The Place of Modesty

A reflection and prayer to start the day with Andrea Rea.

Good morning.

I was born in America, a place that has always come across as – possibly – a bit overconfident. However, I’ve lived most of my life in Northern Ireland, where people are generally quick to put you in your place if you boast or act big-headed.

On this day a year ago, Northern Irish golfer Rory McIlroy won the US Master’s Tournament, becoming only the sixth person in history to complete what’s known as the Grand Slam of golf. It was a lifelong ambition of McIlroy’s to win the Masters, but he still calls golf “just a game”.

Northern Irish poet Seamus Heaney never called poetry “just words”. But he did describe poems as ‘stepping stones’, a fairly modest analogy: “Every now and again”, he said, “you write a poem that gives you self-respect and steadies your going a little bit farther out in the stream”.

Well, few poets went further into that stream than Heaney, and very few are better known. Yet, he was unfailingly down to earth, and famous for his modesty. His death in 2013 at age 74 was a terrible shock to all who knew him and many who didn’t.

In the lecture he delivered when awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 Heaney spoke eloquently of his very ordinary childhood and humble home life. He quoted the work of other poets more than his own poetry in that lecture, unfailingly modest.

Today would have been Seamus Heaney’s 87th birthday - another stepping stone, if you will, in a life that continues through his poems, his literary legacy and in fond memory.

Lord God, help us to listen less to the sound and fury of arrogance and threat in our lives, and more to the poetry of modesty and peace.

Amen