Ann Rennie Reflects

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,  bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.  And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Colossians 3: 12-17

I am writing this from my desk in the lounge room, on a gentle morning in that delightful interregnum before the working world starts back at full strength, when people have time for a chat in the small seasonal slowing down of early January.  When I pop out early for my coffee and paper, I can cross the usually busy Union Road without seeing a car.  There is the odd walker about but my companions are the birds carolling sweetly, singing to the sky.  

I love this time as I think about what’s ahead, the few things already locked in and the surprises and serendipities that will come my way over the course of the year.  I look ahead optimistically and know that there may be times of unexpected sorrow or challenge as well. 

This is life and I am standing ready for whatever comes my way.

We have been challenged as a nation by the Bondi massacre and the knowledge that we live in a society that has good and evil co-existing closely.  We speak of a cohesive community and its fragmentation into tribes, into divisions that deny the good will that we say we share.  What can we do about it?

In the Sunday Mass following Christmas Day, the reading above resonated profoundly with me.  This year, my resolution is to put on love.  It may well be harder than the usual resolutions that fall by the wayside when the year gets into its stride and the demands of reality, rather than the happy somnolence of summer day-dreaming, take hold.  Putting on love is not some Pollyanna-ish sentimentality but a way of thinking and acting that is in tune with God’s love for all of us.

It is a reminder that we all have hopes and dreams, wonders and woes, backstories never healed, small joys accumulating in the ordinariness of the everyday.  Putting on love is about how we are with each other in the intimacy of family life, as a community made up of friends and strangers, in a nation whose heart is breaking.

Putting on love is about kindness and courtesy.  It is about an awareness of the other in a way that is encouraging and inclusive.  We all know what kindness is but I think courtesy is a virtue that has gone missing in a world that is speeding up.  It is a demeanour that carries warmth, awareness, a looking out for others.  It is more than mere politeness or good manners which can be proper and stiff, cold and detached.

Courtesy likes people.  It provides the space for an exchange of pleasantries, a shared understanding, the small moments of connection in a laugh, a look, a gesture, letting someone go in front of you in the Coles queue because they have three items and you have a trolley load.  It offers a hospitality of the heart, albeit briefly.

Hillaire Belloc wrote,

Of Courtesy, it is much less

Than Courage of Heart or Holiness,

Yet in my Walks it seems to me

That the Grace of God is in Courtesy.

So courtesy is another way of putting on love.  It does not have the intensity of courage or the endurance of persistence or the strength of justice but its very lightness and fleeting nature is a blessing, too.  It is a social grace with glimmers of goodness and Godliness, a necessary balm in uncertain times.

Naturally, there are some projects I need to commit to this year and some serious de-hoarding.  I have just started reading Middlemarch and am mixing up my classics with beach reads and older books, trying to keep across things and knowing that I can’t get to everything.  In summary, I will do my best.  There will be occasional becalmings and then the surge of industry and somehow things will get done.  I thank God for the gift of this new year, a year still to be scripted, a year open to promise and possibility. 

At the top of my mind, on my prayer list, in my comings and goings, I will let those three small memorable words, Put on Love, become my spiritual mantra for 2026.  I have written before about faith being a perfume, not an armour, so I will wear this love lightly, courteously, letting it bind me to others in the peace of God’s love for all of us.

By Ann Rennie