This week I read Frank Skinner’s “A Comedian’s prayer book”. It’s a series of his musings in long and short-form prayers (“I suppose praying is like parking: you get as close as you can.”) I enjoyed being privy to someone else’s meanderings on faith.
In the book Frank says his instinctive “praise-mode” would be along the lines of “I’m always glad when I’ve remembered to turn to you”. I share that same gladness.
I’ve been frenetic at times this week, but today I walked downstairs to the sun rising. I was on kid’s church and one of the kids said she liked my jumper because “it’s nice and bright” and then added “just like you”.
I had pancakes for lunch with a friend, and then ventured off for a tour of the underwater culverts in Sheffield. When, ten minutes in, I was crawling on all-fours in the dark with my headtorch on and my hands in the slimy stony mud, I had a temporary moment of feeling the terror of being nine years old visiting the coal mine at the Black Country history museum. I was also feeling a bit concerned for the man in his eighties in our tour group.
However, when he emerged into daylight he mumbled that he was “pleased he still had his knee-pads on from mountain biking that morning”. This made me feel much better.
Mercifully, dark tunnels and an abundance of spiders aside, sloshing along a river in my wellies mostly felt like a cathartic sort of squelchy pastime. I found myself saying in my head ‘grateful, grateful, grateful’, in time with each of my sloshy steps.
Another of Frank Skinner’s lines was speaking about his hopes for that “remarkable contact” with God, “that feeling of a reachable hand in the dark”. I enjoyed the times of living that feeling today, both in the actual and metaphorical sense. I think that feeling is what makes a good Sunday.
thejoyofrachel 