Meet the Founders 1: Sr Julie Newman
An organic farm, a farm shop, and an ecology centre by definition are things which seek to promote a deeper understanding of our relationship to the natural world. While striving to respond positively to our environmental problems, a sense of contact with the natural world is key.
In our own way we at An Tairseach are a significant part of the global shift towards a more sustainable, biodiverse and community focussed world. If that indeed is where we are going, then a sense of authentic contact with the natural world is where we are coming from.
Sr Julie Newman, one of the founders of An Tairseach, is a force of nature in her own right.
Though she is retired, her understanding of nature, her passion for agriculture and biodiversity, and her lifelong commitment to the creation and preservation of habitats on the An Tairseach farm, remain an inspiration for our daily work and for our future plans.
This year we have begun to explore our roots. We’ve begun to create an archive of interviews with the Dominican founders of An Tairseach.
We see this as an exciting way to preserve the story of how Wicklow Town, unlike any other place in Ireland, came to have seventy acres of organic farmland at its heart, a source of the healthiest in season food, a haven for wildlife that enhances gardens across the town, and a local and international gathering place for people seeking to explore and respond to environmental questions.
Behind the scenes the An Tairseach archive project has already become a repository of fascinating social history, candid accounts of the intersection of religious and environmental commitment, wise and far-reaching reflections on sustainable farming, ecology and the challenge for humanity as the environmental crisis deepens.
One of our archive staff recently walked the farm with Sr Julie, and reported back that her knowledge and her enthusiasm were infectious. Through her eyes every field and hedgerow is familiar, and every feature of the farm has a function and a story.
The An Tairseach farm is a place that she knows well, and partly because she has very deep roots here herself. A native of County Meath, she came to the Dominican Convent in Wicklow as a young broader in the 1950s. At nineteen she entered the Dominican Order, and spent three years at the novitiate in Kerdiffstown, which also had a farm. She trained as a Froebel teacher, and taught for some years in the Dominican Junior School in Eccles Street in Dublin; after which she completed an Arts degree and a H.Dip at Maynooth University, before returning to the Dominican Convent in Wicklow to teach English and Geography. Ten years later she was appointed Principal of the school, a role she fulfilled with enthusiasm for a further decade, before turning her attention in the 1990s to the establishment of the organic farm, farm shop and ecology centre that remain today a vibrant hub of sustainable food production and environmental action, with a wealth of stories and characters attached to it.
To stand in her company at the edge of the farm on a bright Spring morning, with the broad organic fields rolling down to the Irish Sea, the Murrough Wetlands SAC extending to the north, and the red-brick grandeur of the convent itself like postcard features, is to have a chance to recognise the growth of the town in recent decades. This changing place has been Julie’s home and her working environment for most of her life.
An Tairseach is an extraordinary legacy, and we are proud to acknowledge the vision of our founders. But there’s no time for proud reflections on the farm.
The archive recording we’re looking forward to sharing with you is an immersive podcast experience, loud with birds and full of a spirited and familiar observation of the land.
True to her own nature Julie makes her way energetically down the lane, through one meadow and into another. She’s keen to visit the groves of 12000 trees whose planting she planned and oversaw. And keen to see if there are onions or potatoes being planted in one particular secluded field, which is flanked on one side by a tall crop of glossy green leeks.
A mature shelter belt she tells us is composed entirely of alder trees, the cones from which are favoured by yellow siskins. The stands of Scots Pine nearby attract the siskins.
She marvels at the beauty of the wildflowers as she goes, greeting the springtime like an old friend.
The stems of the anemones are herb-like. The bluebells are uncommonly bright. The tadpoles are gone, but the marsh marigolds are coming soon. A drifting sparrowhawk overhead might be, at first guess, a kite.
Our problems require an intense political will and intense social change. But one wonders if there can be a sustainable future without respect and love of this kind in our lives?
Meet the Founders 2: Sr Marian O’Sullivan
‘We stayed with the name An Tairseach because it’s so meaningful. The way we understand is that we here are crossing a threshold from one world view to another. And we have to cross the threshold. And that takes courage. It takes a deliberate decision. We’re a threshold community here that invites people to take that step.’
