THIS week the moon got in front of the sun. When I get in front of the sun it isn’t called an eclipse, it’s called sunbathing.

I’m amused by the thought that the moon was doing all the sunbathing on Wednesday evening.

A former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, says that prayer is a lot like sunbathing.

When you’ve been sunbathing does it feel like you are simultaneously praying?

I can think of lots of ways prayer doesn’t seem to be like sunbathing at all.

I often think of prayer as a practice, something active, something I need to put some effort into. How is that like sunbathing?

But maybe the Archbishop sees it differently. Sunbathing is very much a passive thing.

There is something happening, but it is not happening because I am working hard at it.

I don’t get a better tan by concentrating on it. I just have to slow down and give it time, and things begin to change, but at their own pace. Rowan Williams says that the first thing he does in the morning is to spend time in silence.

He says that when he is still, he becomes aware of a reality there, something that surrounds him, something that is ‘just there’, something that is given.

He says that all he has to do is sit and breathe and allow himself to be filled with that reality. He says that the only challenge of prayer is to pause and be still and quiet enough to allow that to happen.

This is how prayer is like sunbathing; you have to show up, be still, and let the light get to you. Prayer is not primarily something I do; it is something I make myself available to.

I don’t have to pretend I’ve got it all together, I don’t need to try to be something special in order to pray – in fact, like sunbathing, prayer works best when I take things off and allow myself to become as unguarded and vulnerable as I can.

Prayer is getting myself in front of the light. I can’t manufacture sunlight, but I can put myself where the light will reach me.

There are some metaphors for prayer in the bible that resonate with this too.

One of the psalms says, ‘I do not busy myself with great matters… I submit myself, I have quieted my soul, as a weaned child clinging to its mother; my soul within me is like a weaned child.’

There is a prayer in the New Testament letter to the Ephesians which talks about us being ‘rooted and grounded in love’ and prays for us that ‘Christ may dwell in our hearts’.

I like sitting in the sun, getting in front of the light. Today I also feel drawn by this image of prayer. Prayer that invites me to show up, be still, and let the light get to me. I am getting in front of the light.

Pastor James Gregory

Crediton Congregational Church