Those moments pass fleetingly, when heaven and earth seem to touch, through the ages these times are described in different ways, a thin place, a quaking, the ah-ha moment. Yet what if there is something about the way we think about God that is the reason these are fleeting? Some flaw in our thinking, our narrative, our approach that means G-d can only ever be glimpsed in passing… an approach so rooted it not only limits us to fleeting moments but by its outworking it means that very few others are able to catch these moments and so start to embrace the presence that is always all around us.

I wonder if we have too narrow a view of the sacraments. Is there space for a kind of sacramental missiology, where we can take an apophatic view of the sacraments? Where by not talking about or practicing the sacrament of communion but by sharing a meal within the context of an ongoing relationship where community is fostered, people are real, that g-d is fleshed and blooded amongst us, but by naming it and calling it out as community or special, it would slip through our fingers like sand. Or that young person who gets a tattoo of religious significance after regular contact with a mission community, that actually baptism takes place but baptism does not need to mentioned, and if it is will it make the ink fade away….