Sr Marian O’Sullivan grew up on a farm in County Cork. She joined the Dominican Order in 1949, and spent most of her working life in South Africa, as a teacher and in variety of leadership position. She returned to Ireland in 1986, and was elected Prioress General of the Dominican Congregation that same year. After twelve years in that role, she made a commitment to the fledgling An Tairseach project, collaborating closely with Sr Julie Newman, and in 1998 she completed an MA in Ecology at Berkeley University in California.
A linguist by training, and a student of numerous languages (‘In my first year at Stellenbosch University, I had English, Afrikaans, Zulu, French and Latin’), Marian’s articulacy, her writing talent and her skill as a teacher, were central to the establishment and running of An Tairseach for many years. She was chair of the An Tairseach Board from 2002 to 2017, and director of the Ecology Centre from its first opening in 2005 until 2012.
In her archive interviews, Sr Marian speaks warmly of her upbringing in Cork, and explains that her vocation was a matter of personal certainty from a very early age. Asked about her love of the natural world, she explains that growing up on a farm on the banks of the River Lee made the sense of connection part of who she was. Her early experiences later fed her curiosity about the Celtic traditions, and influenced her study of ecology. She speaks about the deeper understanding that motivated her in the founding of An Tairseach, and in her subsequent leadership roles. Conservation, organic farming, the farm shop, and the ecology centre itself are all linked, she explains, to the core educational ambitions of An Tairseach.
For Sr Marian, the idea of personal transformation is central. In order to sustain any hope of environmental renewal, a fundamental change of ‘mentality’ is required. From the perspective of the founders, all who visit An Tairseach are invited to reconsider their relationship to the natural world.
As she says: ‘We are, hopefully, a threshold community here, that invites people to take that step from one worldview, where only humanity matters, to another where we are participants in this one community of life.’
To hear Sr Marian speaking, in an excerpt from the An Tairseach archives, click the audio below:
Music by Alannah Thornburgh
Meet the Founders 3: Sr Helen Mary Harmey
‘Right from the beginning, we always had the question of how do we integrate our theology with ecology and evolution?’ – Helen Mary Harmey
Sr Helen Mary Harmey was appointed Chair of the Board of An Tairseach in 2017, the same year that she became a full-time member of the An Tairseach community. But her close association began in the days before An Tairseach was established. She had previously worked closely with the An Tairseach founders; she had in fact been at university with Sr Julie Newman, before spending a stint of more than two decades working in New Orleans.
In the early years, after the Ecology Centre was opened, Helen Mary was able to advocate for and support An Tairseach from Dublin, with the added advantage of being Congregational Prioress for two consecutive terms. If there were some who thought that An Tairseach was an unusual and perhaps even a questionable undertaking, Helen Mary was in a position to lend gravitas to the idealism that underpinned the project, and to make the case for financial decisions that benefitted An Tairseach at various critical junctures. As such, before she was in situ in Wicklow, Helen Mary was a key ally.
Sr Helen Mary grew up in Dublin. She attended Scoil Bhríde, the primary school founded by the nationalist figure Lousie Gavan Duffy, who her mother knew well (the two friends had been members of the revolutionary group Cumann na MBan together). Gavan Duffy’s innovative approach to education included a strong emphasis on the natural world as a principle of Irish identity. The story of Saint Brigid was central, and the changing seasons were always explored and celebrated in the classroom.
‘… We were in the city, and in those days you didn’t go on field trips. But we got a sense of it. I suppose it was embedded in Celtic tradition.’
Helen Mary also attended Scoil Chaitríona, the first second level all Irish school for girls in Ireland which had been founded by the Dominicans in 1928.
