One of the great things about our church, is the number of people willing to take a turn at leading intercessory prayer.  There is always the freedom to use any format whatsoever, but 99% of the time peopple opt for prayers that are spoken.  Yesterday the person chose to do something different.  Rather than words, a series of carefully selected images was displayed, reflecting the diversity of things in the news over the last week or so.  At the end a short reflection was shared.

I really valued these prayers for many reasons and at many levels...

Firstly in a week when there has been a relentless tide of bad news, words are difficult to find, and risk being trite and trivial or ill-considered and unhelpful.  Sometimes silence speaks louder than words.

Secondly, the choice of images was inspired... we had Andy Murray kissing the Wimbledon trophy and Larry the cat strolling along Downing Street... and we had images from Nice, Turkey and the USA.  There were images relating to complex issues on which we as a church may not all agree.  There were images that will haunt us, at least for a while.  Over recent days, I have wrestled quite a lot about the tension between sharing the serious and the silly on social media;of what, if anything, to say about any of these complex topics... these visual prayers expressed better than I could ever hope to that the tension does hold, that laughter and anger, weeping and celebration may, indeed do, perhaps must, coexist.

Thirdly, and rather selfishly, I appreciated that someone who isn't me did something that wasn't all words.  Sometimes I feel we have a false - and unhelpful, maybe unhealthy - split whereby I do 'multi-sensory prayers' and everyone else does 'spoken prayers'.  I hope that others may now be encouarged to risk trying something a little more playful.

I know it wasn't to everyone's taste.  I know there were some technical challenges due to light levels and seating arrangements.  I know there was a lot to try to take in and hold in prayer.  For all that, I am glad that it happened, glad that people experienced something a little bit different, glad that they felt able to express their views, glad that we continue to discover the mystery of prayer.