At the daily office, even as we plod methodically through the psalms, sometimes the words begin to throb with a strange intensity, and to dance in the air like overcharged particles of light. Around us the  air seems to ring with the anticipation of bells and birds. What can we do in response to this unexpected surge of incipient light? In fact, all do is proceed  with our psalmody, for we are a battered and weary church, wearing our ancient vocation like a salvation army coat, wearing it in full knowledge that in so doing we have made ourselves a target for God’s alarming emptiness, and that aliens and strangers will teach our own truths to us as if we had never heard of them.