In her An Tairseach archive interview, Helen Mary recalled a sense of happiness and freedom in her teenage years, a feeling of not being put under pressure to work or to choose a career path early, and the emphasis on creativity in Scoil Chatríona. ‘I thought I went to school just to enjoy myself.’ But before she finished her secondary education there was a direct question from a Sr Aquinas, which Helen Mary recalled with amusement: ‘When are you going to start to work?’ Ultimately, Helen Mary joined the Dominicans after a process of reflection. A visit to Dublin by a group of Indian nuns who were involved in healthcare made a particular impression on her; this encounter, and then a school project about South Africa, where the Dominicans had missions, prompted the idea that she might one day travel to distant places and try to help people in need. Looking back on those days, she recalled she was seen, by teachers and classmates alike, as a free spirit: ‘To everyone’s surprise, I ended up joining the Dominicans!’
That was in 1961. She then trained as a teacher in Froebel College in Blackrock and completed a degree in Sociology and Geography and at Maynooth University. Her time in Froebel was positive, and she later recalled a sense of enlightened emphasis on such things as personal development and creativity in the curriculum.
‘Froebel College was wonderful training, because it was hands on for teaching, and we had teaching practice each year. And it was a very good grounding in child development, and psychology. Also, we did something for ourselves, which I thought was very interesting. In our second year, we were all invited to choose a subject that we would specialize in. I did English with a lady by the name of Ronnie O’Brien, who was a brilliant teacher, and brilliant in English literature. For me that was great. You could do art, and crafts, or you could do nature study, or anything. It was just for yourself, it wasn’t for an exam; it was intended just for your own development, which I thought was great, particularly in a teacher training setting.’
This vision of varied interests and abilities connects to another of Helen Mary’s recollections in the An Tairseach archive. Speaking of the idea of love as an aspect of commitment in the context of the core early work of An Tairseach, she remarked:
‘… Love comes first, and then to express that love, you serve; it is out of love that you serve. And I think maybe some people are brilliant lecturers, some have been brilliant teachers and writers. And others may be just, you know, ordinary folk. But I think once you have the basis of love, the love comes through. And really, it’s love that reaches people.’
After qualifying as a teacher Helen Mary taught for a time at Muckross Park College in Donnybrook, before taking a teaching position in a grade school called St Leo the Great in New Orleans; where after her first year she was appointed principal. While in the States, she also became Vicar of the Region of Louisiana for the Dominican Order, and was consistently in tune with the experiences of other women in similar roles, particularly through the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. She returned to Ireland in 1992 with a strong sense of the natural link between a progressive religious viewpoint and the areas of environmental advocacy and education. A ‘bigger picture’, she later recalled, was available to her through her international experience:
‘… I would have heard about ecology, and I would have heard of the awakening associated with the idea that we need justice for the earth. I would have heard of that through LCWR, and through the bigger picture provided by the women religious in the States.’
Helen Mary later travelled extensively to Australia, Lisbon, Brazil, and South Africa. This international perspective, together with her recognition of the talent and dedication of the first members of the An Tairseach community, and her own renowned skill in the spheres of governance and administration, in addition to her considerable gifts as a communicator and a teacher, made her a popular and dynamic presence in An Tairseach, where her work continues to resonate.
You can listen here to a clip of Helen Mary speaking, in which she acknowledges that her role has been one of ‘a mover’, working sometimes deliberately in the background, and urging An Tairseach onward.
Music by Alannah Thornburgh
Meet the Founders 4: Sr Pauline McGrath
‘The centre point of the An Tairseach labyrinth is a place of receiving, of healing and enlightenment.’
Sr Pauline McGrath was born in Dublin, the youngest of four siblings. She went to school in the Dominican Convent in Cabra, which gave her an early sense of what a religious life might be like. But it was in fact the art department that was the reason for her being taught by Dominicans. Her father was both an artist and a plumber, and, being convinced of his daughter’s natural talent, he identified the Dominican’s excellent offering in art instruction in Cabra.
As a result, Pauline had a long bus commute across the city from her home in Drimnagh each day. In her An Tairseach archive interview she recalls her tendency to fall asleep and being woken by the bus drivers, who she got to know well.
