A Quick Word

Sr Anne Thompson

Sister Anne Thompson is provincial leader of the Daughters of Jesus. She currently serves on the executive boards of both the Conference of Religious and the Association of Provincial Bursars. Before this she was active in both the UK and overseas as a midwife teacher and lecturer in maternal and newborn health.

Q: When were the seeds of your vocation sown?

A. Probably from the beginning with my Anglican parents ...but later through a Catholic schooling, though I was 28 before it materialised.

Q: Why did you choose this particular order?

A. I didn't - it chose me. It became a sort of default position ( at the age of 27) when I could no longer turn a deaf ear to the Lord's call. I'd tried contemplatives, health care sisters - and getting engaged. But in the end, I gave in and turned to the sisters with whom I'd been at school. Little logic, as I was a midwife already - and they were all teachers. But 46 year later I'm still there, so maybe the Lord had a point.

Q: what aspect of religious life have you found most rewarding?

A. Fellowship, friendship and shared purpose - especially when lived in situations of considerable difficulty in Africa.

Q: What have you found most difficult?

A. Returning to England and adapting to a dramatically different mentality.

Q: How do you see the work you are currently involved in?

A. A leadership mandate for a few years has enabled me to influence the shape of certain structures so that sisters can live their mission with maximum creativity and freedom, living their potential to the utmost. The most sensitive and rewarding part is to journey with certain women as they make choices related to radical transitions in their pattern of life, whether it is a change of mission, change of community or recognition of the implications of the onset of illness or disability.

Q: What are the biggest challenges of the work?

A. Balancing personal freedom before the Lord and the fundamental commitment to the common good - these, both for myself and for the sisters and communities I work with. In a way these are years of "flying blind": there is no precedent or template for what we are living, as a Province of 32 members, scatted over the UK, with an average age of 83 and no "next generation". I see it as an invitation to genuinely see how in this new situation we can identify and respond to God's call to us today, as older women committed within His Church.

Q: What skills do you need?

A. Listening, honesty, the willingness not to leap to judgement, the effort to see things from the other's point of view, as well as to look beyond the immediate situation. The ability to remember that time, too, does it's work - and that the Holy Spirit doesn't work to order!

Q: Have you a tip on how to pray?

A. Oh dear! If only. Just keep at it.....strive for stillness. Or let it happen. And stay close to the Gospels.