First Post

So by the inspiration of the wonderful Michele Monk, I am going to periodically bare parts of my soul on a blog, offering honest restatements of the reflections I do in prayer--both to more firmly grasp what God is leading me to and to share thoughts with others that may need to hear them for inspiration or fellowship.

Right now, my spiritual struggle is to listen more in prayer. I was cautioned by my spiritual director to not just worry before God for however many minutes a day. Even though it is important to explain yourself and your feelings honestly to God and present your concerns and joys and everything, God already knows our innermost desires and thoughts. However, we do not know God's innermost desires and thoughts. My director compared it to any good friendship; it must be a two-way street that involves talking AND listening. It was kind of jarring to me to accept that I have never really diligently and thoroughly tried to listened to God.

I am making concerted efforts to make as much time for listening as for talking in my prayer. For every minute of description and explaining I do, I try to put as long towards listening to God. I have started to keep a journal of the things I discern from the quietness before God, especially during Adoration when the presence of the Lord is even more profound and striking. As the entries add up, I hope that I can find a pattern or message in the "little discernments" that come of the quiet. Each of the little notes are important, but I hope that my prayer can come together to show me a glimmer of God's will.

Whether or not I find patterns now or in a few days or weeks, I have also tried to subordinate my prayers to the will of God--"thy will be done". As important as honesty and being true to oneself is in prayer, the humility to put all of ones desires before God is the ultimate. My friend Nick suggested to me that perhaps we must seek to do what we think is right and leave it up to God to "frustrate our designs" if we they are not in accordance with his will. I like Nick's view of Thomas Merton's idea that at least the desire to do God's will is in fact pleasing to him. Hopefully my efforts to seek his voice are pleasing to God.