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Life throws darkness but Mending Lives ignites the light within. Listen to people willing to share their real-life stories of coping with significant loss. Through inspiring conversations and a touch of spirituality, we explore themes of resilience, adversity and grief.
Jane_Houng: Hi, I'm Jane Hong, and this is Mending Lives, where I'm talking with people from a patchwork of places. Some have had their lives ripped apart by loss, some are in the business of repairing others brokenness, but we're all seeking to make this world more beautiful.
Gemma Simmons is a sister of the Congregation of Jesus and a senior research fellow at the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, Cambridge University, where she teaches pastoral theology and Christian spirituality. She's chair of trustees of the community of St. Anselm at Lambeth Palace and has worked as a spiritual director and retreat giver, training candidates for religious life and ordination in the Catholic and Anglican [00:01:00] churches.
Gemma has been a missionary in Brazil, a chaplain in the universities of Cambridge and London, and a volunteer chaplain in Holloway Prison. She's a regular broadcaster on religious matters on the BBC and other radio and television networks. She's also published extensively in the areas of spirituality, the theology of religious life, and ecclesiology.
Jane_Houng: I'm here in London with an old student friend, Sister Gemma. Should I call you Sister Gemma?
Gemma_Simmonds: You can call me whatever you like.
Jane_Houng: That reminds me, you knew me [00:02:00] as Miranda.
Gemma_Simmonds: I did, yeah.
Jane_Houng: I should explain about that.
Gemma_Simmonds: Yeah, I've never asked you about that.
Jane_Houng: It's like this. Um, my parents were both very romantic people. I was the firstborn. My father had recently read The Tempest and said, Oh, let's call our daughter Miranda. But my second name was Jane. As soon as I came out of the hospital, I was, I was being called Jane, and I was called Jane all the way along. And then when I got to Cambridge, where I was, you know, it wasn't a usual path, let's say, in my family history, I thought, right, this is the time I'm gonna fix it. I'm going to be Miranda, so everybody call me Miranda.
Gemma_Simmonds: You did. I remember. That's how I knew you.
Jane_Houng: I still like that name, much better than Jane, damn it. But anyway, when I went to Cambridge, back into the wide world again. It all got a bit mixed up, but now it is so tiresome, Gemma, because in these days of internet and digital, um, things and the importance of, of names, I have to explain at least once a week. Yeah. My first name's Miranda, but call [00:03:00] me Jane.
Gemma_Simmonds: Yeah. Cause of course Gemma isn't my given name either. It's not on my passport. So when I go traveling, it gets very complicated.
Jane_Houng: What's your name?
Gemma_Simmonds: Marie Christine. And that's too foreign and complicated for most people. My mum was French. My father was Welsh.
And they decided if they had children, the girls would have French names and the boys would have Welsh names. Which is just as well, because I'd otherwise have ended up being called Blodwyn or something, which you know, I mean, listen, let's not be, I'm very proud of my Welsh heritage, but, uh.
Jane_Houng: Now wait a minute, so who first started calling you Gemma?
Gemma_Simmonds: I did because when I entered the convent at that time, it was the custom to change your name because you'd started a new life. It was a new identity. You were a new person. And, um, we used to have such fun because you, you didn't get the religious habit. You weren't clothed as a nun, uh, for the first six [00:04:00] months. And we used to sit upstairs, in the novitiate, with this old book called Butler's Lives of the Saints, um, daring each other to take different saints names.
And, you won't believe it, but there is actually a saint . There is, yeah. And a Saint's Sex Burger. And I, and I kept threatening that I was going to take one of those names, you know. I couldn't imagine.
Jane_Houng: So why did you choose Gemma?
Gemma_Simmonds: Because it was short and snappy. And because, actually, she looked like me. I found a picture of her. And she, we looked very alike. And I thought, I found myself a kind of soulmate. And I thought, Gemma, that's a nice, short, snappy name.
Jane_Houng: Right, and that's how I knew you. When we met, aged 18.
Gemma_Simmonds: Good grief, yes. I was a tiny bit older then, because I'd done my novitiate then, so I was 20.
Jane_Houng: Oh, so you had.
Gemma_Simmonds: And I was dressed in full [00:05:00] 17th century widow's weeds. Do you remember that?
Jane_Houng: Well, of course I do.
Gemma_Simmonds: I mean, how many friends did you have who looked like that?
Jane_Houng: Oh, I know, and your full hubit with your cute little face peering out. Very cute. And your dimples. You're laughing. You've still got the dimples, Jeva. You must have thought we were so naive.
I mean, we'd come back from partying and dating and a little bit bleary eyed and I just have this vision of you being so fresh and wise.
