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Good morning. I was born in Salisbury in Wiltshire. Apart from making me a ‘Wiltshire moonraker’, a name that references the sinking of smuggled barrels of rum under water, it means that whenever I see or visit Stonehenge, I feel somehow as if I am looking at some sort of ‘mother ship’ for me. Part of my origin story as an individual, but also as a human being living in this land. This morning, the sun rose behind the heel stone in the north east part of the horizon and its first rays then shone into the heart of the perhaps 5,000 year old monument. The stones are arranged to align with both summer and winter solstices. And today - the solstice- which means the day the sun stands still, is the longest day this year. Our sensitivity to light and darkness, the presence and absence of the sun in our sky, as the earth turns, is so ingrained in our human rhythm of life, it’s sometimes hard to step outside it or reflect on its meaning. And in religious practice, including Christianity, the language of light is powerful in describing a range of spiritual instincts, insights, sensations and values. Often associated with the telling of truth or the bringing of hidden perspectives to the fore. In society’s public conversations too, it’s sometimes said that sunlight is the best disinfectant, which is to say that regularly shining a light on the exercise of any kind of power; social, political, economic, religious, is an encouragement to transparency and good decision making. Sometimes more pithily expressed as: don’t write an email you wouldn’t want to see on a front page. Light is a metaphor for understanding, for clarity, for accountability, for visibility. Having difficult conversations in the light, really to prevent them being consigned to, in contemporary society, dark corners of the internet, is not easy, but can contribute to the public good. At its best Christian teaching will want to argue for working environments, home life, political discourse and economic arrangements that encourage us to work together for more honest, more plain and open hearted relationships, moving us from the opaque to the clear. From St Paul’s ‘seeing in a glass darkly’ to being able to relate to one another, and to God, ‘face to face’. Today on the longest day, the most hours of light we will experience this year, the words of CS Lewis ring true in his reflections on the spiritual life: ‘I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else’.