We had several reckless participants at this week’s prayer gathering at the Belchertown UCC’s parish house after service We began with a fun ice-breaker exercise where we all sat in a circle with one person in the middle who would call out “step out if you’ve ever done …”, and then whoever had done the same thing before (”white water rafting”, “been in a musical”, etc) would raise their hand. The person in the middle then got to choose who to swap places with.

After that, we reviewed our thoughts from the previous gathering by discussing the art of conversation, and by discussing the insights we’ve had on the act of conversing with God by thinking about how we relate to others in conversations.

To bring some of those insights out of our minds and into our sensory experiences, we did a couple of exercises that had us spend five minutes in a conversation with another person in the group. We split the group up into two, group 1 and group 2. Then we randomly paired people from group 1 with people from group 2. For the first exercise, the people in group 1 spent five minutes talking while the people in group 2 focussed on just listening and being aware of the conversation - WITHOUT responding verbally. For a topic, we chose “how was your week” as a fairly easy one to help people get talking. For the second exercise, we reversed the roles and switched partners - now the people in group 2 got to talk while the people in group 1 had to listen.

After the first exercise we spent a few minutes discussing the experience, and we did so again after the second exercise. It was interesting to see the different experiences people were having! Many commented on how different the conversation felt without verbal feedback from the other person - “a conversation is usually a dialogue, this felt like a monologue”, “it was so hard to NOT respond to what the other person was saying”, etc.

Of course, for some people five minutes felt like an eternity, while others were surprised that five minutes had flown by so fast

I think we uncovered some key insights into prayer through the exercise. When we think of prayer as a conversation with God, I think we automatically expect it to be like our conversations with our friends. However, we have two major obstacles to overcome in that effort.

The first major obstacle is the fact that many of us have become unfamiliar with the art of having a meaningful conversation - in today’s rapid-fire culture of soundbites and one-way communications, it’s all about saying our piece effectively, not about listening to the other person. We are unfamiliar with the rhythm, the cadence, the dynamic slowness of relating to another person while we carry a dialogue with them. We don’t have the patience to slow our minds to actively listen, and by that I mean to not only pay attention to the CONTENT of what the other person is saying, but also to be aware of the CONTEXT - the non-verbal cues, the body language, the “vibe” the other person is giving off. Do they seem happy, sad, relaxed, suppressed, reclusive, holding back, lost in space? Do they seem like they have something else on their minds, do they seem distracted, are they dropping little cues that say “please ask me about my joy”, or “please ask me if I’m alright”?

We talk TO others, we don’t often talk WITH others.

The second obstacle we face in the journey toward having meaningful conversations with God is our expectation of dialogue and feedback. When we are talking we expect our conversational partner to be engaged in the conversation (funnily enough, we don’t seem to realize that when THEY are talking we ought to be doing the same thing), but conversations with God are different - there is no tangible feedback!

How do we become aware of God’s presence and know when to “talk” and when to “listen”?

Our little exercises revealed some things to us about how we approach conversations and about our own ways of relating to others. Much of our difficulty was with CONTENT - that is, we really needed feedback to help guide us in what to say next. I think we need to shift our focus to the CONTEXT - how to be aware of the other person’s presence, body language, cues that indicate a “vibe”.

Perhaps God communicates through CONTEXT a lot more than he does in CONTENT. Or, put it another way, perhaps CONTEXT sets the environment for meaningful CONTENT - sometimes the content may be simply silence, because sometimes that’s all that we really need.

So, after the exercises we moved on to our next reckless topic : seeking that “still small voice” that the ancients speak of in 1 Kings 19, the story of Elisha Elijah (I keep getting them mixed up) in the cave.

But that’s a topic for another post The CONTEXT here is done

And what about you? Were you a participant in last week’s gathering? If so, what were your insights and takeaways from the experience? If not, what do you think of rediscovering the lost art of conversation as a way of finding insights into how we relate to Jesus? What have your experiences been with conversations, meaningful or otherwise?