Gemma_Simmonds: And I don't know about wise. I certainly every once in a while thought, you know, I could do with a night out myself. But anyway, um, yeah, it was different. And I mean, I tell you what I did think. I thought of all of you to actually make like a normal friendship with somebody who looked so weird. It would be a bit like having a friend today who is wearing a full burqa, you know. I [00:06:00] think culturally, for a lot of you, it must have been very challenging to have a mate who just happened to wear a 17th century widow's costume. But after a while, you all seem to forget.
Jane_Houng: Well, you were always in the in crowd. You were very, very sociable. Um, maybe we didn't question. Well, I didn't. I mean, you were just such fun Gemma.
Gemma_Simmonds: I don't think anyone did in the end.. You know, it was just kind of, this is my mate Gemma and she wears funny clothes.
Jane_Houng: So how long did you wear those, the habit for?
Gemma_Simmonds: Gosh, we were in the habit until 1986. So for me, that was about 12 years. And the thing is, the founder of our order never wanted us to wear monastic dress. She wanted, she actually said, and we've got it written down, she wanted us to wear the dress of the women of the locality where we lived. It's just that in her day, if you wanted to be respectable and you were [00:07:00] not on the lookout for a man, you wore a widow's dress as a kind of signal that I'm not in the marriage market, you know.
And in fact, during lockdown, oh lord, I had such an encounter with a delivery man from our local, um, So, the local supermarket used to come and deliver food to the convent, you see. You know. And this guy comes along and I open the door and he looks around and he says, So what sort of a place is this then?
And I said, it's, it's a convent. You've come to deliver groceries to the local convent. Whoa, would have been easier to tell that if you'd been wearing your distinctive garb. So I said, yeah, well, you know, the founder of our order didn't want us wearing, um, kind of weird clothes. She wanted us to wear the dress of women in the locality where we lived.
Quick as a flash, he didn't hesitate, he said, Oh, it's just as well you don't live near a nudist [00:08:00] colony then, in it?
Jane_Houng: Did the nuns blush? Did you, did you blush, Gemma?
Gemma_Simmonds: I just yelled with laughter and said, yes, well, um, just as well. Oh, there's my onions. But I just thought, where, where did he even get such an idea? Good God.
Jane_Houng: Oh, that's meant for you, alas.
Gemma_Simmonds: I mean, that guy was lost to comedy really. Should have been a stand up comic.
Jane_Houng: So should you. I just remember your endless jokes and good humour, Gemma.
Gemma_Simmonds: Hey, hey.
Jane_Houng: And it's an absolute delight to be with you.
Gemma_Simmonds: And me.
Jane_Houng: And let me just think back because you started at a convent. Now, how old were you? And
Gemma_Simmonds: I entered the order when I was 18. I'd been at school with the sisters since I was three and a half. So I knew them pretty well. And I'd been quite wild when I was at school. I've got an elder sister who's the good girl and I was the not good girl. And I was, we had a house system a bit like Hogwarts, you know, and I was expelled from my house for bad behavior.
Jane_Houng: No!
Gemma_Simmonds: Absolutely. Yeah. All of this. [00:09:00] And, um, I used to have to hide a lot at school. This was a boarding school and people were always on the rampage looking for me to get me into trouble. So I was in detention a lot and all of this. So angry teachers, angry prefects, angry nuns were always searching for me. And, um, I would, um, I would hide in the chapel because it was the one place nobody in their right mind would ever think of looking for me. And I just got used to hanging around the chapel as a place of refuge, as a quiet place, a place where I could think my thoughts. And I started to kind of talk to God and I started talking to the Virgin Mary all about how unfair life was and how difficult it all was and nobody understood me and all this kind of stuff that you think when you're twelve, thirteen, fourteen, you know. And I just got used to talking to God in that kind of friendly way and that began a life of prayer that became [00:10:00] a deeper relationship and somewhere along the line, I thought, you know what?
This is actually the central relationship of my life.
Jane_Houng: How old were you then?
Gemma_Simmonds: Sixteen. And I could have done anything I wanted.
Jane_Houng: I'm sure.
Gemma_Simmonds: I was at a very good school, there was a lot of encouragement for us to go to university, do what we wanted with our lives. And I just thought, okay, I go to university, I get a job, I get money. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Kind of, it doesn't do anything for me, this idea. It just felt very dull somehow. When I thought of being a nun, it felt terrifying. But it also felt as if I would be out of the kind of social blah, blah, blah.
Jane_Houng: Which you were.
Gemma_Simmonds: Which I was.
Jane_Houng: Yes, and you could focus on your academic studies. I mean, you were a star in that as well, weren't you, Gemma? Come on.