On completing her leaving cert, Pauline won a scholarship to attend the National College of Art and Design, which was then on Kildare Street. She was to return some years later, but initially she completed only one year, despite being offered funding for a second year. She had an instinctual attraction to join the Dominicans but she found herself wrestling with the idea. Her artistic efforts had opened up what might have been another life.
Pauline declined her second art scholarship and joined the Dominicans in October 1964 along with fourteen other young women, and with ‘a great sense of adventure.’ Asked if she felt inspired or encouraged at that time, she replied: ‘No, I was just me. I didn’t have those titles at all.’ Looking back she felt there was an element of sacrifice in coming away from her art studies, but that is not the full story.
‘Now, it’s easy to say it’s a call. It was something that I felt very deeply about. But I couldn’t put words on. I knew I was going to have to give it a try. To get it out of my system, to join the Dominicans.’
The progressive changes within religious life that followed from the Second Vatican Council impacted Sr Pauline’s experience as an Irish novice in the 1960s. There was a new novitiate on Mount Merrion avenue, adjacent to which a new Communications Centre was opened during Pauline’s second year.
‘It was a heady time … We as novices were the first group of religious women to be sent over there to do a course in communications. We learned how to do an interview, how to give an interview, how to respond to an interview, how to write something, how to … It was just marvellous. And it really stood to us, gave us a whole new view. A lot of us were young.’
A new and more more socially aware approach to religious life, together with the holistic approach to professional training within the Dominican order, meant she did not struggle with any particular loss of identity when she became a sister. Key to this was retaining her own name.
‘One of the first things that happened as a result of Vatican Two was that we could keep our own names, if we wanted. I had submitted six different forms of Pauline. And they got the message. And it was just then, very much on the cusp of us getting our habit, and getting our name, that we learned that we could keep our own name if we wanted. I was very happy.’
Subsequently, Pauline trained as a primary school teacher in Froebel College and in Sion Hill, and later (while also working as a secondary school teacher) she embraced the opportunity to return to her art training at NCAD, where she pursued a special interest in clay.
Joining in 2004, Pauline was for more than twenty years the de facto artist in residence in the ecology An Tairseach Ecology Centre, where she became renowned for insights into the personal and psychological aspects of the creative process, the potential for meaning creation within an artwork, as well her skill as an artist and a teacher. Pauline was also renowned for her ability to make connections between diverse disciplines.
Her art classes within the classic An Tairseach ten week retreat were a staple of the visitor experience in the foundational decades of An Tairseach. Pauline also taught weekly art classes to members of the local community, which were over-subscribed for more than twenty years.
Pauline also had her a personal art studio in the convent, where she has completed countless commissions and designs for a variety of purposes, including gift cards and An Tairseach merchandise. She has had a particular interest in the tradition and craft of iconography. Her original icon of Saint Maintain is hanging in St Patrick’s Church in Wicklow Town.
Pauline’s passion for art combined with her extensive training made her an authority in many aspects of art history and artistic technique. She has been for many years the custodian of the artworks in the An Tairseach chapel, which includes Harry Clarke Studio windows, and abstract religious art by Richard King, her account of which has been set down in the An Tairseach archives.
Pauline feels that her work has channelled her father’s influence, who was at one time taught by the artist Sean Keating.
‘He was wonderful at drawing. I’ve inherited the type of art that I do now. All the time I see my father in it. Except he went far quicker than me into portraiture. And there’s a portrait of me hanging in my studio that he did when I was twelve.’
Asked, not long after her retirement, if she feels her father continues to inspire her, she said:
‘The older I get, the more I appreciate him. Anytime I have the labyrinth out there, in the chapel, when I walk it on my own, and I’m thinking of him, I usually stand in the centre then and wait for a message from him. And the last few years, his message has always been the same. And it is, ‘Get on with it, Pauline, you have everything you need within yourself.’
