LISTEN UP

Listen up


If prayer is ''conversation with God," then prayer is not just about talking to God. It's also about listening to God. In our rush to unburden our hearts, this aspect of prayer is easily neglected to our misfortune.

Silence Is Golden

Ever since owning my first car, my habit has been to start the engine and, as I put the car in gear and pull away, to find a radio station. Then one day, years into this habit and many cars later, the radio broke. Because of the nature of the problem and the state of my finances, it wasn't going to be fixed for a while, so for a few months, I found myself driving in silence.

At first, it was a pretty uncomfortable experience. I kept reaching for the radio, only to remember that it wasn't working. I didn't know quite what to do with my mind if I didn't have a song to sing along with or a talk show or news segment to listen in on. I had to live with my own thoughts (a scary proposition to be sure).

But in a few days, I found myself enjoying the experience. I realized there were few spaces in my life in which noise didn't bombard me. At home it was TV or radio or CDs. At work it was the hum of fluorescent lights and office chatter. In stores it was Muzak. At the library, of course, there was silence, but the library was a place where I filled my head with thoughts as I looked up this book or that article. Here, in the car, was one place where I could simply be quiet, with no verbal or mental agenda.

I began to actually mull over things in a way I'd never done before. And I began to hear things not voices, but thoughts that had never had a chance to make their way into my consciousness. Whether these were from God or not, I don't know. I do know that I began to understand my life a tad better, and I found I was better able to manage it as a result. I liked that so much that I began carving out other places for silence.

Prayer can become a habit that is filled with noise, namely the noise of my own thoughts and words. But if that is all it is, then prayer becomes mere self-talk. Danish philosopher Sfren Kierkegaard put it this way: "A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end, he realized that prayer is listening."

Prayer isn't only listening, but it is partly listening. And that part can have the most dramatic impact on the prayer's life.


So how do you actually hear God? He interrupts our lives and speaks to us whenever and however he wants: through voices, visions, thoughts, experiences, and encounters with others. But this is a hit-or-miss proposition. For better results, we can actually cultivate a couple of practices to train our ears to better hear God.

Meditation

To meditate is to consciously mull over something a passage from a book, a phrase, an object. It means to look at something from different perspectives, to understand the various parts of it, to weigh its meaning. In the context of prayer, to meditate is to do all this with one purpose: to try to discover what God might be saying to us.

For example, let's say I were to meditate on this saying of Jesus: "I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). I'd begin by thinking about vines and branches, how branches grow out of the trunk of the vine, and how no fruit can grow on the branch if it isn't connected to the vine.

I'd move on to filling out the analogy: Christ is like the trunk, and I am a branch. And then I'd begin asking questions like these: What are the ways I "remain" in Christ? What more can I do to stay faithful to him? What more can I do to experience his presence in my life? What part of my spiritual life is lacking right now? Prayer? Worship? Loving others? What part needs the greatest attention?

After thinking in this vein, I might conclude that I've not been spending enough time actually reading the life and teachings of Christ, that I need to spend more time reading about the one whom I call Lord so that I can better understand how I might live my life.

Meditation may seem unspiritual because it seems so deliberate. But our thoughts, our reason, and our ability to discern insights are gifts from God, and are ways in which God speaks to us. Frankly, meditation isn't always as rational as it sounds, either. When I begin meditating, invariably my mind is forced down one path or another, and certain thoughts keep coming back to me over and over. I take this as movements of the Spirit, and I pursue such thought in my meditation.

Some days when I'm done, I have a specific "word" from the Lord. This could be something I'm more keenly aware of (that I'm forgiven, or that there is hope for a situation I face), or something I'm convinced that I'm supposed to do (phone a friend, give money to a charity, or be kind to a certain person at work).


Some days nothing specific comes to mind, and that's okay. I don't want to force these things. And some days, when I go about trying to do the thing I was so positive I was supposed to do, I find that it created more problems than it solved, or that it simply didn't work. I go back into prayer the next day and meditate on how I might have misheard or what I might do differently.

Mediation is not a formula, but an ongoing process, and learning to hear God really hear is a lifelong pursuit. It's something you never quite master (as if we could master God!), but it's something that we can get better at over time.

Contemplation

Many people use the terms meditate and contemplate as synonyms. In terms of prayer, however, it is helpful to think about each separately. These concepts teach us about two key ways to listen. If we employ our wills in meditation, then in contemplation, we try to let go. Meditation is like the counselor who asks questions and probes to discover what another is really saying. To contemplate, on the other hand, is simply to listen without conscious probing; it is to let the phrase or object have its way with us.

When I meditate on the saying of Jesus in my previous example, I ask questions of it and of myself, and I try to figure out what God is saying to me. To contemplate that passage, I do my best to put aside the rational and simply try to experience the passage. That may mean, for instance, allowing myself to become a part of the metaphor and letting my imagination go.

For example, I once did this with a story in the gospels during a time when I was struggling with the idea of grace. I had become a very busy person for God, chairing committees at church, teaching Sunday school, writing articles on spirituality, attending all my kids' sporting events, helping them with their homework, trying to spend time with my wife, working overtime at the office and on and on. I felt that God had given me many opportunities to serve him and others, and I just kept piling them on until I found myself weary and discouraged.


