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Good morning all-

From the comments I receive on this page and others, we are a praying crowd. I dislike the word because of what I perceive to be its misuses, just as I persistently refuse to belong to a church because of my discomfort with the misbehavior of the church. I don't want to be associated with those misuses and misbehaviors. 

We most frequently want a response from God when we attempt to communicate with Him. The response we most typically would recognize, and yet is most rare, is a verbal one. More commonly it is in our emotions, in a sense of peace or resolution, and sometimes we recognize a divine intervention in the 'coincidental' speech or intervention of another person. Sometimes we call these persons 'angels'. What are angels anyway? What is a divine response?

There is a blues technique called 'call and response'. We all know it, but perhaps not by that name. True blues bands use it, as do a few blues inspired rock groups. The best practitioner of it I know was Zeppelin. A good example a lot of people know is 'You Shook Me' off their first album. The singer is 'responded to' by the imitative guitar line, sometimes in unison, sometimes back and forth. 

In music, we readily recognize that the message is non-verbal. Symphonies don't even have words, but they communicate emotion and meaning powerfully. For too many rock bands, you can't hear or understand the lyrics, but you know how the song makes you feel. In the presidential debates, the winner is predicted just as accurately with the sound off as on. That tells us a great deal about how we actually communicate, as opposed to how we think we communicate. We are so proud of our cerebrums and language that we ignore the fact that we communicate by many other means.

So does God. How many ways do we talk about being 'touched by God'? The divine response to prayer can take many forms, the very least of which is the 'granting of requests', and just above it, and still minor, is language. Using prayer to ask God to do things for us is not only bad theology, it is self-evidently pointless. If this form of petition worked, all we would have to do is ask for perfect health and 10 million dollars. Because we believe prayer is a form of the divine 'goody bag', we get disappointed by the non-results, and fail to feel the intervention of the divine in ways in which the spiritual works.

Can the response of God be the intervention or speech of another person. I believe yes. We call such experiences various things- coincidence, serendipity, angel (literally or figuratively). I love the Greek formulation of these things. It is especially beautiful in the Iliad and Odyssey. The gods are described as appearing in the form and likeness of a person, but their presence can be detected at once. Commonly, no one else can tell there's a god there.

Isn't that like how we feel about the presence or words of another person? Any one of us may speak with the voice of God for another. That says nothing about possession, automatism or other coarse intellectualizations of what I am talking about. The spirit, of which we know little, speaks through us, and in us. We all can sense that, just like as fetuses we could sense our mother's and father's voices even if we didn't know we had ears and didn't know we had a father or mother. 

For me, the characterization of these moments as 'angels' is just a restatement of the descriptions of the Greeks about the presence of gods. Using the terminology of angels also externalizes an internal experience, just like using the terms 'good and evil' and 'God and Satan'. Just as we deify the numinous, we feel compelled to externalize it also, not willing to accept that God is speaking to us through us. It is our flesh that receives, and, given the limitations of our fleshly containers, it is our flesh that delivers as well. If our own feelings are not enough to move us, literally and figuratively, then God speaks through the flesh, not a neon sign in the sky.

I have been troubled the last two days. Every night I pray, every day I read (Kim will tell you I read at night too, but then I also pray during the day). I prayed earnestly about what troubled me, asking for guidance, strength and peace. When I got up this morning and checked my email, I had a note from someone I will only name JD, with advice and guidance about my situation. Coincidence? I don't think so. The voice of God speaking through another's hand and mind to me, as I was too upset to feel anything except anger.

That is what this board is to me- the voice of God bringing me comfort when I most needed it. 

You are all now free to laugh, but I don't mind or care any more. That is how I feel, and how I have felt for years, just unwilling to speak up before.

Ted  

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