Pauline’s extensive artistic teaching and facilitation within the An Tairseach community also included sacred dance classes and classes in the meditative rituals associated with walking the labyrinth, two spiritual practices in which she possesses particular expertise and experience. An An Tairseach newsletter from 2010 includes the following update:
‘Pauline facilitates a series of five Walking the Labyrinth evenings several times a year. The labyrinth is an ancient meditative walk into the centre and out again. It is a symbol of life’s journey with the twists and turns. It is a single spiral path which meanders into the core and out again. Using it, Pauline leads participants gently into that special space where the labyrinth can do its work of quieting the mind and offering healing.’
Pauline came to feel that her early work in the area of Sacred Dance, which began during a hiatus from Dominican life after her father’s passing, provided her with an important grounding, which ultimately prepared her for an artistic ministry within the An Tairseach community. Sacred Dance became, as she said in her archive interview, ‘the thing that led me deeper into the needs of the Earth’. In 2001, prior to the opening of the ecology centre, two classes by Pauline’s were among the first to be offered in An Tairseach. These were titled ‘Art as Meditation’ and ‘Meditation as Sacred Dance.’
In October 2023, at the An Tairseach twenty-fifth anniversary celebrations, Sr Pauline performed an inaugural blessing on the new labyrinth at An Tairseach, a major new outdoor feature in Egyptian marble, based on the medieval template of the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral in France, and created by the mason Vincent Collard. The centre point of the new labyrinth, Pauline said that day, would remain ‘a place of receiving, of healing and enlightenment.’
Meet the Founders: 5 Sr Jeanette Kiely
‘My liking for nature became a love of nature’
Sr Jeanette Kiely grew up in Dublin. Her mother was from County Clare and her father was from County Limerick. She was one of five sisters, all of whom attended both primary and secondary school with the Dominicans in Muckross Park College in Donnybrook.
Jeanette recalled Muckross in the 1940s as a small and intimate environment. There were approximately 100 students there, compared to over 700 today. She remembered it as a ‘home from home’, and not only because of the presence of her siblings. She viewed the sisters who taught at Muckross as people of ‘great kindness’. ‘I came to admire them,’ she said.
This early and personal sense of connection with the Dominican Order was made possible in part by the fact that there was at that time less academic pressure. During Jeanette’s time as a secondary school teacher in the Dominican Convent in Wicklow, where she taught French and Geography, she remained aware of the changing expectations within second level education in Ireland.
‘I think we had an easier time. There certainly wasn’t the same emphasis on getting your Leaving Cert, and doing well in it, as there is now, and it didn’t affect your future to that extent.’
In her teaching career Jeanette attempted to embody an alternative to the pressure of the Leaving Cert: ‘I think it was too much for many of them to go through that amount of stress over exams.’
Jeanette’s decision to join the Dominicans was both a natural and a considered step. If her teachers had any intention of recruiting novices, it was done, she believes, compassionately and subtly. ‘One of the elderly sisters used to come and talk to us on a Friday afternoon. And I think, looking back, it was aiming at making us think about joining.’
Jeanette was also influenced by an English teacher named Sr Hillary, who she referred to as ‘an exceptionally kind person’. There was a form of inspiration in Sr Hillary’s authenticity. ‘She never said anything directly,’ Jeanette remarked. ‘But I think it was because of her that I began to think about joining.’
Among the fourteen girls in Jeanette’s Leaving Cert class in 1953, two of her close friends quickly made the decision to join the Dominicans. One went directly to the novitiate in Kerdiffstown, in County Kildare, and another worked for a year before joining.
Jeanette’s sense of vocation had begun, but at the same time she felt wary of following her friends. She completed what was then called a ‘shorthand and typing’ (the words made her laugh when she recalled them) course and subsequently working in the offices of a heating systems company on Upper Mount Street in Dublin, during which time she visited the idyllic farm setting of the novitiate regularly and saw that her friends were happy.
Jeanette had not mentioned the lure of Kerdiffstown to her parents, but they intuitively understood, and out of the blue they advised her not to delay if her heart was set on joining the Dominicans; whatever her decision she could be assured of their blessing and support. Later, having met a number of young religious women who had found themselves isolated from their families, Jeanette appreciated all the more this solid encouragement. She entered the novitiate in Kerdiffstown in 1956.
