Key Takeaways
1. Spirituality is a radical act of listening to God's continuous voice.
I have the feeling there is a voice to be heard if I can relearn to listen.
Relearning listening. Many of us have lost the simple, everyday experience of conversation with God, often muting or silencing His voice. This book aims to stir a longing to listen for God in everything, recognizing that spirituality is an orientation of life to a universe alive with presence and voice. It's about recovering a way of practicing spirituality that has been lost.
God is still speaking. A persistent question in the 21st century is whether God continues to speak. While some believe God's communication ceased after biblical times or is confined to human interactions, biblical spirituality asserts that God is not done with revelation and creation. We have often forgotten to listen in the ways and places where God's voice has always been heard.
Resonance as listening. The concept of "resonance" describes God's presence as a baseline melodic sound (cantus primus) to which we respond in dynamic interplay. It's not a simple echo but a co-creative interaction. Listening is the "ballast" for spirituality, a weighty substance that keeps our ship afloat as we navigate life, allowing us to receive what God reveals with open ears and hearts.
2. God's "first words" resonate in creation and the ordinary.
To be spiritual is to be amazed.
Universal capacity. Hearing is a universal human experience, and listening is a universal human capacity, though not always easy or desired. Holy listening is a practice available to all, transcending sacred spaces or specialized guides. It's about attuning our souls to the accumulation of meaning that comes to those who tend to speech like a midwife.
Ordinary is extraordinary. The universe is blazing with wonder, and God's voice can be heard in our neighborhoods and daily routines. A sacrament is an ordinary thing (bread, water, wine) that becomes a way to experience God's presence. Life becomes sacramental when we receive ordinary moments with openness to mystery, discerning God's voice in common, physical things.
God said. The Genesis creation narrative begins with "Then God said..." establishing a universe alive with presence and voice. This is the starting place of spirituality: God speaks, and we are invited to listen. This intentional listening requires us to:
- Empty our agenda and voice.
- Be curious, expectant, and engaged.
- Wait patiently, not intrusively.
- Attend alertly, ready for change.
- Be present to God's presence.
3. Everyday life, our "household," is the primary stage for encountering God.
Whoever wrote this stuff believed that people could learn as much about the ways of God from paying attention to the world as they could from paying attention to scripture.
Theater of God's glory. John Calvin viewed the world as a "theater of God's glory," where God is the lead actor, and we are co-creators participating in the drama. This perspective insists on engagement, not passivity. God is interested in both the grand structures of the universe and the most ordinary, small things of our lives.
Oikos: Your everyday world. The Greek word "oikos" means "household," encompassing all aspects of our lives—spiritual, financial, political, social, and religious. God's interest extends to all sectors of our household, making every place and activity a potential site for encountering God's voice. This means spirituality is learning to pay attention to God's speaking voice in everything.
God lurks everywhere. Our spiritual practices are responses to God's already active presence. We cannot create sunlight, but we can choose to stand in its brightness. God is alive and revelatory, speaking into the human story as we listen formatively. This truth transforms life from banal routine into a surprising, sacred pilgrimage, turning our worktables into altars for worship and service.
4. Hebrew spirituality, exemplified by the Shema, teaches holistic, embedded listening.
Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.
Losing our listening. In an increasingly noisy and distracted world, we are losing our ability to listen deeply, often trading expansive "soundscapes" for isolated "sound bubbles." Listening is more than hearing; it's "making meaning from sound," a universal human and deeply spiritual instinct. Training our listening to experience God's voice in everyday life is a spiritual discipline.
The Shema's simplicity. The Shema, a core text of Israelite faith, declares monotheism and commands love for God with heart, soul, and might. Its profound theology is paired with a strikingly simple spirituality:
- Recite these words to your children.
- Talk about them at home and away.
- When you lie down and when you rise.
- Bind them as a sign on your hand and forehead.
- Write them on your doorposts and gates.
This teaches an entire nation to listen for wonder in the common moments of their days, because God inhabits those spaces.
