Sam Williamson’s Hearing God in Conversation is an effort to describe how God speaks to us in e events of ordinary life. Describing to others how God talks to us is likely always a perilous effort, as Williamson himself notes, quoting Lily Tomlin’s observation that when we speak to God it’s called prayer, and when God speaks to us it’s called schizophrenia. The possibility of being accused of insanity notwithstanding, Williamson gives numerous examples of how he has experienced God’s communication. 

I am thankful that he has done so, but I found some much more convincing than others. I suspect that is due to the similarity of dissimilarity of his experience with my own. He has felt a gentle nudge from God, and so have I. He has walked up to people and told them they seem to have a problem. I have not experienced any such directive from the Almighty. I have watched as God moved me around the board like a checker, sometimes not finding out about it until much later. So has he.

God has never told me to go quit my job, or if God has, I haven’t listened. The timing of Williamson’s experience of that makes me wonder whether it was simply a “midlife crisis” event of much simpler provenance. 

There’s no way for me to judge that of course, nor do I wish to. I am aware that one of the criteria for judging locutions that is used by people whose job it is to do such things, is to make a determination as best they can of whether such experiences are more likely psychological expressions of emotional agitation or whether they are indeed supernatural. It’s not an exact science by any means, and even popes get it wrong (e.g., in the case of Sr. Faustina Kowalska).

While we’re on the judgment page, I wish that Williamson had omitted the comparative Christianity nonsense in the appendices. As he himself admits, it’s quite a pointless endeavor, given the 33,000 different denominations in existence around the world today. The book can stand on its own two feet without such futility. 

Williamson never uses the term lectio divina and might find it helpful to consider, especially since he describes a similar approach to Scripture that he uses. It might also be instructive for him to look into contemplative prayer, as described at the Contemplative Outreach website. No need to like it, mind you, just to become aware of the power of silent prayer, since God’s primary language, as he agrees, is silence. There is, by the way, no possibility of which I am aware of “emptying the mind,” short of death. To me, that seems just like another pejorative epithet thrown about by people who are afraid of what they think God might find if they actually stopped the interior chatter telling God what they want God to find. As Williamson astutely points out himself, God is not looking for information from us.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to hear what other folks’ experiences of conversations with God are like, either to validate their own experiences or to get some insight into where to begin to look. Like all of our conversations with our Creator, the dialog’s a work in process until we die, and it reflects where we happen to be at a particular point in our spiritual journey. His book is not a manual or guide for spiritual direction, just an honest enough expression of Williamson’s own experience, such as he chooses to tell it. For that, we can simply be grateful! 

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255.