Sr Jeanette later studied Geography, French and History in UCD (then located on Earlsfort Terrace on Stephen’s Green) where she also completed a HDip. She taught in the Dominican schools in Portstewart and Ballyfermot for a number of years. And then in 1978 she joined the staff at Dominican College Wicklow, where she remained and where she had an abiding passion for two subjects: Geography and French.
Wicklow spoke to her: ‘I liked it very much from the start. And I liked teaching in the school, and there was a nice staff.’
At that time, the lay teaching staff were in the minority, and the convent was vibrant. Jeanette was one of thirty Dominican sisters living in Wicklow in 1978. In some ways this was a traditional religious community experience, but there was also the sense of the end of an era. The boarding school that had defined the Dominican Convent in Wicklow through the twentieth century closed in 1983. By the early nineties more change was coming. A new requirement for the sisters to live in smaller groups was introduced by the Dominican leadership. Up to the end of her teaching career Jeanette had an extended stint in a Dominican house in St Mantann’s Road in Wicklow, which she recalled as being very happy.
Jeanette was a member of the An Tairseach community from its earliest stages, and a member of Friends of An Tairseach from its founding in 1993; the latter proved to be an important place for the articulation of ideas that would become central to the project over the years, and it created a lasting sense of environmental partnership between the An Tairseach sisters and like-minded members of the local community. By 1998, 6000 native trees had been planted at the south end of the Dominican farm, an initiative led by Friends of An Tairseach.
When the Ecology Centre opened Jeanette was its first receptionist, and she subsequently became the An Tairseach librarian, collecting, systematising and managing for more than twenty years a bespoke library dedicated to the intersection of ecology, literature, spirituality and theology. In this work she was in often in dialogue with Sr Marian O’Sullivan, whose wide reading habits have fed into the An Tairseach collection, along with a range of books of specialist interested donated by visitors.
A much loved and respected member of the An Tairseach community, renowned among her fellow sisters for her wisdom, Jeanette has not retired from her role as the An Tairseach librarian. She continues, with her characteristic warmth, good humour and intelligence, the work of maintaining and expanding the Ecology Centre book collection on a weekly basis.
You can listen here to a clip of Sr Jeanette from the An Tairseach archives. Recalling her experience of taking part in one of the first An Tairseach sabbaticals she remarked: ‘my liking for nature became a love of nature.’
Music by Alannah Thornburgh
Meet the Founders 6: Sr Colette Kane
‘In An Tairseach there’s this reverence for the whole community of life, not just the human.’
Sr Colette Kane grew up in Belfast during some of the most intense and tragic phases of the Troubles. As a member of a Catholic family, the impact of sectarianism and political violence were a daily reality that all in her family understood. Years later, in an editorial for the An Tairseach newsletter, she would describe Belfast as a place where ‘fault lines of ethnicity, religion and culture’ were inescapable.
At the same time, Colette’s early experiences were defined by happy participation in music, by accomplishment in sport, and by a sense of close community.
Colette’s aunt Clare was a Dominican sister, and her grandmother, a Wicklow native, had been a lay Dominican. But it was not so much the family connection as a concern for safety that prompted Colette’s mother to send her to Saint Dominic’s Grammar School on the Falls Road, where an affinity with the Order began to take root for Colette.
She was to be a student there through her teens and beyond, including completing her teacher training at St Mary’s, where she became a PE teacher, as she said: ‘All in one campus, all Dominican’.
While still in secondary school, through her aunt Clare, Colette was offered an opportunity to visit a Dominican monastery in France. She was initially torn as to whether to travel, having already signed up for a hockey coaching course. She chose the unknown and it proved a formative and very happy experience; she would make repeated visits to France.
‘At sixteen years of age, in a monastery at the foot of the Pyrenees, just outside Lourdes; that’s when I really experienced the life of a religious sister at first hand. The Divine Office, the prayer, the singing in French. The setting was beautiful.’