Gemma_Simmonds: I [00:11:00] could photograph, uh, focus on my academic studies. I think, though, you know, I was very interested in, or at least, I hated the class system. I really hated it. I hated the idea of it I hated the idea of people thinking they were more important than other people because of the kind of family they came from or how much money they had I hated all of that. And I can remember thinking I want to live outside all of that. I want to live beyond those kinds of categories. And actually religious life does that for you because it takes you right out of social norms and it means you can be friends with anybody. You can relate to anybody.
Jane_Houng: And well, and if you're serving people, that's what you do, isn't it? Yes, it is. Right across the board. I mean, you must have had such a rich, colourful, we can't call it a career, can we? What do you call it?
Gemma_Simmonds: A life?
Jane_Houng: A life!
Gemma_Simmonds: I have, [00:12:00] and you know, it's, it's 50 years now, which is quite scary. It'll be 50 years this year since I entered the Order. I have not been bored for one moment in 50 years, I don't think there's a lot of people who can say that.
Jane_Houng: Absolutely And uh, I I know from this extraordinary CV where you know, you say you're an academic theologian. You're a consultant theologian. You're a religious sister. Of course, you're a broadcaster, author linguist. Nine languages, Gemma.
Gemma_Simmonds: Yeah, I know. Where do they come from? Well, listen, you know as well as I do that the classics are like the key to languages, and certainly Latin. It's like scaffolding. And you can build any building around it as long as you've got the scaffolding really strong. So once you my mother was french, so we were brought up french speaking french english bilingual So I already had [00:13:00] from early childhood the notion that you just make different noises and different people understand you. My both my parents were very good linguists.
Jane_Houng: That explains a lot.
Gemma_Simmonds: They'd been abroad during the war and had learned German, both of them. Uh, they both spoke a bit of Greek. Um, my father spoke some Welsh cause he was a Welsh speaker. Um, so. I just kind of accumulated languages. I suppose we were taught latin Incredibly well, and once you've got Latin and French, you've really got Spanish and Italian and Portuguese.
Jane_Houng: Some of us have, but what about New Testament Greek? Come on
Gemma_Simmonds: That was more complicated. That was more alien.
Jane_Houng: How do you say, we are in Hampstead?
Gemma_Simmonds: I have no idea.
Jane_Houng: No, I'm going to cross that off the list. Then what about Romanian?
Gemma_Simmonds: Uh, Romanian is a very different thing. So I became involved, a lot of the things that have happened to me in my life. [00:14:00] Appeared to have been accidents. You know, I suddenly met somebody like I, I, I was out in Brazil as a missionary. I met Ronnie Biggs, the great train robber, the way you do. Absolutely. He looked me up and down and said, I've never met a nun before. So I said, well, I've never met a train robber before. Cause I mean, what else do you say? And, um. In a rather complicated way that was connected with Ronnie Biggs, I became involved in the life of this young Brazilian woman who had married, um, an associate, shall we call him, of Ronnie Biggs, who ended up being involved in a huge, uh, Um, money laundering and drug, uh, running syndicate. He had married this girl to use her as a decoy effectively. She got stuck here in Britain, in the prison system. So the Brazilian family got in touch to ask me if I could go and visit her and just see [00:15:00] how she was doing because she was all on her own here. And, uh, I became involved in the, um, the ministry, the, um, chaplaincy to the prison because they wanted linguists who could talk to the foreign women who were coming into the prison.
I ended up working in the prison system for 25 years. Out of a random meeting at a wedding with Ronnie Biggs, the train robber, you know. And that's the kind of thing that happens. And in the same way I was working out in America, And I met some sisters who were helping to put religious life back together again after the soviet era the communist era which had persecuted the Catholic Church and um had destroyed religious life completely and we had sisters I knew we did who were living in the kind of underground in um, Romania [00:16:00] Slovakia Czech Republic and Hungary And these American sisters were going right across the former Soviet Union helping women to, to put their lives back together again and to start religious life again. And they said, we need a linguist. Would you come? And I said, well, yeah, I will come, but I don't know any of the languages. I, I've got a smattering of Russian, but you know, enough to say.
Jane_Houng: How about Romanian?
Gemma_Simmonds: You know, hello, goodbye. And they said, oh, well, Romanian is very like Italian.
Jane_Houng: Oh, is it?
Gemma_Simmonds: Yes. actually Um, so I thought, well, okay, I can try that one. And, and I, that's where I got started working in, in Eastern Europe.
Jane_Houng: Yes. Well, you've lived and worked all over the world, haven't you?
Gemma_Simmonds: Yes that's true
Jane_Houng: Yeah, I won't say countries because we all know what all over the world means and it literally has been for you, hasn't it? And Brazil seems to be a special place, not only because of Ronnie Biggs, I know the story now.
