She is a Living Theasure, an author, a calligrapher, a community activist if the situation is right for her. She's one of Santa Fe's most visible personalities.
But 80-year-old Mary Lou Cook also is a minister, and almost 100 couples in the last year have her to thank for marrying them. "Two friends asked me to marry them 10 years ago," Cook says. "I was resistant, because it was nothing that I would have ever done. But they insisted, so I called a friend, asking how I could become a minister." The friend was a fellow minister, Dr. Jay Scherer-who started the Healing Academies in Santa Fe and who has since died- who ordained Cook. The two worked together for many years. That was 10 years ago, and Cook has been regularly performing nontraditional ceremonies of simplicity ever since.
"I'm just so grateful I got into this," says Cook, who added to her total of weddings performed with two on New Year's Day and another on Saturday. "I realize this is my work." Couples fly in from all over the country to be married, Cook says. Mostly they want to avoid the hassles and planning of a large wedding and turn to Cook to reduce the stress.
Before weddings, the couples sit with Cook at her home, where she performs some of the weddings. "Everyone settles down and realizes how pleasurable it will be to plan a quiet, simple, wonderful wedding," says Cook.
She also has just completed her 11th book. The latest is called "Divorce Insights," co-authored by Jan Boyer of Santa Fe. Cook describes the book as a healing read. She says her experience as a counselor led to it. "There is not the right preparation for marriage," she says. "Consequently, 50 - 60 percent of marriages end in divorce."
The ceremonies Cook performs she calls "spiritual partnerships. I'm very happy with it."
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