The year 2025 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of the renowned Welsh poet R. S. Thomas. His 1975 collection Laboratories of the Spirit, from which the title of this issue is taken, explored the elusive presence of God in the spaces opened up by language. The collection begins with the poem ‘Emerging’, in which he proposes: ‘There are questions we are the solution / to, others whose echoes we must expand / to contain’. Such questions were also envisioned by St Ignatius when he devised a system of formation for novice Jesuits based around a series of practical experiences that would help them to grow into their vocation before God. The articles in this issue show in different ways how literature, language and experience create experimental spaces in which we can attend to the movements of God deep within us.