All Shall Be Well: a message for today from yesterday's Christian Mystics with Sr Anne Tormey

Sr Anne Tormey is a Catholic Nun. She has been a Sister of Mercy for 60 years, devoting her life to the complexities of social justice issues such as modern day slavery and human trafficking while becoming a great reader, thinker, empathiser and encourager of the human spirit.

Sr Anne shares her faith, calm and wisdom and leads us in a moment of meditation.  She shares her many reflections on the great Mystics of centuries past, who offer us windows of truth where we can find meaning and stillness in today’s busy and often troubled world. 

Duration: 25 minutes.

Links:
Sisters of Mercy    Vatican Council 2     Church in the Modern World
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin   Rumi     Eckhart Tolle   CS Lewis    Thomas Merton
Meister Eckhart  Catherine of Siena   Julian of Norwich   Hildegard von Bingen
Etty Hillesum

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• Sincere thanks to Jay (Justin) Hill for his expert sound mastering and patience! Jay, together

Transcript

Sonia Nolan: 0:06

I'm Sonia Nolan and around my warm table, we will welcome an eclectic and fabulous range of guests to share their expert knowledge and life experiences. In this first season, we are exploring a wide range of topics, including some of those with a torch not to discuss at the table, politics, religion, and set. The table is set. Please join me. Today on my warm table, we are talking religion. I have the pleasure of speaking with sister Anne Tormey, a Catholic nun from the Sisters of Mercy congregation, sister Anne has been a Sister of Mercy for 60 years, devoting her life to the complexities of social justice issues such as modern day slavery and human trafficking. She's also a great reader, thinker, empathizer and encourager of the human spirit. I first met ces two and 15 years ago, as a participant of the Catherine McAuley developing women in leadership and service scholarship award. It was a programme that she founded with Sister Sheila Saul to develop the women who they believed would take the mission of God's teachings forward for a new era. I'm sure those who knows this to an will delight through this interview. In hearing her voice of calm and wisdom again, she shares her many reflections on the great mistakes of centuries past, who offer us windows of truth, where we can find meaning and stillness in today's busy and often troubled world. Sister and it's just such a privilege and a pleasure to be talking with you today. And there's so much I want to ask you, and there's so many things I want to cover with you today.

Sr Anne Tormey: 1:44

And it's lovely for me to be here with you, Sonia. I have just completed 60 years this year as a member of the Sisters of Mercy. And I've seen more recently, a lot of the institutions that the sisters religious congregations across the state established to meet the needs of another age, for education, for health for social services and various forms. These institutions have in the main now been passed into other hands, the sisters now of the communities are principally composed of age women. And I feel very privileged to live with women, many of them very frail, who live with great generosity of spirit, and live very rich lives and have great spiritual depth. So I feel very blessed.

Sonia Nolan: 2:40

Do you mind if we dive back into 60 years ago when you joined? The convent was lifelike then what was the convent like then for you?

Sr Anne Tormey: 2:51

I think 60 years ago, like the world I grew up in was sort of a post world world when there wasn't, nobody was very affluent. And life was quite simple in lots of ways, you know, that I joined the sisters before completing my degree. And it was very much a sort of semi enclosed community, which was not what our founders envisaged. But it was the way things had evolved in the church. And I joined just before the Vatican Council. And I remember the sort of thriller I had when I heard the church had written a document a document on the church in the modern world I was really very excited about and then at the same time, I discovered tire to shadow tire to shut down was a French priest, a scientist, who had this great sense of evolution was one but he was a geologist, too, you know, and it was just a different vision of reality and the interconnection of everything. But then life changed. The sisters were very quick, religious congregations and women to start to apply the learnings of Vatican to the teachings. And so ministers began to diversify. We had lots of opportunities for religious deeper religious formation and for study and also for travel. So you've seen a

Sonia Nolan: 4:25

lot of change. The sisters were quick to start living the ministry and other that you mentioned, and

Sr Anne Tormey: 4:30

I live with the community at the moment of women are doing quite incredible things. Many of them spent years living in PNG or in Pakistan. Many of them live with Aboriginal communities in different parts of Australia.

