I wasn’t quite 18 years old when I joined the Novitiate in Ballarat. I — Deidre Brown

"My violin and piano teacher, Mother Lua Byrne ibvm, was a great influence. She was a very fresh-faced, smiling woman, intelligent and kind, and drew the best out of her students. She always had that sense of loving what she was doing, and she loved us. So it made a big difference to a small child to have such a beautiful woman as my music teacher.She brought my gifts out of me in a great way so that by the time I finished school, I was leading the school orchestra, I was music captain, and I was carrying the two instruments of piano and violin at the top levels. She’d prepared me well for performance studies at Sydney Conservatorium in 1953. It looked as if that would set me out on a career in music and I was happy for that. She introduced me to ethnomusicology in Form 5, and it became a life-long interest for me, with implications for pursuing the connections between music, spirituality, liturgy and culture."

"Despite the fascination of a life in music, particularly as an orchestral player, I felt a deeper call to religious life. During my boarding school years, as mystifying as the sisters’ vocation seemed to me as a child, it presented as a very worthwhile way to live a fulfilled and spiritual life. Prayers that I had come to pray regularly, which were significant in my decision, included the ‘Peace Prayer of St Francis’ and the ‘Prayer of St Ignatius for Generosity’. I chose to follow Jesus in loving service along the path of Mary Ward’s Loreto sisters—to take up the opportunity to be with people who have shared the same faith, who cared and wanted to give their life for others. It seemed a generous thing to do. And in that generous movement, you felt there was love born in you at that time for what you were going to do, following the steps of Jesus, and believing strongly in the value of this way of life."

"A key formative period in my musical life in the Church of Melbourne came in 1988 with the invitation to join the Office for Worship team. This place was truly a centre of vitality, learning, collaboration and pastoral leadership, headed at the time by this incredibly erudite liturgist, professor, spiritual director and pastoral human being, Fr Frank O’Loughlin. He provided leadership through first-class theological input into parishes and assisting with resources to meet their pastoral needs. Margaret Smith SGS, liturgist extraordinaire, partnered me in visiting local parishes, providing workshops on the revised rites of the church and the liturgical seasons."

"In 2005 I accepted the invitation to be the writer of our revised modern Constitution Volume 11 for the Loreto sisters worldwide. With such a ministry, there was not much time for music, but I found composing poetic prose a music of its own kind. The style of the document was challenging in that it was to be of spiritual inspiration as well as legally accurate. There is an important line in that document: ‘Mission is at the heart of who we are, and love is the driving force that urges us on.’ So, to answer your question, I think it’s love. The love of education, of seeing people—young and old—grow. My life has been not one of being tucked away in a convent, but very much associated with people beyond. And what brings it together is my faith, and my music."

"I come from a Celtic background—Irish, English and Welsh—so I was surely bound to be a music lover! I was influenced by my father, a well-educated pianist and singer as well as a writer and lover of poetry. He’d come home in the evening and play the piano and sing, and from the time I was very small, he would read poetry to me in the evenings as well as sing me lullabies. That was a beautiful thing for my ear. My mother died just prior to my eighth birthday, so that affected my life. I attended Loreto Normanhurst in Sydney from Grade 6 to Form 5, which was a formative period of my life, especially when it comes to music, education and my call to religious life."

"My faith was nurtured by the nuns’ witness to Jesus and their authenticity. Boarding school life was, besides being a lot of fun, an oblique way of observing the religious life of a nun. Each morning we attended 7am Mass with the sisters, and shared evening prayer, which always included a hearty singing of a hymn with them in the chapel. I don’t know how many hundreds of hymns I would’ve sung at school! I came in time to think about the words of these hymns, particularly where children and young people are concerned. This set me up to be a careful composer of words as well as melodies for hymns. I remember, too, the spiritual formation we received through processions. One such was the feast of Corpus Christi where the local parishes joined us annually in the grounds of Loreto Normanhurst to process in honour of the Blessed Sacrament. It was a ritual that informed my interest in liturgical ceremony."