Bathroom Reflection on Communication with God

I often read 3-6 books at the same time. I usually have 1-2 in my bedroom, 1-2 in my computer bag, and 1-2 in the bathroom. My wife and I have a system where if we want the other to read something, we put in in the bathroom. That is often where we meditate the most and can get a brief break from the kids. We should put bookshelves in there.

My current bathroom reading is Michael Mitton's The Sounds of God: Hearing the Voice of God (Guildford, UK: Eagle, 1993). He spoke at a retreat of St. Michael's Anglican Church of Paris in 1996 on the theme of "listening to God." At that point, he was Director of Anglican Renewal Ministries. Of all the retreats I've been on, this was perhaps the one that marked me the most. The notion that God speaks to us in different ways was something that my heart hungered to hear at that time. He helped me understand different strands of the Church, something that Richard Foster and Dallas Willard of Renovaré Ministries have helped develop as well.

This is my 3rd reading of Mitton's book. Here's is an excerpt from the section "Awareness and alertness in everyday life" in the chapter "Hearing Without Words."

A two-way communication with my children is an essential part of our family life. It would be curious if I said to my children, 'I only want you to talk with me for twenty minutes a day before breakfast and for one hour on Sundays. During such times you will talk to me and read the book I have written, but I will not talk to you. During the rest of the day it would be nice if from time to time we could think of each other, but there is no need for us to talk together.' Yet this is how it is for many in their relationship to their Father in heaven. A twenty minute 'quiet-time' and church on Sunday is the only chance God gets of getting a word in, and even then there is often the assumption that all the talking is done by the child, not by the Father. (p. 67)

As children of our Father, then, we need to set our minds to the very likely possibility that God will want to speak to us at any time of the day or night. The question is, are we alert to his voice? Modern western people view their lives rather like large department stores. Bits of my life are given to different departments. There is the work-department, the family-department, the God-department, and so on. God is allowed to be generally around and doing things in the God-department which has within it other sub-departments such as my quiet-time, church, fellowship group and meeting with Christians. But it comes as a shock to some to find out that our God is a God of incarnation, who actually has invaded all departments of life and who is just as likely to be found in the shopping-in-the-Co-op-department, as he is in the church-department. It stil disturbs some today to know that Jesus was as much at ease in the pub as he was in the synagogue. We somehow imagine that he was there under suffrance, standing at the bar looking condemningly at all who came up to order a glass of wine. Actually, he wasn't talking about the evils of alcohol at all. He was talking about the evils of religious hypocrisy. (pp. 67-68)

This intuitive ability for communication between parent and child is God-given and is good. Children learn to listen through words, but non-verbal communication still exists usually at a subconscious level, such as body language, tone of voice, facial expression, etc. All combine to give the overall message. I once heard it said that only seven per cent of the total message is communicated through the words. All this has something to say about how we listen to God. (p. 70)

Hearing God, and child-like faith are very closely bound-up. Anyone who has tried to hear God will know that faith plays a large part in it all. We not only have to learn to open that channel of intuition in which we hear God communicating to us, but we also have to develop faith to believe it is him communicating and to walk out in it. Abraham not only heard God, but believed him and he acted on what he had heard. (p. 71)

If we are to hear God then, we will need to become as a child again. We will need to start opening up channels that we closed off long ago, and for some of us this may even involve a measure of inner healing. We have failed to hear God because we have made it all to sophisticated, too western, and too rational. As we start to become as little children again, we start to become the kind of people who will be aware and alert to our God who is communicating to us. And he is a God who will communicate at any time in any place. (p. 73).

So how does this intuitive level of hearing work in practice? The intuitive is to do with that part of the brain which is creative, which handles emotion, which speaks in pictures, which dreams, which sees visions. These are the areas that the Protestant church has in the past closed off so effectively. It was launched in the power of the word. It was offended by symbols; it smashed statues, icons and stained-glass windows. This was all in reaction to misuse. But there was once a church in this land [Great Britain] that had word and picture in creative balance. It was a church that existed long before the Catholic/Protestant divide. (p. 73)

Mitton is referring to the Celtic Church. More reflections on the Celtic Church to come hopefully.