by Pastor Dan Baumgartner

The wonders of technology. Since I am sometimes a critic of our massive obsession with technology, it seems only right that I should give affirmation where it’s due. On Tuesday morning, January 20 th, I was in a plane at 35,000 feet heading towards Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I was bummed to be missing the coverage of the historic presidential inauguration, but I’d had a trip planned to visit our son Jesse and take in a Tarheel basketball game for months. And you have to have your priorities.

Just about the time we flew over northern Nebraska, I pulled my nose out of a book and noticed for the first time that every seat on the 767 had a mini-screen in front of it with not only movies available…but live television coverage! Most people on the plane were already watching, but no matter. And fortunately, I’d brought my iPod headphones with me (see, I’m not a Luddite).

The woman across the aisle from me had the opposite problem. She’d been watching her screen all along, but had no headphones. So we shared mine, each with one earpiece, wire stretched across the aisle and moving every time someone had to pass. It was historic, and exciting. After the main part of the ceremony was finished, I sat and pondered. There was plenty to think about.

One thing I noticed during the ceremony was a fair amount of God-talk. In fact, during the whole election campaign there was an extraordinary amount of God-talk. Mentions of God. Talk about God. There is nothing wrong with that, of course. We want to think and talk about God- who God is, the character of God, what following God is supposed to look like, what we believe about God. It’s what “theology” is all about, the study of God. It’s critical to think and articulate well about important things.

However, more and more I find myself wanting to not just talk about God, but to talk with God. To be in this conversation with God that Christians call Prayer. If you’ve been in worship lately, you know that we are reading and preaching through a number of the Psalms. They are very good for training us in how to pray.

The Psalms give us, among other things, the voice of humanity responding to God. In the scripture we have this rich record of people working out their faith in God, often with painful honesty. Anger, humility, arrogance, despair, frustration and joy all figure prominently in the “Prayer Book of Israel.”

And we are learning, I hope, to be more authentic and honest in our prayers. I still remember Anne Lamott’s story of someone at her church blurting out in prayer, “Lord, we pray for the same things every week!” Yep. If we don’t get anything else out of the Psalms but a new/renewed sense that it is okay to talk honestly with God, to bring who we are and what we’re feeling directly to the Lord, we will have benefited a great deal.

But if it’s true that this prayer-business is a conversation with God, then we will have missed half of the equation. The Listening part. So even as we go deeper in our talking to God, we want to make sure we are also listening to God speak through scripture, people, circumstances and the still small voice inside us. Or occasionally an active loud one. Sometimes it feels natural to listen, but more often it requires the discipline of intentional reflection. Listening happens both “in the moment” and during quiet times. It’s not speedy work. No shortcuts, no downloads, no “try it for a week” techniques. Repetition. Time. Endurance. This listening is the work of a lifetime.

And it’s often frustrating. We want to speak honestly. We want to hear well. Yet so many times when we commit ourselves to both sides of the conversation, we experience what Richard Foster talks about: “At first our praying is uneasy and halting…back and forth from divine glories to the mundane tasks of home and work. Back and forth, back and forth. And often the alternation is worse- much worse- than not praying at all.”

If we practice, we will find- probably without noticing at first- that the conversation becomes smoother, more honest and spontaneous. We will cultivate little practices, small gestures that, as Foster says “draw us into a habitual orientation of our heart toward God.” We’ll be facing the right way for a conversation. And that, I think, is what we truly long for. Not just God-talk, but conversation with God.