As part of the evening service yesterday we were invited to go out in twos for a 20 minitues 'Emmaus Road Walk' to reflect on scriptures from other two other faiths, Hinduim and Buddhism.

My co-disciple and I opted to walk in the Botanic Gardens where we happened upon a beautifully yarn-bombed bench  - and he took a photo with me stting on it 'looking ponderous'!!

We jokingly suggested we should create a super-spiritual reflection on how the colours represented the diversity of human experience and how, when woven together they result in a more beautiful whole... but of course with lots of adjectives and superlatives before ending up with the word 'bench'.

It was an interesting way to spend an evening - in the right sense of the word - and certainly our conversations were valuable as we discussed the allocated texts.  But the real 'Emmaus' moment was the bench - the unexpected moment of joy and beauty, fun and laughter that broke us out of the earnest, repsectful conversation about impossibly demanding texts.

That the photo is slightly out of focus seems appropriate - a fleeting moment, not full realised, even on reflection.

Two Revs were walking in the Gardens by evening, discussing among themselves ancient texts of other faiths, when suddenly the God of Surprises did just that...