Gemma_Simmonds: Yeah, yeah, I know. I left my heart in [00:17:00] Brazil.
Jane_Houng: You left your
Gemma_Simmonds: I left my heart in Brazil.
Jane_Houng: Oh, what can you tell me about that?
Gemma_Simmonds: The Brazilians have this word saudade, and saudade is, um, it's like homesickness, but it's much deeper than homesickness. It's a sort of It's where your heart lies and they talk about that when they think of brazil when they're away from it and I certainly I had an extraordinary experience of life in Brazil. I was working in Favelas with women and children on the streets. But also I went out there really to study theology. And a very particular kind of theology that was born in South America called liberation theology, which was it's sort of theology meets politics and there was a very famous, um. He was the archbishop of Recife up in the northeast of Brazil. And called Heldacamera and he [00:18:00] famously said "When I give the poor something to eat, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have nothing to eat, they call me a communist." And I suppose,
Jane_Houng: Unforgettable.
Gemma_Simmonds: Liberation theology asks why the poor have nothing to eat and it asks it in the name of Christ. It asks it in the name of the gospel and it also says religion that has no answers to that kind of question is worthless.
Jane_Houng: So what is their answer then?
Gemma_Simmonds: The answer is that the deepest call in in human relationships is to solidarity. You know, you cannot look a starving child in the face and say, I'm sorry, I can't do anything for you. You can't do that.
Jane_Houng: Yep but we do in London.
Gemma_Simmonds: Well, we do in all over the world.
Jane_Houng: All over [00:19:00] the world.
Gemma_Simmonds: All over the world. Yes, all over the world. And it has to be said, it's very hard because these are complex questions that don't have easy answers. But the one answer that is totally and absolutely not acceptable is to do nothing.
Jane_Houng: What's that expression? Um, evil happens when good people do nothing.
Gemma_Simmonds: Do nothing, yeah.
Jane_Houng: If we all did a little bit.
Gemma_Simmonds: Well also, if we applied our minds to the problem, because, you know, Jesus in the gospels is reported as saying, I came that you may have life and have it to the full. He didn't just say that to the chosen few. He said that to the whole world. He said that to the whole of humankind and a church that doesn't think that that is the priority is a church that I think is failing in its [00:20:00] mission. So for me the whole purpose of religion is to help people to discover in themselves the capacity for living life to the full. Whatever that may mean
Jane_Houng: What parts of the world would you say that you've seen that in action
Gemma_Simmonds: Well, you know in Brazil, we for instance, I was involved in a um, it was a plan, basically Brazil is is a huge huge country. It's the fifth biggest country in the world. It's bigger than India. You know people forget that. And something like 80 percent of the land is owned by about 2 percent of the population.
I mean, it's absurd, it's obscene. People who've got a farm the size of Switzerland, you know, much of [00:21:00] which is not developed, is not, uh, cultivated, and yet there are people starving. So, you know, the church tried to do all sorts of things, and eventually it got to the stage, um, it looked at something that actually Pope did, John Paul II, who, you know, was no friend of communism, my God, given his background.
But he, at one point, there was a big meeting and he said, When all other efforts have been tried and failed, the people have the right to appropriate land in order to survive. So the church started, um, helping people to claim land to appropriate land. They, the bishops would come or the priest or the nuns, the sisters would come basically to protect people from being murdered when they did this. And they would take over land and start to cultivate it. And sometimes they would take over land and start building on it. [00:22:00] And I was involved in a scheme where it was a whole group of people together. They all built the houses together. Nobody built their own. They built houses according to a plan and then they would have a lottery and whoever got the lottery first, you know, won it. They got the first house and so it went on. And the first people to get the house were an elderly couple who were desperate. They were elderly. They had no shelter. They were living in the most terrible conditions. And imagine for the first time in their lives, they had a house of their own, they owned it. But they knew that in the group where they'd been helping to build this house, there was a young couple expecting a baby.
Jane_Houng: Oh, they didn't.
Gemma_Simmonds: They gave their house away. Can you imagine that?
Jane_Houng: That's the greatest, the kindest people I've met on this planet are the poorest.
Gemma_Simmonds: Absolutely. And that's the sort of [00:23:00] revolution of tenderness that Pope Francis talks about.
And, you know, he is a Latin American and he has seen all of this. And he talks about us being revolutionaries of tenderness. And I think he doesn't mean anything soft and squishy about that.
Jane_Houng: No, absolutely not.
Gemma_Simmonds: Because, you know, to give up the only home you've ever had a hope of owning, Just when you get it, because you see that other people have a greater need than your own. I mean, that is just miraculous, really. And I saw that happen so often, that level of human solidarity, human understanding, and that to me is what conversion really is. It's about becoming that unselfish.
