Ann Rennie Reflects

Spring has returned.  The Earth is like a child that knows poems.

Rainer Maria Rilke

I was enormously cheered when I read that Pope Leo XIV would be visiting Genazzano, for the second time in his papacy, on 7th of September this year to pray at the Basilica of Our Lady of Good Counsel.  A painting depicting him praying before the image of the Madonna and Child will be unveiled, just as has been done for the other pontiffs who have worshipped here over the years.

The Basilica is well known to Pope Leo as it is looked after by the Augustinian Fathers, the order to which he belongs.  (On my not-so secret prayer list I am hoping he pops down to Melbourne when he comes to Sydney in October 2028 for the International Eucharistic Congress.  Imagine if he visited our Genazzano… I would be in heaven!)

Meanwhile back on earth, I will be saying a special prayer on the day, the Nativity of the Blessed Mother, as the Pope continues to look to her as mother, patroness and guide of the pilgrim church.  As I said to a group recently, imparting one important travel tip: When in Rome … take a day trip to Genazzano! (It’s only 40 kilometres outside the eternal city).

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Over the last few days, the weather has been promising and I have felt the soft embrace of Spring.  I am glad of this new season of beginning again, fresh shoots, a lightening and brightening much needed after the chill and chore of getting through long grey days.

Winter has been hard for many and we know that the civic mood has been less resilient because of various external pressures.  Today, in the third week of August, I went to the pool and again spent some time reflecting, sitting on a bench next to the small lake at Surrey Dive.  The ducks were swimming in unruffled company and a couple of model boats skittered on the water, leaving bubbles in their wake.  I looked up at clouds, fine and fleecy, and uttered a prayer of simple gratitude for creation all around me, even the noisy galahs.

I passed the brickworks site and am hoping that people power will ensure that this will be converted to parkland rather than more tower blocks.  We need these green spaces as sanctuaries in the city; places to breathe out, linger, laugh, sit, stare, be.  They are the third spaces recently spoken of, like libraries, that after home and work, offer an elsewhere where we can also find ourselves.  Of course, we too have our lovely parish church spaces that offer us another dimension altogether.

My grandmother was a great gardener and two of my sisters adore creating gardens of visual delight, as well as growing vegetables that seem to taste better than anything from the supermarket.  Of course, being in a garden or in nature is another way of being close to God.

Many readers will be familiar with Dorothy Gurney’s words,

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God’s heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.

I am not a gardener, but I am an appreciator of the beauty around me, be it a neighbour’s garden, the local park or the Fitzroy Gardens.  I am one for sitting and looking and being thankful.  I was reading today about birdsong and how ancient and uplifting it is for the human species.  I know that the gurgle and lilt of the magpie lifts my heart.

I am fortunate in having parks and gardens near me and have enjoyed wandering around Maranoa Gardens looking at native flora.  I have also found a sweet secret garden nearby where I can sit on a bench undisturbed, with trees swishing gently and birds fossicking for food.  This little garden was a sanity saver for me during the pandemic, a small spot of regirding greenery to change the colour of those locked-down days.

In Australia, we will be celebrating Wattle Day on the first of September and there is nothing lovelier than the fine swags of yellow that decorate our streets, the poured gold to which poet Judith Wright refers.

We also celebrate the Season of Creation, which I am minded to think also as the season of re-creation, a new budding and blooming, more ecological care and consideration of our interdependency with all living creatures.  This season concludes on the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi on October 4th, he who preached to the birds and is the patron saint of the environment.

Pope Francis’ in Laudato Si urged us to heed the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.  In a speech in 2014, he reminded us that we received the giant garden beautifying our planet from God as an inheritance and that we cannot leave this to future generations in a state of desecration.

We have an intergenerational responsibility to pass on our common home in a way that honours the Genesis story of creation when God saw his handiwork and it was good.  Gerard Manley Hopkins in his poem, Spring, writes:

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.

Spring is in my step.

I am starting over, swaddled in hope, putting behind me winter days, knowing that they offer their hard-won lessons and occasional desolations.

I am looking forward to the consolations afforded by the new and never been, the juice and joy… the days still to be scripted, the songs to be sung, the places to see and the people to love.

By Ann Rennie