Our Conversation with God
Prayer is a conversation with God. As with any conversation, we speak and listen, give and receive, attend and are attended to. The spiritual life is a series of conversations sustained by this one eternal conversation.
Our word “converse” is derived from the Anglo-French converser, and from Latin conversari, which orginially meant “to live with.” In it’s archaic form it could also mean “to have acquaintance or familiarity” or “to become occupied or engaged.” In modern usage, it means “to exchange thoughts and opinions in speech: talk; or to carry on an exchange similar to a conversation (as with a computer).” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/converse
Ignatius of Loyola based his Spiritual Exercises on this notion of conversation. He believed we can “find God in all things.” Every moment and experience provides the matter and context of our relationship with God. Further, our conversation with God is helped by conversations with others who are also conversing with God; and our conversation with God leads us to engage others, to live with others, in a life-giving way.
Do you live with the expectation of meeting and conversing with God in your day? Where have you conversed with God in the past 24 hours? Perhaps it was a moment of grace or challenge or conviction that you didn’t recognize as God speaking until later.
Are there places or times in your day when you feel more ready and open to converse with God? Are there situations when a brief conversation with God would give you strength or focus?
What about your interaction with others? Has God spoken in these relationships, either to you or through you?
Attending to these many conversations, and in them the one eternal conversation, is the art of prayer and of living deeply in the Spirit.
Many times I awaken around 3:30 or 4:00 AM. And as I lie there, many things are going through my mind.
How is this day going to go, what kind of challenges am I going to face, who am I going to have to deal with today, what can I do to help someone or to make a difference in someones life.
While I lie there in the quiet, I talk to GOD and contemplate.
After a while, I go back to sleep for a half hour or so , and
when I get up, I think my day and hopefully someone elses goes so much better.
Thanks for this, Al. Waking in the middle of the night was once a cause of anxiety for me. But then a prayerful person suggested to me that it is a perfect time for listening to God and contemplation. Still, when I wake often have anxious thoughts. So I try to call to mind my blessings, all the ways God’s grace is made available to me during the day: my wife, our children, our dog, our house, the people with whom I share faith and ministry, the beauty of creation. Giving thanks calms my spirit and most of the time (but not always!) sleep returns.
I also believe God speaks in our dreams. It is good to attend to these images that arise from our depths. It has been said that ignoring a dream is like throwing away a letter from your best friend without even opening it. A word of caution: people and images in our dreams are best understood as representing something about ourselves. They tell us more about our own souls than anything about the person or place we dream about. And before acting on something learned from a dream, we should seek a discernment partner to help us interpret what God may, or may not, be saying to us.
I too, believe that GOD can speak to us in our dreams.
I have had many vivid dreams of people in my past, such as family members and friends, and people who are no longer with us. We do have to be vigilant that what is being presented to us in our dreams is not being projected to us by a false or evil entity.So I agree with your point on getting with a discernment partner to help us with our understanding of our dreams and visions to ascertain that they are indeed rooted with our relationship to God.
Blessings
Practically everyone I know (over the age of 35!) is awake around 3 or 3:30 AM on a regular basis…myself included. I think it is God saying, “You were so busy today that I didn’t get a chance to spend time with you; how about now?”
I found that my cat was always jumping on my chest when I first got into bed. And this annoyed me because I want to read at this time. But he is good at getting in front of the book. I have learned (slowly) that this is a good time to talk to god. I stop my reading and my list making and just focus on petting my cat and talking to god. I think of Carl, my cat, as the little messenger.
I love this. My dog, Lucy (a white lab) has a way of jumping up to put her front paws in my lap, lick my face, and look at me with those adoring eyes, when I am the most uptight and unreceptive to love. It’s like she’s saying, “Whatever you’re worrying about, lick, lick, wag, wag, doesn’t change the fact, lick, that I love you, lick, wag, and think you’re the best, lick, lick, wag, wag.” If that’s not a message from God, then nothing is.