Jane_Houng: Unselfish. Yeah. Helping others.
Gemma_Simmonds: Yeah. Yeah.
Jane_Houng: Serving others if we're in the position where we can.
Gemma_Simmonds: Or just giving, giving whatever you have, giving,
Jane_Houng: sharing,
Gemma_Simmonds: sharing, whatever you have, yeah, giving of who you are and what you [00:24:00] are if you have nothing else to offer, you know, and I saw this time I mean I visited so many families where you know, there were children everywhere and i'd say right And there always seemed to be kind of children within the family who weren't quite within the family, And these were literally kids that they had picked up from the street. Oh, and they'd you know, they would say we have nothing but what we have, we share. There's always room for one more. And, you know, they did this in a way that was just natural to them, you know.
Jane_Houng: So, until I lost my daughter, I feel I had a very sheltered sort of privilege, typically British, white life, let's say. And, um, Given what happened, I've, I've, I've, my worldview has changed so much. And I have been to, uh, countries where poverty is a [00:25:00] real issue. And I have reached towards some kind of spiritual path. Because for me, it's the only way, um, violence against women is,
Gemma_Simmonds: yeah.
Jane_Houng: Everywhere, in our, the whole family, uh, the human history.
Gemma_Simmonds: Yeah.
Jane_Houng: Violence has been here.
Gemma_Simmonds: Yeah.
Jane_Houng: And, alas, it's fair to say, I think, that, um, it's more prevalent in the sort of lower classes of society. Um, no, yes, no, um.
Gemma_Simmonds: Yeah.
Jane_Houng: But, I suppose what I want to say is, I really hope that as what I'm doing now with this podcast, Mending Lives, talking to people like you, um, that people will become more aware because I think many of us have live in our little compartmentalized lives. I wasn't brought up religious. Um, I, I've reached to a higher [00:26:00] purpose. I like to think to God, whatever, um, because there seem to be so many existential threats.
Gemma_Simmonds: Yeah.
Jane_Houng: Now. And what happened to my daughter is above political and even formal religion, religious beliefs. Um, maybe the world is going to get a more violent place, um, because of the threats, um, of, you know, the economy or maybe economic systems breaking down. Um, how does, how do you respond to what I say from your life experience.
Gemma_Simmonds: Well, I mean, first of all, Jane, I can't even imagine what you went through when Becky died. And to have a beloved daughter taken from you in such a way is simply unbearable and unthinkable. And you know, it leaves someone like me with nothing to say because I think the worst thing anyone can do is [00:27:00] to try and offer you religious platitudes. Um, I can't stand them myself. And, and I find them, you know, smug and insulting. Um, And that level of evil always faces us with the huge question, the biggest question of them all, which is, why do evil things happen to good people? And it is the rock on which many people's religious faith founders, You know, it's the standard philosophical question if God is all good if God is all powerful if God is all knowing, how come God does not stop these things happening? And I think it must be very frustrating for people when someone like me as a theologian says the only answer I can give Is to believe that the terrible terrible [00:28:00] gift God gives human beings is radical freedom. So radical that God does not prevent us using our freedom even when we use it for evil. Because otherwise we're just God's puppets God pulls our strings, you know, and I don't believe in that sort of a God Um at all. And and the bible doesn't suggest that sort of a God. What we do know is the New Testament speaks of Jesus himself dying in the most cruel and horrendous way, and crying out almost at the moment of his death.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And I think plumming there, the depths of human despair and human loneliness. And yet we know that what he was actually doing when he cried that out was he was quoting a psalm And it's a psalm which speaks both of the worst of [00:29:00] human degradation and human sorrow. But it is a psalm of hope. In the end, it is a, it's a psalm of, of light shining in the darkness that darkness cannot overcome. And I suppose that in all the things that I've seen and witnessed in my life, both at home and abroad, and I've certainly witnessed some pretty terrible things. Um, I've always in the end found hope to be stronger than human despair and human evil. What I do think though is that no system, no economic system, no political system, no system of any sort, um, absolves us from our personal responsibility for how we choose to live our lives. And that includes, you know, uh, my mother [00:30:00] lived under Nazi occupation. Um, we had members of the extended family who were in the Nazi concentration camps. You know, every single soldier who chose to work in a concentration camp or found himself there and found himself either trying to do his best to keep people alive or
Jane_Houng: or the opposite
Gemma_Simmonds: enjoying people's suffering and death you know even in those circumstances
Jane_Houng: you have a choice
Gemma_Simmonds: You have a choice You have a choice.
And you know, as I say, I worked for 25 years in the prison system. Now
Jane_Houng: Yes, tell me about that. A little bit more about that.
