. She’s the real deal! :>)
it is a great story, for sure. help me out though, what is ECUSA doing ordaining nuns? i’ve never heard of such a thing…..
The article gets a couple of things wrong:
1.I don’t believe Andrea Jaeger is ordained.
2.TEC doesn’t “ordain nuns” anyway.
Most monastics are laypeople. They take vows to enter the professed life- but a Bishop never lays hands on them. Once upon a time (pre vatican II) this was considered a form or level of ordination, but Vat II eliminated those distinctions. Doesn’t apply to us anyway since we’re not RC. About half of the Anglican Order of Preachers (the group Andrea belongs to) are laypeople, including her. You can read more about her order at: http://anglicandominican.com/
What I have to say is not, let me repeat not, a reflection on the goodness and Christian example of Andrea. But I have to register my unease at Episcopal pillaging of other people’s traditions. The Anglican Dominican website says that Friars and sisters live by themselves, with their families, or in small groups. They support themselves and the order by their ministry work: either within the institutional church or in the secular marketplace representing the Body of Christ. Friars and sisters may take vows of marriage, or vows of celibacy. I am sorry, but that is not a formulation of the Dominican life that any Roman Catholic Dominican would recognise. Dominicans, like Franciscans, have a Third Order (in the Franciscan case, Secular Franciscan Order) of lay people, but they would not be referred to as friars or sisters. I am glad that the Spirit blows where it will and stirs up people of faith to witness. I only wish that they could find a way of structuring their spiritual life without taking over, and altering to suit themselves, a way of life pioneered and persevered at by another tradition for nearly 800 years. If you call yourself brother or sister, if you go about in public in a habit, then you need to be in vows and in a community. I am well aware, of course, of the rich irony that so many Catholic religious in the US have abandoned the habit and live virtually indistinguishable lives on their own in apartments. If Anglican Dominicans create communities where people say the office, live celibately and are an inspiration to us all, then I rejoice. But I would be happier if it was made clear that this was a very specific calling.
Well said, Terry. And God bless Andrea.
If I am remembering correctly (and I may not be), “Sister Andrea” used to be listed on the Anglican Dominicans’ site.