Ann Rennie Reflects

I love it that we live in a city that celebrates words and books and all things literary. I often pop into the State Library to sit quietly at one of the big desks under the crystal light of the Dome. I find myself happily burrowing into an atmosphere where words and ideas and flights of fancy and good research and the dreams of publication are in the ether.

No matter the platform, we internalise words because they so often provide us with intellectual, emotional or spiritual sustenance. They nourish us at the deepest level. As the Persian poet Hafiz wrote: The words you speak become the house you live in. The words we read and speak and listen to inform who we are. They can make or mar us. 

Sometimes we forget to acknowledge the precious gifts of wordsmiths, minor poets and the larger God-given talents that work their internal magic on us. The right words wake us up, galvanizing effort, confirming and contesting ideas, making us think. There are words for all the times and places, all the seasons of our lives. The right words spoken or read or heard at the right time can change everything.

We read, and these days more often listen, for a variety of reasons; for diversion, enlightenment, fun, to open our minds to other people and places and the lessons of history. We do this to stretch ourselves beyond our bias and worldview, to probe ambiguities and doubts. Many of us read to become better people; we allow others’ words to infiltrate so that we can venture beyond our own bubble of ease and complacency. Sometimes we need to be prodded and provoked, moved beyond postcode insularity to new attitudes and consequent actions. 

If we are lucky, we find the writer who speaks our language. We gather in the words that work for us. In their offerings, we move beyond that small frame of reference – ourselves. Every time we read or listen, we are immersed in other furrows of thought and we temporarily cease our own self-involvement. We are liberated from the tedium of self and that same old story. Our world expands with new colours and shapes, new imaginings and possibilities.

Some writers and preachers peer into our souls and ask that we do better. They can bring us closer to God in the beauty and sensitivity of their insights. They ennoble our humanity. They can articulate our thoughts when we are dumbstruck. They can write a truth in such a way that we see it for the first time. And, sometimes, that truth is a blunt instrument because it needs to be.

The right words are balm for wounds, vision in the fog of venality, springboards for action, touchstones for the spirit. They can tune the soul to goodness, truth and beauty. 

We know that Jesus was a man of his words. He preached using parables and the language of the harvest and the seasons using images and ideas that communicated simply and effectively to his audience. He spoke of the lilies of the field and the tiniest of sparrows, of sowing and of soil and of shepherds tending their flocks. 

And his words were so often seasoned with love. 

Today, we seem to be inundated by hate speech, the vile and vituperative, where human beings who should be kin other those who hold a different opinion or experience an alternative worldview. So much for the brotherhood of man. This is the human family estranged. We see children groomed to hate when they chant words they cannot fully understand in a nursery-rhyme lilt. Their innocence is sullied.

Our children need to hear the words of love and hope as their lullabies and playground chants, in their primary readers and in the books they study at school and in the words exchanged in the demands of family life. They need to learn that love is the wellspring for all the good in the world. 

Pope Francis has previously spoken of a revolution of tenderness. Tenderness, not threat. Last month, he celebrated the first ever World Children’s Day. He reminded the young of the little things, the small courtesies and care, the gratitude and optimism they need as they grow up. These young people are the future of our Church. We must tend them well.

Love can make the world go round if it becomes our modus operandi – if we follow Jesus’ commandment to love one another. The lessons learned while so young, impressionable and innocent can be formative for whatever their future might be; that future framed by the attitudes we pass on in our daily example in the hope of their taking seed and flourishing.

Love grows love.

The words we use can hearten or hurt, acclaim or annihilate, venerate or violate. We have a choice every day as to how we speak to others, what we write, what we listen to or view, how our words and actions tell of who we are. 

There are many injunctions as to how we should use words, especially in the Old Testament. Words are for building up, occasionally holding our tongue in wise restraint. Proverbs 25: 11 reminds us that a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver. Proverbs 16:24 tells us that Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body. The words we use can be restorative and reconciliatory if we mean what we say, if our hearts are in it, if we do not let the darkness overcome the light (John 1:5).

By:  Ann Rennie

Published 31 May 2024