Gemma_Simmonds: Um, I mean, there, the whole question of violence, violence by women as well as violence to women, it was very complex because a lot of the women I worked with and worked among were addicts of various sorts. Alcohol [00:31:00] and drugs. Many of them worked in the sex trade to maintain a drug or habit Many of them had their first full sexual experience under the age of 10 at the hands of a male within their family circle You know, so you come eventually, if you took an animal, a dog, and tormented it enough, it would grow savage on you. And that's what happens to human beings. Now, Equally, that we had cases of women who had had very privileged lives. I mean, you know, some of them had extraordinarily privileged lives and still chose, you know, to hurt people or kill them or do usually for material crimes.
Jane_Houng: Yeah, I suppose you can't generalize.
Gemma_Simmonds: No, you couldn't generalize. Um, and you know, not every, not every [00:32:00] perpetrator is a victim.
Jane_Houng: Absolutely.
Gemma_Simmonds: But I have to say that there were some very, very damaged human beings in that prison. And certainly, I mean, statistically, and these are relatively recent statistics, they calculated that 51 percent of women who went into prison for the first time for a crime had had a prior psychiatric intervention. Now, that tells us.
Jane_Houng: That's, uh, in the last 10 years or something? Or,
Gemma_Simmonds: Yeah that would tell us. And, and, I think the, I think the statistic would be higher for men. marginally higher. That tells us that in this country, we are using the prison system as a substitute for good mental health provision. And certainly there were a lot of women in that prison who were very, very ill. Um, and who [00:33:00] actually, oddly enough, prison might have been the best place for them because they were getting the psychiatric help and the medical help that they needed. It's just, they were getting it in a context that was not very good. helpful to them for, for coming to terms with their, their acts, actions, actions and their illnesses.
Jane_Houng: And their illnesses. Yes. So as a chaplain, where did you find that you were most powerful, let's say?
Gemma_Simmonds: I don't know if I was powerful at all, but I would certainly, um, listen a lot, just to encourage the women to talk. Um, I was not involved in it, but we had a brilliant system, uh, called Sycamore, which was for what we call restorative justice.
Jane_Houng: Oh, I'm, yes, a great believer in restorative justice.
Gemma_Simmonds: You probably know all about that from your own situation, where perpetrators are encouraged to acknowledge [00:34:00] what they have done. and come to terms with what they've done and tell the truth to themselves but also to their victims and their victims families and to say sorry.
Jane_Houng: Have you seen that in action?
Gemma_Simmonds: I have certainly seen it in action from the perpetrator's side, yes.
Jane_Houng: How did it, without divulging any confident confidentiality, what did you think?
Gemma_Simmonds: I thought it was the only way to help these women in any way start a new life. You know, the hardest person, most of those women, they were perpetrators, not victims, but nevertheless many of them had, as I've said, very difficult backgrounds.
But the person they found it hardest to forgive was themselves for what they had done.
Jane_Houng: Mmm. I can imagine that.
Gemma_Simmonds: And, you know,
Jane_Houng: We all have consciousness. That's what makes us human. We're not animals. We're [00:35:00] not dogs. We can behave in a dog like way, but actually we have an intellect. We have consciousness.
Gemma_Simmonds: Dogs behave better, of course, you know. Alas. But, yes. And so, to, to, to get them to, to come to terms with what they had done, And to try to learn to do something with their lives, to make better choices, but also maybe to make reparation in some way. I mean, you cannot, as you know very well, if you've taken someone's life away, you cannot restore it. But you can actually dedicate the rest of your life to doing something restorative.
Jane_Houng: And you've mentioned the word choice again, and freedom. We have freedom of choice.
Gemma_Simmonds: We do. Now, I think sometimes when somebody has a profound psychiatric illness, or is profoundly addicted to drugs and what have you, their choice is limited.
But, you know, again, um, I mean, I do remember [00:36:00] one young woman who had committed a truly appalling crime. She came from a very privileged background. But she had been drinking heavily when she and her friends committed this crime. And, you know, she didn't wake up one morning and I think to myself, Oh, I wonder what I'll do today. Shall I go shopping?
Jane_Houng: You're always mitigating circumstances.
Gemma_Simmonds: Or shall I kill somebody? You know, that's not how it happens. Evil is cumulative. Um, you know, when I go into schools and universities and talk to young people, I say, look, Nobody becomes an addict overnight. Nobody becomes an alcoholic overnight.
You choose to drink beyond the limit. You choose to take drugs that are going to alter your consciousness. And knowing that they are addictive, knowing that this could happen to you, you go on making small choices. Until you no longer have the choice because [00:37:00] you're addicted, you're addicted. The choice has been lost to you and that affects your behavior.
