I have one of the original Kindle ‘paperwhite’ readers, and was amazed to find this text on it: had no memory whatsoever—where I got it, or of reading it. It was easy to find the other illustrations on Google Images. Far from being cloistered, she’s made a public splash on more than one occasion
Interview: Sister Annaliese CSC religious
Sister Annaliese was talking to Terence Handley MacMath.
31 August 2011
Work and ministry and life are all one, as a religious; so it’s difficult to know where to start, really. I’ve been living here at the Convent of the Anglican Community of the Sisters of the Church (CSC) on Ham Common for the past two years, though I’ve been in the Community for 21 years.
Our Community was founded by Emily Ayckbowm in 1870. She was passionately concerned about children and poverty on the streets, and gathered some like-minded women to help her. She fought against things like exclusive pews for the élite, but her real work was with children —starting things like “bun schools”. The idea was that hungry children couldn’t learn; so there would always be lots of baking of buns to feed them first. We had large children’s homes and children’s convalescent homes in Broadstairs, Kilburn, our original convent, and in the north.
Since March, I’ve been in charge of the day-to-day running of the place. There are 13 of us living here, with six or seven in their late 80s and 90s. There are beautiful grounds, and people come for retreats and quiet days. Six women live alongside us, sharing in our life and prayer, including some who are applying for asylum in Britain.
The older sisters are the most inspiring women to me. Sister Dorothea is 96 now. She was the head of the Community in the ’60s, and moved with the Vatican Council when so many Anglican orders didn’t. As I assisted her to bed last night, I said goodnight to her. She replied: “I hope you sleep well, too — if your conscience allows it!” Scholastica is the oldest sister; she is 99½, and still swings the incense — right round in a full circle, with a twinkle in her eye.
My work in Bristol couldn’t have been more different from this leafy, quiet place. I lived at our house in Bristol for 15 years. It was very much in the inner-city, working with people who were homeless, and those struggling with substance addiction. For many years, we’d made relationships with them through giving out food parcels. We could feed about 300 people a week. Eighty volunteers came to help us and work alongside.
The house was no bigger than a vicarage, with a storeroom next to it, but it became a sign of the presence of God in the city.
My heart was very much with the women in the street-based sex industry there. I was a founding member of the One25 Project, which we started in May 1995. There were so many women on the streets when I first came to Bristol, and we started with a tiny seed (£5 from a pimp, actually), and it’s become a nationally acclaimed charity. We have a van outreach, going out at night, because so many of the women have chaotic lives, and couldn’t come to our drop-in centre.
We went to show those women that we care. We would offer them sandwiches, cake, sweets, condoms, hot drinks—and they could come up into the van and stay as long as they wanted. That’s probably the most important thing I’ve ever done.
I met Christ in those women. It’s difficult to know what helps, but once, a woman came up to me and said: “I bet you don’t recognise me.” She was out of it now, and was in work; so I asked her what had helped most. She said: “You looked at me as if I was a human being when I had forgotten it myself.”
That life and work was probably more suited to my temperament, but in our Community we don’t normally hold an office for more than nine years, and I had already been in charge there for ten.
I work at Westminster Abbey one day a week now, which couldn’t be more of a contrast. I really love going there: it’s a great privilege. One of our Sisters is a chaplain there, but was on a long sick leave; so I said I would take it on.
People don’t realise what goes on behind the scenes — and in the build up to The Wedding. . . So much cleaning and polishing for months, and all the security preparations, and the wonderful team of about 350 staff, as well as volunteers, all working together.
We don’t wear habits normally, but it’s appropriate to wear them at the Abbey. There was a bit of flurry of interest after the television cameras at the wedding picked up the “Reebok” in tiny writing on my black trainers that I wore, as we were sitting beside the bride and groom.
I’m quite tall and slim, and my name isn’t on the preaching rota; so a few commentators convinced themselves that I was really MI5. The security guards still rag me about that, and I’ve become “the Ninja nun”. I even got sent a free pair of trainers from Reebok after all the unintentional advertising I did for them.
