Ann Rennie Reflects

Last week in the space of five minutes on a Monday morning, I was reminded of belonging to the human family.  Not in the intimacy of blood and kinship but in a connection with incidental others.  Coming out of the Coles Local store, a woman from my church, OHR, waved cheerily to me.  Thirty seconds later at the lights another woman called out to me from her car.  I had only met her the weekend before doing some university invigilation.  A minute later a complete stranger said, “You look fabulous,” as I rounded the corner into my coffee shop, perhaps because I was decked out in layers of pink.  There I met my neighbour and his walking group and we had a bit of a chat about the weather.  It was if all the world wanted to greet me.  Five minutes and the world was on my side.  Thus, the small and joyful blessings of an ordinary morning in the suburbs.

As I ponder what to write this month, I am mindful that we vote on the 3rd of May.  We decide who we want to lead us for the next three years.  We decide where we are going to put our political faith in those who promise so much.  We know about propaganda and electioneering, the hype and hyperbole, the experts and passing the pub test.  We need to get beyond the staffers’ words to the meat of good policy, policy that will aim at looking after all of us who call Australia home.  We need to identify the sugar hits via handouts and short-termism and call out the me-ism which now sometimes seems to trump mateship. 

The papers are full of commentary and predictions, prognostications and dots on graphs, posed photos and all those pre-programmed nodders who are the wallpaper for so much live news.  Everyone has an opinion and no one is afraid to share it.  Division seems to be sown more broadly than ever.  Newspapers analyse and critique, confirmation bias runs riot and letters to the editor become ever more trenchant.

And then we vote.  Only we know what we put on that ballot paper in the cardboard confessional that is the voting booth.  We have thought about where our core values lie and what aligns most generally with that.  We know that whatever the outcome, there will have to be compromise and good will to achieve consensus on plans for the future, be they more immediate such as the cost of living or what our defence priorities might be in a world where alliances are shifting shape. 

We hope that our elected representatives care that the common good prevails and work hard to ensure that fairness, equity, access and justice are the goals for decision-making that impacts us all. 

And after all the point-scoring and kissed babies and high-vis photo opps and headlines and the democracy sausage, we will get on with the weekend and resume our normal lives the following Monday.  There will be post-mortems and water-cooler sniggers and clever memes and cartoons and percentage points to sum up the result. 

And in our neighbourhoods we will get on with being neighbourly because that’s how we live our lives day to day.  This may appear to be an uneventful horizon as we go about our business; working, caring, accomplishing, laughing, collaborating, making small, good things happen.  But it is here that the heartbeat of the nation lives. 

It is in the greeting of the young Indian barista who sees me most mornings as I bustle in to read the paper.  It is the 612 bus driver who actually waits for the elderly passenger to be seated before driving off.  A ten second courtesy that means such a lot.  It is the amiable shuffle and chat of those who await the opening of the door at the Balwyn library at 10.00 am and who rush in to read the papers as my walking neighbour does most days of the week.  It is my brother who always donates $50 to the Good Friday Appeal for the Royal Children’s Hospital.  It is the volunteers at my husband’s residential care home who devise games and exercises and whose good cheer is inexhaustible.  It is the quiet gathering of strangers who are neighbours at the dawn  service in Surrey Gardens on Anzac Day, the memory of mateship that lives on and grows in meaning.

Recently, I was waiting for the bus and I got chatting to an elegant woman who told me proudly that she was in her late eighties.  We talked about the weather and what was happening in Melbourne and then started talking about more local things.  As the conversation continued, it transpired that she had gone to my school and her father had known my father and she knew people that I knew as we had both attended a recent funeral at OLGC.  Then we turned to books and our admiration for Brenda Niall, another Genazzano alumnae, who at 94 has just released her book about Joan Lindsay who wrote Picnic at Hanging Rock.  The film of the book has since become one of the iconic Australian movies and is 50 years old this year. 

Thus, a delightful burble and bubble of connection and chat because we used that reliable opening gambit about the weather while we waited for a bus that was eighteen minutes late.

Such is life in the suburbs and country towns across the nation.  We are loving our neighbours in the incidental ebb and flow of our lives.  We have our inner circle but the outer circle also adds joy and colour to our days.  Whenever we take part in something, make an effort to engage with others, we are adding a new richness to our lives.  We become more expansive, kinder, gentler, less judgemental. 

This is where I really cast my vote. 

I have faith in the goodness and decency of people.  I believe in the best of them, the best of us. 

Whatever the result of the election, we are people of good news and the Good News. 

Let the lives we lead celebrate this each and every day. 

I had just finished the above when news of the death of Pope Francis came through to me late Easter Monday.  I said a prayer for him, this modest man who led the Church he loved with humility and generosity.  He will be remembered for reminding us to watch out for the globalisation of indifference and pleading with us to embrace a revolution of tenderness with our sisters and brothers everywhere.  He beseeched us to hear the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. 

May our Holy Father rest in eternal peace as he meets the Lord he has loved for a lifetime.  May God be good to him.

His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant!
You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. 
Come and share your master’s happiness!’ (Matthew 25:33)

By Ann Rennie