Hearth, table, and commons. Shema spirituality is grounded in the ordinary, practiced in the intimate spaces of our homes (hearth), in engagement with others (table), and in public spaces where we work for the larger good (commons). It transforms our lives from predictable routines to sacred pilgrimages, making every moment and place infused with possibility and revelatory potential.
5. Our personal stories are sacred narratives, shaped and revealed through listening.
Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is.
Stories form identity. Human identity is formed narratively; we are who we are because of the stories we tell and retell about ourselves. Spiritual formation is the process of shaping and retelling our lives within the larger story of God's action. Listening to your life involves reflecting, pondering, wondering, and savoring your experiences, including family, community, culture, and place.
Three interwoven stories:
- My story: Daily routines and extraordinary moments of individual life.
- Our story: The collective narrative of family, community, and "tribe."
- The story of gospel: The unfolding narrative of God's intentions in the world.
These stories are not detached mechanisms but intensely emotional, shaping our meaning-making and coherence.
Sanctified imagination. Listening to biblical narratives helps us listen to our own. It's an active process of "sanctified imagination," where we see ourselves within the biblical stories, not as passive observers but as participants. This narrows the distance from God, allowing His voice to be heard within our personal narratives, even in moments of crisis, pain, or confusion.
6. The Psalms provide an honest "anatomy of the soul," embracing all life's orientations.
The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it.
Life's jumble. Life is often a jumble of surprises, twists, and turns, lacking a clear roadmap. The Psalms offer a truthful account of life as it actually is, freeing us from the illusion that life is easy. They are "the anatomy of all parts of the soul," providing resiliency, anger, hope, joy, wonder, and struggle.
Three orientations of the Psalms:
- Orientation: Life is orderly, coherent, and good (e.g., Psalms 1, 127).
- Disorientation: Life is experienced as chaotic, painful, and dislocated (e.g., Psalms 42, 88).
- New Orientation: Life is restored, redeemed, or released into new possibility, evoking awe and celebration (e.g., Psalms 30, 34, 150).
These movements are infused with Spirit, not in a formulaic order, but in the often chaotic flow of life.
Ferocious faith. The spirituality of the Psalms is ferocious in the face of life's fury, offering poetry for those who cannot accept banal or simplistic answers. It insists that God is at work in all life experiences, even when His presence feels like absence. This trilingual speech of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation is the language of faith, affirming God's presence in all of life.
7. Lament is a bold act of faith, allowing light through life's deepest cracks.
There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.
Surprised by lament. Lament is faithful speech addressed authentically to a listening God, expressing pain, horror, loss, grief, and inexplicable agony. It's a spirituality of "the terribleness of God," complaining that God allows suffering and violence. This language was often absent in traditional theology but is a necessary part of biblical spirituality.
Faith in the darkness. Lament is a ferocious act of faith in moments when light cannot be found. It acknowledges that pain, sorrow, suffering, and failure isolate us, but lament brings us together in a community of tears. It's not about finding answers or quick solutions, but about honest, earthy faith that sits in the face of life's worst.
Biblical language. Lament is a core biblical language, with over 40% of the Psalms being complaints to God. It's not a failure of faith but a bold act that insists the world must be experienced honestly. Job's story shows that God's answer to suffering is not always an explanation, but His presence in the whirlwind, a profound mystery beyond human comprehension.
8. The prophetic voice demands integrity, integrating worship with justice in all of life.
What a hideout: holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color.
Unwelcome truth. Prophets like Amos delivered messages of warning and critique that people did not want to hear, especially during times of prosperity and religious fervor. Their words, often described as "Words That Linger, Texts That Explode," challenged the comfortable separation of worship from daily life and social responsibility.
Holistic spirituality. Prophetic spirituality insists on the integration of all life, railing against the compartmentalization of faith. It critiques worship that is disconnected from justice, equity, and morality in the streets and marketplace. God's concern extends to:
- Economics and finance
- Politics and power
- Law and justice
- Education and thought
- Healthcare and bodies
- Business and jobs
- Culture and the arts
The prophetic voice declares that what we deem "secular" is, in fact, sacred.
