Attention as Prayer & Recognizing the Voice of God

​In her sermon this past Sunday, Pastor Alison spoke about the difference between knowing God (experientially and relationally) and knowing about God (intellectually, in the abstract). 

She said this:
"As I’ve been reflecting, it has occurred to me that having just one word for 'know' in the American context both reflects and shapes how we understand faith, spiritual practice, and the Christian tradition. With just one word available to us, we sometimes flatten the concept of knowing, falling into the trap of emphasizing just one type, or certain types, of knowing over others. One way I see this play out is the tendency to equate knowing things about God with knowing God experientially. Both ways of knowing are important — and they help to reinforce each other — but we benefit from being clear about the difference between the two. Now, let me be clear, learning about God — say through studying the Bible, or discussing theology, or listening to sermons like this one, — is wonderful! But it’s often not the same thing as interacting with God relationally."

Alison shared two frameworks that have helped her to know God more deeply:
1) Attention as Prayer
​2) Recognizing the Voice of God

---

Attention as Prayer
God is everywhere. We can go nowhere apart from God. However, we can be more or less aware of God’s presence and more or less aligned with God’s love and priorities. Because of this reality, throughout history, artists and mystics have spoken about attention as a key component of spiritual practice.

French mystic Simone Weil, who was born in 1909, spoke about attention like this: 
“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”

“Prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable towards God. The quality of attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it.”

English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it this way:
"Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes--
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware"

If we want to see the ways that Earth is crammed with heaven, the ways every common bush is afire with God, then we need to practice turning our attention to God.

Alison spoke about the ways that this has been true for her in her own life, as well as the ways that practicing attention can be difficult in our world. She said:
"Over the years I have found that I am most able to feel God’s presence when I give something my whole attention. When I connect to my body and my breath through deep breathing. When I set aside time to pray, meditate, or journal. When I walk through the tree-lined streets in my neighborhood. When I am fully present in conversation with another. When I am immersed in a work of visual art, dance, theatre, or music. When I minimize distractions and give these things my full attention I am much more able to sense God’s presence with me and to be responsive to the ways that God’s Spirit is moving and working within me and around me. But this is not easy to do. Our world and our technology reward short attention spans and multitasking. Cultivating the kind of deep, sustained attention needed to abide in God — requires that we be intentional about how we direct our time, energy, and focus. In the words of the song we sang together earlier — we need to become skilled at 'being where our feet are.' And like any other skill we can only become good at this through regular practice. For me, it has been helpful to plan ahead — picking a specific time or place when I want to practice directing my attention to God."

If you are interested in practicing attention as prayer, we recommend taking a look at the four Daily Practices included in this year's 40 Days of Faith Guide. They are:
​
1) Looking Up and Down:
This practice from Emily P. Freeman helps us to literally pay attention to where our feet are by taking two photos a day as a form of creative prayer.

2) Taking In the Good: 
This practice helps us to overcome our hardwired negativity bias by turning our attention to and internalizing positive experiences.

3) RAIN Feelings Check-In:
This practice is a mindfulness-based technique that can help us to develop emotional awareness, grow in self-compassion, and build our capacity to process emotions (instead of avoiding, suppressing, becoming overwhelmed by, or responding reactively to them). 

4) Embodied Prayers:
This practice, from Dr. Hillary L. McBride, allows us to pray with our bodies, symbolically creating the kind of world that we want to inhabit and letting ourselves be changed into more whole versions of ourselves.

We think these practices are great! But engaging attention as prayer can be even simpler if you’d like. It might look like quieting your mind, connecting to your breath, and praying, “Come, Holy Spirit.” Or, like being intentional about putting phones away at the dinner table. Or, like listening to music without doing anything else. Try some things out and see what works for you!

---

Recognizing the Voice of God
The second framework Alison spoke about was learning how to recognize the voice of God. Alison shared a personal story about how her life has been changed by learning to recognize God's voice. She also said this:
"I’ve found that a key aspect of cultivating friendship with God has been both sharing my thoughts and feelings with God and, also, growing in my ability to perceive the ways that God is guiding me and speaking to me. Before I say more, I want to acknowledge that the practice of hearing God’s voice can be fraught for many — especially if you have had negative experiences in pentecostal or charismatic spaces. Please know that like with anything else at the River our approach to hearing God’s voice does not involve pressure or manipulation of any kind. And that we don’t think there is one 'right' way to hear from God that is more valuable than others. There are countless ways to hear from God — through journaling, prayer, reflection, meditation, and conversation; through words, images, stories, memories, songs, and scripture passages; by noticing our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and bodily sensations; by seeking God on our own and, also, in collaboration with others. And that’s by no means an exhaustive list! The method we use matters less than our end goal itself — the goal of knowing God more deeply."

A key question that arises for many is: "How do we know something is the voice of God?" Alison shared a helpful essay from Richard Rohr on this topic. You can read it in full here. Some of Rohr's key points were that the voice of God: 

• Comes toward us with grace and passes through us with grace;
• Is supportive, encouraging, urging, and alive;
• Is the positive flow that helps us connect to our best, largest, kindest, and most inclusive selves;
• Sounds simultaneously “like the voice of risk, of trust, of surrender, of soul, of common sense, of destiny, of love, of an intimate stranger, of your deepest self”;
• Is not shaming, accusing, blaming, too harsh, or diminishing of ourselves or others.

If you are looking for support around learning how to recognize the voice of God, please do not hesitate to reach out to Alison to schedule pastoral counseling meeting. She would love to work with you! 

Additionally, some resources and practices you may want to explore on your own include:

• Seeing Is Believing by Greg Boyd
• Ignatian Contemplation
• The Examen
• Lectio Divina
• Praying in Color​

​We hope these resources are helpful to you and we pray that in the year ahead, each of us, in our own unique ways, would grow in our ability to know and connect with God.