My home is Suffolk, and I spend about three weeks of our four weeks’ holiday a year there. You ask about my favourite place — well, there are some beautiful places, but there’s something about a place knowing you. I feel that Suffolk has known me for as long as I can remember. But Austria is very important to me — the Dachstein mountain and the Gosausee. . . Everything flows from my decision to go there. My dad saw
this ad in the Quaker journal for young people to go with Christian Aid there. I went in 1977, and worked in a children’s home run by Lutheran Sisters.
The children all had severe learning difficulties and physical disabilities; so it was very hard, but these Sisters were an icon of love. They showed me what love and faith was. That was my first experience of calling. My name is actually Elizabeth, and I am still called Liz by my family and a few old friends; but when I joined CSC there was already a Sister Liz. I took “Annaliese” when I was clothed a novice in memory of Schwester Anna from Austria, who radiated the love of God and had died shortly before I joined CSC.
I’m pretty multi-lingual denominationally. In East Germany, I worked with Quaker Peace and Service and the Moravian Church, and in West Germany with the Catholic Church, working on a nursing unit in a Caritas home for the elderly. I sang in the Anglican village church in the choir as a child, belonged to the Methodist Church at uni, and was brought up a Quaker. Then I went to Taizé. If Austria was the most important place, Taizé follows close after. It’s where I learned contemplative prayer, where it got into my bones and my soul. If things get tough, I put on some Taizé music, and that carries me.
The Quakers helped me discern my vocation. I had a Clearness Meeting, which is their tradition, thinking they would help me get it out of my system. But they said: “You’ve got to follow this. Find out.”
I used to sing and play the guitar, quite a lot in the Austrian children’s home, and also in Germany — but the guitar rarely never comes out now. I just don’t have time.
We are always more than the sum of our parts. We’re actually quite frail in our numbers and capabilities, but having been called together. . . I’d put it like this: each Community is like a recipe, and each Sister is an ingredient that goes into the mix. What comes out of the oven is quite different, and if you change a Sister, it changes the end product. The older Sisters at the Convent are very significant ingredients in our mix.
We’re called to be faithful to God, not to a way of life, because we are a pilgrim people. So I’d kind of like us to not be so focused on numbers. It’s more about listening deeply to the Spirit. The danger for Communities or churches with declining numbers is that they become too inwardly focused.
We need to be prepared to look at things anew and maybe make radical changes.
We live in an age when most people are reluctant to make long-term commitments, but so many have a deep hunger for God, and long to spend time in prayer of some kind.
I rejoice in the alternative monastic movements, because it’s a sure sign that God is alive and moving in our times.
My family are very important to me — I wouldn’t be who I am without them. I was definitely influenced by my dad, and his Quakerism. He worked with the unemployed, and with peace and justice issues. My grand-
father was quite radical, and worked in the trade-union movement. I think I’ve inherited their openness. My mother died 18 years ago, and my sister is in the States, but we speak on the phone very frequently.
Machines that don’t work make me angry — but that’s just a less well-developed part of me. At a deeper level, injustice, without a doubt.
Etty Hillesum’s An Interrupted Life is definitely my Desert Island Discs book without a doubt. That ability to be still and know, and be rooted in the beauty of life despite the terrible things surrounding her. . . It’s a book I go
back to again and again. “The sky in my heart is as wide as the sky above my head.” It’s a pointer to the way I’d like to live.
Or Thich Nhat Hanh: “Peace is every breath.” I belong to a Buddhist Sangha which meets in our Convent, and find that the meditation means a huge amount to me.
Most people who know me know that I power-walk. I do it every day for my health and for my sanity, and probably everyone else’s sanity, too. I am renewed and restored by stepping out into physical spaciousness. I find that it helps to bring inner spaciousness and a sense of perspective.
Prayer is so important: it’s a living relationship with God. I pray for lots of people and situations, of course, but it’s a love relationship. Our whole life is to be prayer, together and also at a deeply personal level. I couldn’t have
done anything without that.
It’s easy to choose someone I’d like to be locked in a church with. Thich Nhat Hahn, without a doubt. He is such a gentle, centred presence, and so intellectual, but communicating his truth with simplicity and depth, very
accessibly to people. He has a deep love and respect for Jesus, too.