As the child of a peripatetic military family, Sister Sharon spent her youth on U.S. military bases around the world. She joined the Dominican Sisters from Sacred Heart Parish, Redlands, Calif.
Then she taught junior high and high school for about twenty years before transitioning to healthcare administration. She worked for about a combined dozen years at St. Dominic Hospital Jackson, Miss, and St. Mary-Rogers Memorial Hospital, Rogers, Ark.
In the late 1990s, feeling drawn to the study of Earth literacy, Sister Sharon completed a master’s degree in Earth literacy at St. Mary of the Woods College and became the founding director of Jubilee Farm, an ecospirituality center in Springfield. The center is celebrating 25 years of active ministry in 2025. It, and Sister Sharon, provide an alternative narrative about human relationships with Earth who sustains us.
"My vocation was quite a surprise to me, my parents, family, and friends," Sister Sharon said. "I did not attend Catholic schools or have any connection with religious sisters. I just knew it was what I was supposed to do. The roundabout way I ended up a Dominican Sister has brought me the most joy! Of the four pillars of our Dominican life, I continue to find that study is the most alluring for me. It is in learning about God's Creation, the whole of it, that I find God so powerfully present."
