BONUS LIVE Sr Anne Tormey - Catherine McAuley Award 25 Year Reunion

I’m sneaking in this live and raw episode of My Warm Table recorded on 28 March 2023 with Season 1 guest Sister of Mercy Anne Tormey. 

I had the privilege of hosting a conversation with Sr Anne during the 25 year reunion of the Catherine McAuley Developing Women in Leadership and Service Award.  

We celebrated this milestone in the olive grove at MercyCare Wembley - a foundation sponsor of the Award Program.  Speakers on the night included Award co-founder Elena Douglas, convenor Rosa Speranza and our evening’s MC Jenni Del Marco. 

I’m sharing this conversation with Sr Anne for all the Catherine McAuley Award women who couldn’t be there at the event and for the My Warm Table podcast listeners who enjoyed the deep wisdom and encouragement from Sr Anne last season. 

Enjoy this live recording and raw episode! 

Transcript

Sonia Nolan: 0:00

Hi, I'm Sonia Nolan and I'm sneaking in this live and raw episode of My Warm Table recorded on the 28th of March 2023, with season one guest Sister of Mercy Anne Tormey I had the privilege of hosting a conversation with Sister Anne during the 25 Year Reunion of the Catherine McAulay Developing Women in Leadership and Service Award. We celebrated this milestone in the beautiful olive grove at MercyCare in Wembley. MercyCare was a foundation sponsor of the award programme, so it was really fitting to be on those grounds. Speakers on the night included award co-founder Eleanor Douglas, convenor Rosa Speranza, and our evenings MC Jenny Del Marco. I'm sharing this conversation with Sister Anne for all the Catherine McAuley award women who couldn't be there at the event on the night. And also for the My Warm Table podcast listeners who enjoyed the deep wisdom and encouragement from Sister Anne last season. Enjoy this live recording and very raw episode. Okay, are we all settled? Is everybody comfortable? Wherever you are, everyone's comfortable? So excuse our backs to the ladies behind us. But everyone else is comfortable. Fantastic. Thank you. Hello, friends and fellow Catherine McAulay ladies. My name is Sonia Faccin Nolan and I'm a CathMac girl from 2007. And, and I've been given this amazing privilege to sit and have a conversation with our very beloved Sister Anne Tormey. So we will all know Sister Anne as one of the very early conveners of the Catherine McAuley Award. She was part of the first 10 years of the award. And I'm sure she needs no introduction to us based on that score. But what might be lesser known was and very fitting that here we gather under the olive trees at MercyCare is that sister Anne has had a long 30 year history in the early formation of MercyCare long before it became MercyCare. She predated the organisation that we know today and was involved from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. And Sister Anne was then a foundational MercyCare board member, and then a trustee until 2013. She kept the spirit alive and the mission of the Sisters of Mercy absolutely imbued within the organisation. And she can see now the legacy that was formed then and continues to this day in very different iterations. So welcome, Sister Anne.

Sr Anne Tormey: 2:53

It's a joy to be here this evening, and to meet you all again, and to meet the members who came after 2010, who did the award after 2010, whom I wouldn't have met. But it's great to know that you're here as well. And thank you.

Sonia Nolan: 3:17

So we prepared a few questions. We've had lots of long ranging conversations in the last couple of days since Sister Anne has been here in Perth. And there's so much that we could share with you tonight. And so we're going to do our best to cover as much as we can, that's going to be really relevant and meaningful to all of the women gathered today. But as we sort of evoke the sense of place, I also want to reflect on a sense of time. And what's always struck me about the Sisters of Mercy is that they were always keen to mission and do the work of the time and really read the tea leaves of what's going on at this moment in the world and how are we going to be the most relevant and useful and so Sister Anne I'd love to- I'd love to understand from you when you were setting up the Catherine McAuley award with Elena and all the rest and you were part of the convening body. What did you see as the main needs of women 25 years ago.

Sr Anne Tormey: 4:14

I think 25 years ago was again, recording some of our history, the history of Catherine McAuley and her radical move in the 1830s in Dublin. It was Ursula Frayne 29 coming here when there were only 5000 people in, so in Perth and setting up the first permanent school and the first school for girls. And then when we moved into the 1990s it was a time of rising consciousness. Well, certainly the women's movement globally. A lot of writing both in terms of it feminist theory, feminist theology. So that was something at the time then. And then when we set up the award it was to draw on some of the theory that was there, but also some of our own lived experience. And one of the things that struck me very early on in the interviews was, like, women who we were interviewing had amazing experience, you know, had studied and travelled and worked, but the thing that stayed with me was the sense of diffidence. You know, I thought,"Oh, these have been great opportunities. But there was then a diffidence." At the end of the award, what struck me was the sense of confidence that women had. And one of our key things was in forming a community, we tried to have diversity in, in each year, diversity profession, the cultural and ethnic diversity, never as much as we would have liked, religious diversity. And the idea, and Kate Hitchke was very helpful in using the Myers-Briggs in the formation retreat, helping the group to see not to be afraid of difference, but to see difference not as threatening, but as holding the possibility of enrichment, enrichment. And I think that was, the other thing was, if women could be free enough to share, that would be one of the greatest influences for formation during the year. I think even meeting you here tonight and knowing that so many of you have stayed in touch, and have had that connection of genuine friendship. I think that was a great outcome of that award year. Because it makes such a difference, to have people with whom you can, can share and who can appreciate your giftedness and for whom you can also encourage them to do new things. Another thing I think we learned was in the year following the award, a lot of women made changes in their own lives. And I think that's so important to have a sense of one's own giftedness, to grow in self acceptance and in self knowledge. And I remember we often had Sally Kester as one of the presenters, because she often referred to Socrates, you know, know thyself, know thyself, have some sense of your own shadow, because if you don't know some of your own weaknesses, and own them, then you can project them and cause difficulty wherever you are. So I think we chose to a whole range of women because we really wanted to expose the women within the programme to a whole range of women, role models, women who professionally were very successful, but who were very authentic, courageous, and generous. And probably, you still remember many of those women and some of the things that you would have learned from them. We also in the programme, if you remember, each year, I asked you to select one woman from history, and look at her biography or autobiography. And we shared some of that in the July residential. And it was another way of - there have been amazing women in history who have done amazing things, many of them inspired by deep religious purpose. Yes, there was some amazing ones. The other thing is the programme, we would have liked to have offered much more in terms of experience within service. Given the commitments women in the programme already had, we couldn't do that as much as we would have liked. But Rosa has referred to the pre planting some of the experiences we've tried to build in.

