WORDS Anne Rennie

Whenever I think of my faith and the mysterious and wonderful gift that it is, I throw a prayer of thanks to the women in my life.

Many women have nourished and nurtured my body and soul; my grandmother, my mother, the nuns who taught me during those 12 long years of Catholic education and the wise women I admire today.

The faith they have given me is in the gentle breath of prayer and the solace of belonging, a faith that moves mountains and does the dishes, a faith that gets down on its knees to pray with a child. Not grandiloquent treatises on theology, but the homely manual of grace and gratitude.

My grandmother’s faith still echoes through my life.

When I used to stay overnight we would often recite the mysteries of the rosary. The first few perfectly enunciated Hail Marys would soon become a sort of swoony chant, soothing and rhythmic with its soft pleas and the jewelled hope of each small bead. In her second bedroom I’d settle under a giant eiderdown quilt, mumble Now I lay me down to sleep and try to remember everyone I had to include in my ‘God bless’ list.

My grandmother taught me the quaint bric-a-brac of the faith. Fuchsia flowers, purple and pendulous, were known as Our Lady’s earrings. Mantillas were kept in the top drawer with the lace handkerchiefs, perfumed gently with that grandmotherly scent of love and Apple Blossom.

The iconography of devotion decorated her home. Crucifixes, statues, scapulas, medals, mass books, a lovely print of the Infant of Prague. Most beautiful was a large silver figurine of the Madonna and Child. I have it now. Every time I look at it I think of my grandmother and the way God spilled over into all the actions of her life. It stands on my bookshelf, next to my wedding photo, part of my own history of family and faith.

My mother was the one who heard my daily prayers.

She heard my messy pleadings, my occasional attempts at deal-making with God. If He helped me get a good mark for Maths I would be especially good and helpful around the house. It was she who made sure that my nails were clean when I received the host. It was she who drove me to youth masses, ecumenical camps and retreats.

I took my confirmation name after her, Barbara, because I loved her and, at 10, was rather gruesomely interested in that martyred saint’s grisly end. Her everyday faith was in her insistence on grace before meals, in the prayer to dear demoted St Christopher before travelling. In retirement she volunteered at St Vincent de Paul, sorting through other people’s cast-offs in a shopfront in Mornington, doing her bit for those less well off.

I have every respect and love for the nuns who taught me.

Throughout the years of primary school their faith was the background to my growing up. We’d visit the chapel in the big school, walking past Bernadette in the grotto kneeling in front of Our Lady. The nuns escorted us with exhortations to piety and prayer. We’d slide down the pews and subdue giggles and somehow over the years we learnt that that the stillness and calm of the chapel really did soothe the soul.

The nuns prayed and put mercurochrome on grazed knees and made us learn the catechism by rote and gave us beautiful holy pictures. They taught us about saints and sinners and our world was filled with the visionary and the venal. We lived in fear of mortal sins and loved feast days.

Today these women who nurtured my youthful faith are the wise and faithful women of my later years. They have not retired in their sixties and seventies, but are still undertaking adventures in life, all in God’s name. They are not in nursing homes. They are spreading the Word by training novices in Indonesia or working with the poor in the meaner streets of Melbourne. They are being sent out, modern day disciples, to teach in other countries, to study, to continue their life’s work in dutiful obedience—where their personal desire is subjugated for a higher cause.

Charles Kingsley wrote, ‘I do not want merely to possess a faith; I want a faith that possesses me’.

These women are, indeed, possessed. The Holy Spirit lives in their attitudes and actions which transform and elevate. They are models of what it really means to love and serve.

And so, I thank God for all the good women (and all the good men!) in my life, the faithful and faith-filled companions on my journey.

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