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Good morning.

There’s an app on my phone that identifies birds from their songs. Unlike most of what’s on my phone, this app has the capacity to connect me more deeply to the present moment, to help me to listen. I’m getting better at predicting what it’s going to tell me about the symphony of song around me, learning to differentiate robin from blackbird, from song thrush from chiff chaff.

I wish there was something equivalent for talking about other experiences in life – something that would help me tune in, to what’s happening to me, what’s happening in me, as I read a powerful poem, listen to a piece of music, or sit in a Quaker meeting for worship. These are experiences that take place beyond language, and the words I reach for to try to articulate them, even to myself, feel inadequate. I could just rest there I suppose, satisfied with not speaking of what I have felt. But, like the bird app, I suspect that there are benefits to trying.

I want my encounter with the Light, to be the engine-room at the centre of my life. It might be fundamentally a mystery, but it’s a mystery I want to get to know, to become familiar with, to have a language for.

So my prayer today is for all spiritual seekers. However and wherever our encounters with the transcendent happen, may we have the courage to try out words, to share something of them, and may we have the blessing of friends to share them with, so that we can learn to listen better, so that we can find the strength to follow the convictions that arise from what we hear.

Thank you friends.