WORDS Anne Rennie

A prayer on the way to work is a good way to start your day.

The sturdy backpack containing lunch, a half-read novel and some corrected homework is humped onto my spine. It’s an ungainly lump, but the daily trek to work is about practicality, not fashion sensibility.

After a minute or two I begin to stride into a rhythm, a buoyant stepping out into the promise of a new day, the uplifting prayer of the possible.

It’s a day that has never been before or will be again. It’s a day still to be written, still to be scripted, and I have my very own walk-on role.

As the world shakes off its slumber and clouds curl into the blue beyond I begin to frame my day, to put a shape around it.

I do this by having a quiet word with God as I hit the road. My words fly up accompanied by the bump and grind of peak hour traffic, a low vehicular hum heading towards the CBD. I maintain a steady pace, not quite a soft shoe shuffle, but a purposeful perambulation to journey’s end, school.

I offer him my thoughts, stop-start, alert not alarmed efforts, as I keep an eye on cars backing out, the pedalling paper boy, the serious runners, the busy intersection … the others who walk on by.

I pass shuttered shops with sleeping mannequins dreaming of being real. Hardy hydrangeas nod as I puff past and newspapers play dead on footpaths.

My greetings to God are composed of loosely connected fragments, small scintillas of thought, strung together with the glue of gratitude.

They do not have the formal elegance or meditative quality that would flower in the calm cocoon of the chapel. They are practical work-a-day, walk-a-day prayers for the urban pilgrim, prayers for the busy road, not the leafy avenue.

I am glad God speaks all languages because my prayers could so easily be lost in translation. He makes sense of what I am tying to say, the giddy grammar and poor punctuation.

And as I unburden myself my backpack doesn’t seem quite so heavy. I am lightened.

Pedestrian prayers. Or prayers for pedestrians.

As I walk beside the moving ribbon of traffic I am reminded of Corrie Ten Boom’s observation that prayer can be either the steering wheel or the spare tyre of one’s life.

And I am thankful that my prayerful peregrinations on the road are steering me in the right direction.

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