And that may well end up with you committing an act of violence against somebody. Would you deeply regret? And had you been in your right mind, you wouldn't have done, but you chose not to be in your right mind. And, you know, at the end of the day, You know, the church talks to people about the choice between good and evil.
And we make those little choices and they're cumulative and You know by the grace of God for some of us the bad choices we make don't end up in irreparable harm But some of them do.
Jane_Houng: Are you allowed to drink as part of your order?
Gemma_Simmonds: I am
Jane_Houng: an occasional tipple
Gemma_Simmonds: drink I certainly do as a French woman. I have a great love of a decent, uh glass of wine But I have seen what alcohol abuse.
Interestingly enough, we [00:38:00] had, I remember asking about this and in the prison where I worked, we had more women serving life sentences for murders committed under the influence of alcohol than under the influence of crack cocaine. You know, alcohol is a tremendous disinhibitor. And of course, it's cheap, and it's legal.
And so anyone can get hold of it. And What happens when people lose all sense of themselves and all sense of moral agency because they're so drunk is, you know, they can do terrible things. So, you know, I love wine. You know, I really enjoy having a good bottle of wine over a meal with a mate. But I'm aware of how careful I have to be
Jane_Houng: To live in moderation.
Gemma_Simmonds: Yeah.
Jane_Houng: Choice.
Gemma_Simmonds: Choice. And I'm aware of how easy it can be, you know. I have good times and bad times like everybody else. [00:39:00] And, you know, it could be very, very easy to just keep drinking. But, thank God, there's always a moment where something in my head says enough.
Jane_Houng: I'm just thinking that the killer of my daughter blame the fact that he'd been taking some drug.
Okay. We've got about 10 minutes left . I do have a serious subject. I just need to seize the moment as I'm with you and, um, I'm sure you have unique insight into this thorny issue of, um, free will. Yeah. We've talked about freedom and determinism, you know, um, Are our lives predetermined, do you think, um, because there is by the grace of God, you know, the influence of God, um, that there's some reckoning going on, or do we [00:40:00] truly have free will?
Gemma_Simmonds: I, I believe we do have true freedom, but of course we don't live that freedom in a vacuum. Um, it worries me sometimes when parents say to their children. You can be anything you want, or you can do anything you want. I know they're trying to encourage their children to have hopes, to have dreams. But the fact is, we can't do anything we want. There are all sorts of limitations to our lives because we live in systems. We live in economic systems, political systems, social systems that don't always enable us to do, you know, not everybody can become a rock star. Not everybody can be famous, can, you know, be a film star or whatever people dream of being. Some people do get to do that, but very, very few. Um, [00:41:00] So, I do think that God gives us the gift of freedom, but the fact is, we are born into a time, we are born into a place, we're born into an era, which has determining factors to it. Um, I think then it is for us to make what we can and what we will of those determining factors.
You and I were incredibly privileged to have a fabulous education. Um, you and I met at Newnham College in Cambridge, which is a college that has always promoted women's education. Um, I belong to an order. So the founder of my order, Mary Ward, she was a Yorkshire woman born in 1585 at a time when the Catholic faith was being severely persecuted here in Britain.
She had three uncles who were killed in the gunpowder plot. And if you go to the National [00:42:00] Gallery and see the plotter's portrait, you see all these men sitting around talking very animatedly. And they are planning an act of religious terrorism. Now three of the men in that portrait are Mary Ward's uncles. We've got yeah, absolutely. We've got a portrait also of the women of those families. So all our early sisters had male relations who were involved in the gun powder plot and we've got a portrait of these women sitting in a circle talking very animatedly hands flying everywhere really kind of eyes all aglow They're also plotting something much much more dangerous than blowing up parliament
Jane_Houng: Catholic order
Gemma_Simmonds: No, they're plotting to educate women. Yes. Something so revolutionary. And the thing is you give a woman an education, you give a family an education, because women are the primary educators of their children and their families. [00:43:00] So, you know, we've been involved in this very revolutionary business. of um, educating women for over 400 years and in 1617, Mary Ward, we've got it recorded. She gave a speech to her sisters in which she said, there is no such difference between men and women that women may not do great things. And I hope it will be seen in time to come that women will do much. Now, she was saying that at a time when in the universities, there was still debating whether or not a woman had a soul.
You know and you and I had the great fortune to have an education. But we also chose what to do with that education. Do you know? And so did our contemporaries and I can think of many of our mates at university who have done really astonishing things with their lives either in their personal lives or their professional lives. Because they've made [00:44:00] choices for the betterment of the world. They didn't necessarily do it out of religious motives. Some of them were very irreligious But they did it out of a sense of I want my life to matter. I want, and this idea of giving back. Yeah. And, and being significant. I want my life to have meaning. I want my life to count. Do you know? And it seems to me that that's the freedom every one of us has got. Every single one of us. I met women who couldn't read or write on the street in the Favelas of Brazil who were making a difference who made it count that they were alive.