Sonia Nolan: 9:51

Thank you, Sister Anne. It's interesting you talk about the historic women that we studied, and I remember studying Corrie Ten Boom and I remember one of the really uplifting things which has stayed with me over many years is the fact that she did her best work and what she's known for in her 50s. And so there's, there's hope. It's wonderful in my forties, like Corrie didn't do her big thing until she was in her 50s. So, so I'm really delighted to have had that opportunity, yay for the 50s. And in fact, some of the conversation I've heard this evening Sister Anne is so much and I think Rosa even said it, you know, we'd all love to do the programme again, my goodness, you know, the wisdom that and the sharing that we could really embracing and get something out of now would be wonderful now that we're all that little bit wiser, perhaps, and a little bit older, dare I say it? But what would you have as some wisdom that you would want to impart on us now 10, 15, 25 years since we've done the programme? What is some of the wisdom that that we could learn from you this evening?

Sr Anne Tormey: 10:55

Well, I think I'd like to refer to one of the presenters. We had, we often invited her and thank you. Thank you, Elena. And Elena referred to her as one of the sponsors, original sponsors. And that was Sister Patricia Pak Poy. And we used to invite her because Pat had such an involvement, and not only in leadership roles in Australia, not only, yet she was in Asia often and being ethnically Chinese, she also taught English for a time in China, but she headed up the Australian non government campaign to ban anti personnel landmines in the 1990s. And in that capacity was often attached to the Australian Government delegation to the United Nations in Geneva. So we used invite Pat, and Pat was somebody who liked to distil things. And I remember at the end of her presentation, she distilled some of her sharing into two principles. One I've forgotten but the other. The other one stayed with me clearly. And she referred to the Ethel principle. And she told the women she had seen a tombstone, and the tombstone was for somebody called Ethel. And, and it was written the words "she did what she could." Pat made a big thing of that. She did what she could. And I remembered that, and I think why I remembered it, because Pat has been a nursing home for the last five years. And people say to me, at times, you know, I didn't realise Pat was a resident, I thought she was a volunteer. She's attentive to all the other people, to the staff, to the husbands to come in to sit with their wives. So I think, ah, Pat, you're doing what you can. And last week, we were out and I said to her "Pat, you know, when you came across, what was the second of those principles?" She didn't remember. But she said, she did what she could, it's very important. It's very important that people don't have to compare themselves to other people. And it's very important that women don't have a sense of self reproach. So with Patty every week we go driving and everything and it's the high point in my week to be with somebody who is so internally free, she is an extremely free woman. And that was not me that was maybe GK Chesterton or somebody. But, um, so that's the other thing is to touch on the sense of inner freedom. Like we have a long march, each of us to inner freedom. And I think life is so busy. Sometimes I catch the tram and I see half the tram, more than half the tram, everybody's on his or her phone. And I just think, like, we need, we need. See that and it also makes me think, there was a writer in the early centuries in Christianity, who used to have this adage, "we need to put the mind in the heart." We need to have moments when we're just in the moment. So whether it's sitting under the stars, or walking in the garden, or listening deeply to music, or watching children at play, or watching animals, but just to have where we're not thinking, we're just in the moment. And I think it's building in those moments in our lives, busy lives, because otherwise we're thinking of the past or the thinking of the future. There may be also more formal practices, the practices of mindfulness of meditation in various forms, including walking meditation. And for many Christians, nowadays, there is the practice of centering prayer. I've just been saddened, aware of the presence of God. And I think it's, it's quite important to have that, to allow God to work within us. There's a line from William Blake, the poet, William Blake, "we are put on earth a little while to bear the beams of love, to bear, and two cents, to bear, first of all, the God given gift of life with appreciation. A life that's given to us breath by breath, and heartbeat by heartbeat, and to bear in the sense of emanating love and kindness." And I think- so, I think that Pats being challenged to do the Ethel principle, to do what we can. The aorta principle. We ought to sometimes to stretch ourselves. And then I think the sense of building into busy lives, just moments of silence, and yes, just to rejoice in being.

Sonia Nolan: 17:32

Thank you, Sister Anne. I know we could talk all night. Yes, we're gonna absolutely applaud in a moment. We could talk all night and I just hope that these beautiful words that you've shared with us Sister Anne will continue to resonate for us, so it's been such a delight to have you with us. We do need to wrap up but I want to sincerely thank you, Sister Anne on behalf of all the women here, and all the women who couldn't join us this evening, who are Catherine McAuley Alumni. What we want you to know is that you have made a significant contribution.

Sr Anne Tormey: 18:07

You have made an enormous contribution and enriched my life immeasurably and for that, I thank you.