Sonia Nolan: 4:46

I know that you've done some work over many years in the area of human trafficking

Sr Anne Tormey: 4:52

slavery, we thought was finished in the 19th century, but there probably more people enslaved now than there have ever been and There are also people in every country working to counter human trafficking and human slavery, there's actually been

Sonia Nolan: 5:05

some really positive developments in that with legislation passed, even here in Western Australia about supply chains, you have to actually look through your supply chain all the way through to make sure that there isn't any slavery involved at any stage. So and because it's such a real issue in our in our modern world,

Sr Anne Tormey: 5:26

and there's still more to be done. In terms of legislation and enforcement, or for contravening,

Sonia Nolan: 5:32

I know that there's another sister that you are close with who has dedicated a lot of her life to the eradication of landmines.

Sr Anne Tormey: 5:40

Yes, she was very involved in forms of social justice. And one time was heavily involved in the landmines comm anti landmines campaign, I should say, within Australia, I think was in October for the signing of the landmines agreement. She was back and forth to Geneva. But it's yes. And the sisters were involved in lots of social justice activities. And still,

Sonia Nolan: 6:04

no, I think that's something that always, in my mind, marked the Sisters of Mercy Corps as a congregation or as a as a mission was very active in contemporary issues. And wherever the need was, that is where the Sisters of Mercy would be found. And we we moved to today's world, and it is, you know, the issues are really big and complex. But you still see the Sisters of Mercy within that discussion and the activity to help the world be a better place.

Sr Anne Tormey: 6:40

I think the religious congregations of sisters have contributed in their own way. But it's not just the sisters, it's all people. You know, I think the future of the church, I have think is with lay people like yourself, we all stand on the shoulders of those who went before us. We can learn from them. But it's it's the people of goodwill everywhere. Well, there are lots of problems in our society. There's also a lot of generosity, people who are so concerned for other people.

Sonia Nolan: 7:12

So you talk about the this is like the end of an era for the work of the Sisters of Mercy, as it has been in the past. So can you tell me more about that?

Sr Anne Tormey: 7:24

I think in terms of their institutional commitment, there has been a great deal of sadness since the Vatican Council communities diversified their ministry and did many different things. But I think the life of communities in the life of the church goes in cycles and groups come into being to meet specific needs. Many of them, then at a later point, go out of existence and other groups, some continue redo themselves and continue on, but the majority seemed to have an ending point. And then other groups submerged to meet the needs of a different age.

Sonia Nolan: 8:02

And so where do you think this next age is taking us in regards to how will we meet these needs? And and what are the needs?

Sr Anne Tormey: 8:12

I have no idea. Like, it's a great mystery. It's a great mystery. But I have great faith that the message goes on. I think we live in quite uncertain times. The pennant pandemic, of course, but we also live in times of great geopolitical tension. We live in times of enormous social, economic inequality, certainly between countries, but also within countries, we live at a time with this great crisis of meaning for many people are people searching. And I think people live very busy lives. I think so many of them are searching for meaning searching for inner peace.

Sonia Nolan: 9:01

How do you see people finding that meaning these days?

Sr Anne Tormey: 9:05

I think people search in many different ways. I think in the past the great religious traditions into which people were incorporated from that they gained a sense of what life's purpose was, and I present time in a very secular age in many very highly individualistic societies. I think the search for meaning takes on different forms. But you do see it people in the income that life must be more than trying to make money and have success and have a lot of possessions. You can have all those and still not be happy person but people search in different ways. But I do notice some evidence of the searching is the emphasis for many people on forms of meditation, practising yoga and tai chi other people From different forms of meditation people going on retreats of one form or another, people going on pilgrimages, opening to spiritual texts whether they be the poet Rumi, the Sufi mystic Rumi, whether they be some of the spiritual writers contemporary spiritual writers such as Eckhart Tolle renowned writers such as Thomas Merton, CS Lewis, people search in different forms.

Sonia Nolan: 10:28

And there is so much wisdom for us to tap into. It is at our fingertips if we go looking for it. So I think that's a really lovely message that you've reminded me of these wonderful writers and some of the mystics what it is that they were finding or how they were finding that stillness and peace.