Jane_Houng: And if they'd had an education
Gemma_Simmonds: They could have made an even bigger difference and you know. I've worked in the Congo. I've worked across Africa. I've worked in in Asia. I've worked in the former communist countries of the Soviet Union and I've seen women and old and young, you know, making a difference, making choices [00:45:00] within the limitations in which they live. And it seems to me that every one of us can do that. every one of us.
Jane_Houng: So, Gemma, you're still doing this.
Gemma_Simmonds: Yeah.
Jane_Houng: And, um, can you retire as a nun or are you, you know, you're just going to go on and on?
Gemma_Simmonds: I think I'll probably go on and on until I drop. I mean, obviously, you know, I hope that my health will hold out. Um, but in our way of life, we also believe. There's a thing that Pope Francis, I'm a huge fan of his, and in one of his apostolic letters called Evangelii Gaudium, the joy of the gospel, he says, I am a mission on this earth. That's what I'm in this world for. He doesn't say I have a mission as if I could. Kind of choose not to being it's who you are and [00:46:00] how you are who you are. That is the real issue and you can do that when you're on your deathbed And I've known sisters of ours. I've accompanied them to their death, who you know lying there, as it were, joining their sufferings to the suffering of Christ for the sake of the world, and making that a prayer for those who are suffering in the world. You know, lying there dying, thinking at least I can offer this at this very last moment of my life when I have no strength left, where I've got nothing left but my pain and my suffering. I can offer that, you know, and
Jane_Houng: That's something very beautiful about that.
Gemma_Simmonds: Well, when you witness
Jane_Houng: That's how we all want to die,
Gemma_Simmonds: when you when you witness it, it's extraordinary. It's extraordinary. And I hope that Even if, you know, in my [00:47:00] last days, I no longer have strength for anything. If I just lie there loving the world, that's going to be worth something.
Jane_Houng: Absolutely. And you'll be in your convent. I mean, where is this convent?
Gemma_Simmonds: Well, I live currently in Cambridge, in a house of my order, but, um, One of, uh, the, the founders of the order on which my order, uh, is based said, uh, the road is our cloister. You know, the road is the convent. So you know.
Jane_Houng: He's not checking you out. No,
Gemma_Simmonds: he's not. Oh, well, I'm not. But, you know, the thing is. We've had, I mean, I knew one of our sisters. She was an amazing woman. She spent 14 years in the Gulag And I mean her story is just my goodness, you know, you could do a podcast on that my goodness, if she'd still been alive, she was a wonderful creature. And you know 14 years of her life in a Soviet concentration camp and she [00:48:00] did amazing things while she was there Uh, transformative things
Jane_Houng: to fellow prisoners.
Gemma_Simmonds: Yeah, just helping them to come to terms with what was going on, helping them to speak more kindly to each other, to treat each other well, to resist the temptation to be selfish and to be violent and to be miserable. And, you know, I can't even imagine what that must have been like. So she was living religious life in the middle of a Soviet concentration camp. You know? It can be done anywhere. It's not where you are, it's how you are, who you are, that counts.
Jane_Houng: Day by day.
Gemma_Simmonds: Day by day.
Jane_Houng: Well, I should tell our listeners that you have traveled all the way from Cambridge on the day of a train strike and taking a wrong turning and the trains being horribly overcrowded and all kinds of things. I just can't thank you [00:49:00] enough.
Gemma_Simmonds: It's been my pleasure.
Jane_Houng: The idea was we were just going to meet and have a chat because we'd bumped into each other at a college dinner, wasn't it?
Gemma_Simmonds: Yeah, it was.
Jane_Houng: A few years ago, shortly after I lost Becky, and you, yeah, you said some very, very helpful words at the time, but before then, wow, yes, as I say, it's over 40 years ago, isn't it? So, so kind of you in your very, very, very busy life to make time for me. And also now to agree to be on my podcast because I've started podcasting. I thought, I wonder what I should ask Gemma. Well, I'm a bit of a beginner. Maybe it's a bit early, but you. Thank you so much.
Gemma_Simmonds: It's been my pleasure. It's been my pleasure truly.
Jane_Houng: Absolutely fascinating conversation. Thank you all the very best Let's go and have some lunch. Let's do that.
Thanks again for listening to Mending Lives with me, Jane Houng. It was produced by Brian Hou. You can find relevant links [00:50:00] to this show in the comments section. I would not, could not, be doing this without many people's support and encouragement. So until next time, goodbye.