A week ago I enjoyed my first hour of sunbathing of 2025! Here we were in early March and for an hour just or so after midday, I sat in a favoured spot in our garden, sheltered by the wall of the house. I closed my eyes and just felt the warmth of the sun on my face.
I am no sun-worshipper. Nowadays I don’t enjoy the heat of a Mediterranean summer but I do like to feel the gentle sun on my skin. I did not read. I did not think any great thoughts. I just let my mind wander where it will. I just let the sun do its warming, relaxing work.
As I did so I remembered some words of Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s worth quoting at length. He once brilliantly compared prayer to sunbathing:
"When you're lying on the beach something is happening, something that has nothing to do with how you feel or how hard you're trying. You're not going to get a better tan by screwing up your eyes and concentrating. You give the time, and that's it. All you have to do is turn up. And then things change, at their own pace. You simply have to be there where the light can get at you."He goes on to say that we do have to take off our layers and let the sun get to us.
For me this somewhat takes the mystique out of praying. It’s not about some special technique or form of words. It’s not about getting into some sanctified frame of mind. It’s not about body posture. It is rather about turning up with our unvarnished selves, our authentic selves. It’s about letting our deepest needs and concerns rise to the surface of our minds. It takes time for these to reach the surface.
And then we recognise that this is who we are below all the layers.
Praying is a mysterious business and not the exclusive domainof ‘religious’ people. I suspect that sometimes we pray when we don’t know we are doing so. And I suspect that sentences which finish with ‘amen’ don’t always qualify.
The rain and dullness returned after my brief spell of sunbathing. But the sun and warmth will come again. Maybe it’s worth our while to take a few moments just to sit in the early spring sun. Just to be where the light can get to us, as Williams says. Take off a few layers of self-protection. And just turn up.
Actually my hour in the sun, my basking did give me a bonus - the first hint of a tan. That must fit into the metaphor somehow.
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