I spoke about this with my spiritual director, and she suggested that I contemplate the following story and see what happened:

"One day some parents brought their children to Jesus so he could touch them and bless them, but the disciples told them not to bother him. But when Jesus saw what was happening, he was very displeased with his disciples. He said to them, 'Let the children come to me. Don't stop them! For the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I assure you, anyone who doesn't have their kind of faith will never get into the kingdom of God.' Then he took the children into his arms and placed his hands on their heads and blessed them." (Mark 10:1316)

I tried to become a part of this story by entering it as one of the children, as my spiritual director had suggested. And this is how the scene unfolded: Jesus lifted me upon his lap. We talked for a bit, and then he put me down and said, "Now go play."


I was so surprised by this that I was startled out of the contemplation. This was the last thing I had expected Jesus to say to me. "Now get back to work," yes. But not "Go play." This seemed so irresponsible of Jesus. Play was, well, such a waste of time.

And yet as I ruminated on this and spoke about it with my spiritual director, it became clear that this was a word of grace from God. It wasn't good works or duty or responsibility that God was calling me to he was calling me to joy, the type of joy a child experiences when he plays. Of course, I was called to serve God and others. But this isn't what he wanted of me most. First and foremost, I was accepted for who I was, a child of God; as a child, what God wanted for me more than anything was that I would enjoy life, just as a child enjoys play.


We can also contemplate a painting or a symbol or a sunset or a garden. Usually the voice of God is not a specific message, but just a larger sense of God's presence in the world or a more profound sense of God's presence in you.

In practice, meditation and contemplation often merge in prayer. Sometimes I begin by probing a passage only to find that after a few minutes, it is probing me! Sometimes I begin by contemplating a vista, but then I find myself analyzing it for meaning. Still, it is helpful, I think, to recognize the two means of listening to God.


Dreams

I'm not going to spend a lot of time with this topic, partly because it has never been a meaningful part of my prayer life, and partly because I know little about it. But I do know this: To some people, God reveals his will in dreams.

Joseph, the adoptive father of Jesus, was such a man. The Gospel of Matthew says that it was by means of a dream that Joseph was told to flee from Herod and to take his wife and infant son to Egypt. In another dream, Joseph was told to return to Israel. The Bible, Old and New Testaments, have many such stories about other people influenced by dreams directly from God.

That also happens in life today. Some people fall asleep wondering about which college to attend or which job to take, and they have a dream. When they awake, they are sure what their decision should be.

Psychology chalks this up to the work of the subconscious, that in a dream state, certain parts of our minds can work more freely to solve problems. This strikes me as a reasonable explanation, though hardly complete. Many people awake with a sense not just that they've been talking to themselves, but that another has entered into their minds and spoken to them with words or images. Is it possible that it is not either/or either psychology or spirituality but both?

Dreams, of course, can be pretty wacky, and many are clearly the work of the subconscious: If I dream of having an affair with a neighbor, it's not likely that this is a voice from God. Other dreams are stories with amazing plot twists or striking symbolism. As such, they can be mighty difficult to interpret.


No matter: Whenever you have a dream in which you feel God may be speaking to you, you are wise to take advantage of your connection to the larger prayer community. In other words, get a second opinion. Talk with another who is seeking to know God better, and ask if what you "heard" really makes sense. It isn't a bad idea to check dreams against the plain teaching of Jesus, either.

Lectio Divina:
A Method to Listen

Let me conclude this section by offering one specific model of meditative/contemplative prayer. It's a practice that goes back to the early centuries of the church and was made popular by Benedict of Nursa, the founder of the Benedictine monastic order. This method has three stages, each with its own Latin name. Let's look at each stage in greater detail.

1 Lectio

You begin by reading a passage from the Bible or some other spiritual book, preferably one that you are already familiar with. This is not an exercise in reading something for the first time as much as exploring at a deeper level something you've read. Read until you come to a sentence or a phrase that strikes you in some way. It may seem odd, or you may see something in it that you've never noticed before. It may fill you with a sense of peace or joy. When you come to that sentence or phrase, stop.

2 Meditatio

Though called "meditation," it is really closer to contemplation, as I've spoken of it already (see what I mean about these two terms melding?). Read the phrase aloud, over and over, putting emphasis on different words. Read parts of the phrase with varying emphasis, almost chanting some parts.

Let's take this saying of Jesus': "Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). So you might say: "Come to me, all who are weary. Come to me all who are weary. Come to me all who are weary. Come to me all who are weary. Weary. Weary. Weary. Burdened. Burden."

And so on. The goal is not to grasp the line rationally, but to let the words soak into you.


3 Oratio

Keep repeating words and phrases until you are ready to stop in silence and simply dwell on them in prayer. Then begin to probe their meaning, especially their meaning for you. "Lord, what burdens am I needlessly carrying? In what areas of my life are you ready to lift a burden from me, if I would only let you?" And so on. Pray a question or two, and then wait in silence for any thoughts. Then ask more questions, and wait for more answers.


End the time by simply sitting in silence, basking in the presence of God.