Sr Anne Tormey: 10:46

Certainly, there's been a revival in the interest in the mediaeval mystics as well. People such as most Eckhart, but also the women, you know, Hildegard of Bingen, quite often you can listen to Hildegard music on the ABC, the interest in people such as bacteria of Magdeburg, Julian of Norwich, and their genius has often been overlooked. But these women were emphasising the importance of union with God. They came to it through revelations and inspiration. And it was their connection with, with God, this incredible sense of the awesomeness and the wonder and the beauty of God. And I often think, of God and Norwich, because this particular interest, because of her message of hope, her message, that we are all loved by God that we held in God is our maker, keeper in our lab, we cannot not be loved by God. And that in spite of, I think it's a great message of hope, because a lot of people have a very poor sense of themselves. And I think the message here is, there's no anger in God, that in spite of what people do, are meant to do. God doesn't blame us that in the end, in spite of the suffering, we may cause ourselves that everything will be alright, that all will be well,

Sonia Nolan: 12:22

those words, all shall be well, and all shall be well. And all manner of all things shall be extremely well, I think she said in the end. And that has been something that has certainly stayed with me I remember during the Catherine Macaulay course, I think someone gave that to me and a little slip of paper that I've carried around in my purse for many years now and have shared that same message of hope and promise with others along the way.

Sr Anne Tormey: 12:50

Because she was she lived at a time of great social upheaval in England, and she is regarded as one of the first of the English writers that

Sonia Nolan: 12:58

the 12th century, the 13th century really the

Sr Anne Tormey: 13:02

the 13th and the 14th century, a time of certainly the Black Death, where about half of the population in Europe anyway died. It was a time of the 100 years war with France, the time of peasant revolt. So in Norwich, there was a great deal that went on around to and she prayed herself with her graces to have the experience of being sick unto death and not dying, of having experience of the Passion of Christ, and then being gifted with the grace of contrition, compassion and deep longing for God. And she did have 16 revelations when she was in that state of being sick and to death 16 revelations of God's love over a period of two days, but then for 20 years, she reflected and meditated on that experience. And then her text, the revelations of divine love have merged. It was lost for a long time and then later recovered. And now it's it's quite popular because in it, it's that emphasis on the love of God and other things, the importance of prayer of trust, but of trusting God, she also speaks of God in terms of the motherhood of God.

Sonia Nolan: 14:24

That's something that really struck me throughout our conversation through the Catherine McAuley award, that the presence of God is seen as both masculine and feminine and there was a very much a nurturing understanding of of God and Jesus is our mother as well as our our father. And again, finding the role of women in the church or in ministry or in the transmission of a message that having that powerful vision of the motherhood of Christianity ADO being equally and important in, in how we move forward and how we understand ourselves and understand Christianity. For many

Sr Anne Tormey: 15:09

people God has emerged as mascot and because of the persistent use of Bescot and images, supernatural fact that God is beyond gender, and God is holy mystery. So for Julian, God is our mother because God is our maker. God and emphasises to the importance of coming to know oneself squared is to know God and the two need to go on. So coming to know weakness and fragility, as well as a string.

Sonia Nolan: 15:39

What I find interesting is that Julian Norwich had her experience in the troll hundreds, the 1300s and she was in England. And then we had Catherine of Siena, another mystic a different time and in a different place. And she came to the same conclusions. So there's got to be something in all of this right. Catherine of Siena says, be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire, proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear and God is closer to us than water is to fish. So, very similar sort of understanding that she came to through her own contemplation at that in a you know, different time different place. That is a constant recurring theme of the mystic I think