An altar in the world. Every job and workspace is an "altar in the world" where we serve God. Our work, no less than our worship, is holy when done with integrity and listening for the creative God's voice. This subverts the Gnostic view that separates spiritual from material, reminding us that God is interested in all of life and calls us to coherence between our sanctuary life and our work life.
9. Jesus, the Rabbi, modeled active listening in household, community, and solitude.
Jesus is the Word, the Logos, whom John says “became flesh and lived among us” in the particularity of his own life.
Life and learning of Jesus. Jesus, as a first-century Jew, was not just a teacher but a profound learner, practicing what he taught others: to listen to God's voice in all things. His "classrooms" were diverse, from the intimacy of his household to the public square and the solitude of the desert. He lived alert to the "kingdom of God," a universe of revelation.
Formed by tradition and community:
- Bethlehem/Household: Learned prayer, Sabbath, and the stories of his people from Mary and Joseph, understanding life as a conversation with the Creator.
- Nazareth/Community: Engaged with Torah in the synagogue, respectfully receiving tradition while faithfully subverting it with challenging truths.
- Desert/Solitude: "Driven by the Holy Spirit," he faced temptations of relevance, power, and avoidance of suffering, affirming God as the sole source of identity and agenda.
Befriending silence. Jesus' need for silence, often retreating to "deserted places," models the discipline of active prayer and listening. This is not Eastern emptying of the mind, but a Christian filling of the mind with God's presence. In solitude, Jesus practiced what he already knew from a lifetime of listening to Scripture, demonstrating that silence is teeming with presence.
10. Listening embraces "otherness" and the diverse "languages of the soul."
The troubling truth of Jesus is that he learned to listen for God’s voice in unexpected voices and surprising places.
Schooled by otherness. Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman challenged social and religious conventions, scandalizing his disciples. This "otherness" — racial, economic, cultural, or theological — offers opportunities for profound learning. We often remain in "gated communities" of limited thought, but exposure to different perspectives helps us hear the "whole story" of God's work.
Diverse spiritual languages. People come to faith and know God through diverse pathways, wired by personality and nature. Spirituality is not monolithic but encompasses various "languages of the soul":
- Kataphatic (via positiva): Knowing God through images, symbols, rituals, words, and emotions.
- Apophatic (via negativa): Knowing God through passivity, receptivity, detachment, and surrender to unknowing, emphasizing mystical union.
Jesus experienced God's presence in both, in isolation and in community, in silence and with bread.
For the sake of others. Spiritual growth is not narcissistic self-indulgence but leads outward to service. Jesus' mission was to bring good news to the poor, release to captives, and freedom to the oppressed. Contemplative experiences, silence, and solitude are meant to help us see where God is present in the world's needs, motivating intercession and sacrificial service.
11. Resurrection grounds hope in the present, calling for courageous, persistent listening.
For me the most radical demand of Christian faith lies in summoning the courage to say yes to the present risenness of Jesus Christ.
Resurrection's reality. Easter and resurrection are not just abstract concepts or neatly scripted events, but historical realities. Jesus' post-resurrection appearances, like making breakfast on the beach, were embodied and tangible, allowing disciples to touch his wounds and hear his voice, slowly leading them to belief despite their initial fear and disbelief.
Hope beyond optimism. Hope is distinct from optimism. Optimism relies on evidence that things will get better, while hope looks at dire evidence and chooses to create new possibilities based on contagious visions, engaging in heroic actions against the odds. This is a defiant, courageous hope, a "prisoner of hope," even when natural optimism wanes.
Persistent presence. Just as Mount Rainier is always present even when obscured by clouds, God is alive and present in a universe teeming with His voice, even when we don't see or feel Him. Listening to hope requires courage to say "yes" to the present risenness of Jesus Christ, daring to believe in life after what seems like the end, and trusting in something more when there is nothing left to believe.