The example of self-sufficient agriculture at the monastery, together with a broader multi-cultural exposure, were also significant.
‘You had the reflective contemplative experience in the monastery, Colette remembered. ‘And then going into downtown Lourdes in the afternoon, that was the international church: Africans, Italians, South Americans. And coming as I was from sectarian Northern Ireland, this was a massive change. The language and the culture; and Catholic meaning universal, and not sectarian.’
‘And yet they had a farm too, they had cattle, and they had crops; one or two of the nuns worked the farm, and they had their own milk, for example, and butter and cheese, which was lovely … To grow your own and to be able to have your own milk was important. Literally it came through from the cow shed, right into the monastery.’
Colette was to maintain and develop a special interest in the crossover between sustainability, environmentalism, and religious life.
A General Chapter meeting of the Dominican Congregation took place in Dublin in 1992, with representatives from Ireland, South Africa, Louisiana, Portugal and South America in attendance. The proceedings included formal expressions of concern for the planet, and concluded with an urgent and far-sighted call for collective action, which Sr Colette recalled whole-heartedly endorsing and ultimately voting for at the time.
The following is an excerpt from the General Chapter Acts, which were ratified by the Dominican Order at the conclusion of the 1992 General Chapter.
‘… As Dominican women, preachers of the truth, we recognise the ever-increasing crisis in the planet whereby all life, including human life, is being rapidly destroyed … We call on one another to the urgent task of helping save the life of the planet.’
Colette joined the Dominicans in 1986. On qualifying as a PE teacher in Belfast. She then taught at a number of schools across Ireland, including Taylor’s Hill College in Galway, and St Dominic’s in Ballyfermot. She recalled that sport was a key means of finding new friendships and new community in the context of a mobile teaching career. She was to enjoy a distinguished hockey career. She captained the Leinster hockey team in the mid-nineties, and played four international matches with Ireland at under twenty-one level, winning a bronze medal in the European championships tournament in London.
The natural world too was always a touchstone when Colette was adapting to new settings, Galway Bay being a particular resource during her time at Taylor’s Hill: ‘I remember popping down in between classes during the day and having a swim, and then coming back in to teach a class. I think what’s really helped me is beauty in different places.’
In the late nineties, Colette completed a BA in Spirituality at All Hallows (a Vincentian college, amalgamated with DCU in 2016) within which there was a strong emphasis on environmental issues. This work brought her more deeply into material that was personally significant, and at the same time increasingly important in Dominican life. As she said in her An Tairseach archive interview: ‘The move towards justice, peace and the integrity of Creation was in our thinking, in our Chapter, and in our vocabulary’. She was to return to study again, completing a Masters in Biblical Studies in 2006, with a dissertation on the women in Matthew’s genealogy.
In 2010, after completing a four-year leadership role in Cabra, during which she suspended her teaching commitments, Colette visited An Tairseach and completed the classic ten week sabbatical course. This prompted a new enthusiasm in relation to the exploration of the link between ecology and spirituality. She later described her An Tairseach sabbatical as a point of no return, ‘a real threshold moment. I knew I wouldn’t go back to teaching … I wanted to live the ecology from every aspect, and not in a forty minute period of teaching it; but to truly embody it.’
That same year Colette was appointed Prioress of Mary Bellew House, the renovation of which she had previously overseen. She now had a busy four-year commitment. But her An Tairseach inspiration remained. As Prioress, she initiated a sustainability and biodiversity emphasis in the Cabra community, and also returned to All Hallows where she completed a Masters in Ecology and Religion.
In 2015, Colette was appointed Director of the Ecology Centre, post she held for eight years, subsequently becoming the centre’s Director of Programmes.
In an editorial for the An Tairseach newsletter, she wrote the following:
‘The beauty that is all around us here in An Tairseach never fails to lift my spirit. Whether it is just outside the physical building of the Ecology Centre, in the Cosmic Garden, the Orchard or the Farm, or beholding the two beautiful Lime Trees that stand like sentinels at the front, we are immersed in beauty and biodiversity.’