Refreshing and searching talk with my spiritual director yesterday. It is so tempting to lapse into all the things I do when discussing my role as a Reader. In an interregnum particularly, but most of the time there are so many calls on time and energy, that my head is full of detail and activity. Every opportunity that presents itself means testing whether I have the capacity to offer myself, to do something that will help, or whether I am just accumulating too much and cannot really help or give attention properly to all.

Most of the things I do in a Reader role are, well I was going to say inspired by God, but I think moved by God is a better way to understand how it feels. Without the push God provides I could become static and dry, going through the routines in which I am familiar both in church and out of it. But being moved by God means I am not always in control, when preaching or being with others in His name. These days we call it mindfulness. I think it is a God-given gift to centre completely on the person or the issue or the task or the sense of being where you are. This happens to me, I don’t have to set it in motion. More and more often I “wake up” from what I have been doing or being, to find I am back in a moving context of life. This depth of being with someone or being somewhere is a grace which I gladly receive.

My director suggested I was listening to God, but asked if I was resting in God. I found that hard to answer and need to open my mind to that rest. She called it being cradled by God. I sat on the swing in the garden in the early morning today and allowed in the thought of being cradled, rocked, comforted. It is a sense of being blessed. A cradle I never want to leave.