Ann Rennie Reflects

Sometimes you hear a song or hymn as if for the first time and the lyrics create an unexpected resonance for you.  Maybe this is a mental fog clearing, the right time, the pause engendered by being still in a sacred place, a revelation or the neat configuration of words into an effective message. 

Such was my experience at the Palm Sunday Mass at Our Holy Redeemer Church when the hymn The Servant King by Graham Kendrick (1988) was played.  I was not familiar with it.  Its chorus is:

This is our God, The Servant King
He calls us now to follow Him
To bring our lives as a daily offering
Of worship to The Servant King

Our lives as daily offering.  Five words and behind them a huge story of faith and intention. 

The days of our lives are so often overlooked because they are predictable, ordinary, ho-hum.  They do not have soap-opera narratives regularly changing tack because of moody emotional weather-systems that keep the audience invested. 

Yet, in this hum-drummery there is a certain holding power, a grip on reality, an understanding that preciousness is not defined by the large and triumphal, but often better seen in the small and fleeting.  Or as William Blake put it, 

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

The poet Phillip Larkin asked Where do we live but days? 

For Christians, our days are premised differently.  Behind what we do is a sacred architecture, a spiritual framework that asks more of us than just getting through twenty-four hours unscathed.  This means we are mindful of grace in our lives and those lovely moments when our hearts are lifted up because we are immersing ourselves in our days proactively, pinning them with purpose. 

This purpose is different for all of us, depending so much on what else we are asked to do in the dailiness of our lives.  Even so, we orient ourselves to the divine, in the knowledge that what we can manage to do, if done with the right heart, is a gift to God.  Our worship may involve kneeling in church, but it may also involve so many other things that demonstrate our commitment to family and community, to neighbour and stranger.  And we know that we are led to serve at the foot of the Servant King, our model for going beyond the margins, for doing a bit more, however that is managed by each of us.

Today, a little bit of my daily offering is my effort here.  Before I start typing, I thank God for the gift of literacy and my ability to put words together in a generally coherent way.  It is what I can do and what I offer.  That’s not to say others may have different and better approaches but I write pretty much as I speak, although I do have a predilection for the lyrical.  Some may say I indulge in a purpling of prose and certainly there have been times when my words have needed judicious editing.  Still, there is a joy for me in doing this because I have to think and write and remind myself of purpose, context and audience.

Other writers speak of the ministry of words and I certainly look to writers, both secular and sacred, to inform my world, to widen my understanding, to use language with felicity and feeling.  And then there are the words of songs and hymns and poems that suddenly illuminate an idea in a new way.  Only yesterday I was in Readings and bought Michael Leunig’s Newspaper Poems. 

I know that many of us have stuck a cartoon on the ‘fridge’ over the years, such was the cut-through pith and whimsy of his work.  In his introduction, Michael speaks of the preachy bits in the collection and notes that they are tiny sermons wrapped in doggerel and come from a useful domestic tradition of the folksy and vernacular.  Sometimes, it was his home-spun philosophy that got us talking and thinking and reimagining how we could be with each other.

Tiny sermons are all around us, if we but care to notice.  They may often be words but can be images, too, or the interruptions of real life eclipsing the virtual or digital.  I see tiny sermons of kindness in the meet and greet of neighbours, in the effort people make to keep going when things are tough, in the acknowledgement that we are stronger together.

One person’s daily offering may be the looking after of grandchildren, another a stint at Vinnies.  Some people may have to do things they do not especially enjoy but do these with grace.  Some suffer and offer this up.  Others work long hours.  Some are sandwiched between parents and teenagers, negotiating for others with little left over for self.  Our Parish Priests are on call for the wins and woes of community life; baptisms, weddings and funerals.  All around us, we see daily offerings in action, the quiet blessings of care, comfort and consolation given to others.

As we head towards the middle of the year, let us continue to bring our lives as a daily offering of worship to the Servant King, doing our best as we jostle through these winter months. 

By Ann Rennie