Sr Anne Tormey: 16:31

it is on why'd you talk about desire and of course, Julian's on about longing, longing for God, God's longing for us, our desire for God, but you just didn't mentioning that your vote my recollection of Augustine there many sides to Augustine, but he, he was certainly a great exponent of desire, and he would say God is closer to us than we are to our own hearts. He also speaks of the restlessness, we, you know, we are restless until we rest in the bed, I think it's that inner experience of God in a much more contemporary example of that is Edie hilason. And he was a young Jewish woman who lived during the Second World War in Amsterdam. She wasn't a practising Jew in terms of the faith. But her diary, the diary of Eddie hilason is quite an amazing text, because we trace the journey of this very young woman woman, her growth itself knowledge, and her growth and awareness of God within her and her, her dialogue with God as she becomes more aware of the will of the tragedy for her own people. And then, more aware, too, as she goes with a lot of women and children to the cambered Westerbork, where they await transport to the concentration camps. And Edie herself will die in Auschwitz, in her experience she commits to writing and her growth and the influence the influent, her earlier influence of poets such as Rocha and the Russian novelists, and then to her relationship with Julian spears, who was really a union analyst. So she comes to greater self knowledge, but greater awareness of God and the need and she says to be, we need to be helping you God. And I think that's another emphasis on the mystics is, life is not about ourselves, life is about transcending ourselves, in the love of other people. So Julian will write for her fellow Christians to give some of these insights to them. Eddie will be there helping appeal being people in times of great despair and trouble women and children I know in the camps. And I just think the moment of all the women and children leaving the Ukraine, you know the immense amount of human misery and the need people have for the compassion of other people.

Sonia Nolan: 19:37

It's time for us to practice some of the stillness we've been talking about, relevant to today's world is that St. Julian of Norwich is the patron saint of the anxious, so I invite you to stop for the next few minutes and meditate to sister Anne's reflections on the contemplations of this mistake. You will also hear the extraordinary 11th century composition of German born mistakes. Thank you Hildegard von Bingen

Sr Anne Tormey: 20:04

the main message of God and revelations of divine love, is that God is love. That God's infinite gentleness and mercy and love for all people is unchanging that God's tender love surrounds us, and will never leave us. She also emphasises that God's goodness is reflected in the goodness of creation, and that God rejoices in creation. And there's little example she gives. God showed me in my palm a little thing round as a ball, about the size of a hazelnut. And I looked at it with the eye of my understanding, and asked myself, What is this thing? And I was answered, It is everything that is created. I wondered how it could survive. Since it seems so little, it could suddenly disintegrate into nothing. The answer came, it endures and ever will endure, because God loves it. And so everything has been because of God's love. She also says, because of our blindness and ignorance, we can't see God. And this God reveals God's self. So we need to seek God. But our seeking is God's gift to us. And she saw no anger in God. God's died to save us from ourselves. And when we fail, we will never listen God's love. God's love is beyond measure. It is eternal and can never be lost. And what's quite striking in Julian is Shin Vokes, the motherhood of God and of Christ. God feels great delight to be our Father and God feels great delight to be our mother. Jesus is our mother, from whom we are endlessly born and from whom we will never be separated. We are enclosed in him, and he is enclosed in us. Christ reveals his motherhood through endless compassion towards our feelings and fears. And our response is to respond with the trust of a child. She emphasises that prayer is a relationship with God, and our longing for God. Our desire for God reflects God's longing and desire for us and within us, its purpose is so that we might become one with God. So we shouldn't treat vehemently, wisely and sincerely, to be made one with God's desire. We should pray with thanksgiving and trust and in meditating and in trusting in God's love, we are transformed. Through her experience, she has led from a focus on herself to deep care for her fellow Christians. Her message is that no matter what sufferings we undergo, as a result of our own sinfulness, all manner of things will be well. She says elsewhere, God did not say, you will never have a rough passage, you will never be overstrained. You will never feel uncomfortable. But God did say you will never be overcome. So God wants us to pay attention to these words, so as to trust Him always with strong confidence or he loves us and delights in us. So He wills that we should love and delight in Him in return and trust Him with all our string so all will be well.

Sonia Nolan: 24:40

Speaking with sister and for me and gleaning her wisdom has been a true privilege for me. It's been a timely reminder of how loved we are, and the need to stop and literally smell the roses and appreciate that the beauty and preciousness of creation and our Creator is all around us. Let's keep the conversation flowing. Please subscribe to the My Warren table podcast and share it with your friends and networks. Perhaps if they are new to podcasting, take a moment to show them how to download and subscribe so they don't miss an episode either. I'd also love you to join our community on Facebook. You'll find the group at my warm table podcast, your support is very much appreciated. Until next time, shine bright. Be kind and remember that great movements and positive change often begin with ideas shared around a warm table