listening

"My life is a listening, His is a speaking"

 -Thomas Merton

"Our relationship with God would be greatly improved if we saw prayer as listening to God rather than talking to him. Think of those boring people who talk endlessly to others. All their words show that they are distanced from others rather than close to them. Could this also be the reason why our prayers lack insight into the character of God? Openness to God, submissiveness to God, listening to his 'still small voice' may give us far more insight than the constant chatter which we are used to calling prayer" -James Houston

"Prayer is not a matter of my calling in an attempt to get God's attention, but of my finally listening to the call of God, which has been constant, patient, and insistent in my inner being. In relationship with God, I am not the seeker, the initiator, the one who loves more greatly. In prayer, as in the whole salvation story unfolded by Scripture, God is reaching out to me, speaking to me, and it's up to me to be polite enough to pay attention. When I do have something to say to God, I am rendering a response to the divine initiative. So the questions of whether or not and how God answers prayers now seem to me bogus questions. God speaks, all right. The big question is do I answer, do I respond, to an invitation that is always open" -Virginia Ramey Mollenkott

"Our waiting on God, then, requires ongoing attentiveness if it is to be more than an empty exercise in passivity. When we pay attention, our awareness is sharpened. Then we hear God speak, predictably in sacred settings, but also in wildly unlikely places and circumstances: the subway, the shower, and the messy garage. After all, the Holy Spirit is blowing over us all the time, sometimes as genle as baby's breath and sometimes roaring like a Kansas tornado"  -Margaret Guenther