Listening for the Presence of God

Church choirs have been a part of my life since my early teens in the Falls City First Methodist choir. I have always been a tad smug about the aphorism, “Those who sing, pray twice.” That smugness, however, has been tempered as the years pass and I grow in appreciation that all we do, when done with awareness of its connection to God’s creation, is a form of prayer.

Prayer is, for me, the point of all spiritual disciplines. That is, prayer in the broadest definition of scanning, sniffing, stroking, listening for the presence of God in all the experiences of my life. So spiritual disciplines are not just those activities that I attempt to do in a regular way at a regular time on a daily basis. Those are the practice, the preparation. Like a chef sharpening knives and cleaning bowls, or a musician doing fingering exercises, or a sales clerk memorizing produce codes, they prepare us for the real disciplines of our lives – which in the spiritual realm are opening to God in all the rest of the day. We may, therefore, pray better or worse, judged less on the quality of the act we are performing than by the mindfulness which we carry into that act.

A friend of mine, my spiritual director for a time and a nun, had as one of her spiritual disciplines to read a book about Jesus every year – not an inspirational volume but a more academic tome. She realized how easy it is to slip into ways of seeing Jesus as if he were a 21st century American who grew up with the family next door, and how that artificial familiarity weakened his challenge to us and his claim on us. In that vein, I would suggest Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary by Marcus J. Borg (Harper San Francisco; 2006; $24.95). A book that started out as a project to revise his earlier work Jesus: A New Vision grew with the additional scholarship and his reflections of the twenty intervening years. While based on much scholarship, it is certainly an approachable work brimming with Borg’s dedication to his subject.

There are, of course many, many books out there on spiritual disciplines, but a new one I would be remiss in not telling you about is Christianity For The Rest Of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith by Diana Butler Bass (Harper San Francisco; 2006; $23.95), or her earlier work in the same vein The Practicing Congregation: Imagining a New Old Church (Alban; 2004; $17.00). These books describe her findings from a Lily Endowment study of mainline churches that are growing. As you might surmise, her finding is that they all have congregation-involving disciplines that have opened them to God in their particular neighborhoods and communities. These books are a journey through the spectrum of spiritual disciplines – worship, justice, art, healing to name a few – in the voices of the people whose lives and congregations have been changed through them.

Music Too

Another friend is an avid music fan, though not one of those who can name every person of a band and recite their albums in order and the cuts on them. She approaches it in a way that I consider a spiritual discipline. She listens intently to the lyrics, searching for subtle nuances and new ways of hearing that open her more to God. A musician that she recently told us about who I would recommend to all of you is Carrie Newcomer who writes most of the material on her albums. She performs in the acoustic-folk style, and whether she is explicitly theological as in “Holy as the Day Is Spent” or less explicit as in “I’ll Go Too”, she is a strong swimmer in the spiritual current of life. One of her many albums is The Gathering of Spirits (Philo/Rounder; 2002; price depends on format).

If you are saying to yourself, “I don’t get it. When I listen to a song or watch a movie or whatever, I don’t get any of this God stuff.”, help is on the way in the form of a small book for individual or group use called Meeting God in Virtual Reality by Teresa Blythe and Daniel Wolpert (Abingdon; 2004; $12.00). In this short book (88 pages) with large type, they manage to introduce and give specific instructions for six practices including centering prayer, the Ignatian examen and lectio divina. Though obviously introductory in scope, it is a grand way to poke around in an area you may not have thought of including in your spiritual disciplines.

• How do you keep growing in faith?

David Davies is co-owner of Soul Desires bookstore in Omaha NE with his wife, the Rev. Susan Davies.