Prepared by Fr Michael Whelan SM

Week One

The English word conversation has its roots in two Latin verbs:
• conversari, meaning to ‘dwell’, ‘keep company with’, ‘abide’, and
• convertere, meaning to ‘change’, ‘convert’, ‘refresh’ or ‘turn’.

True conversation can only come about when I am open
to being changed by what happens between us.

Practise it!

True conversation is an act of love.
It is listening, paying attention, taking time.
True conversation is a graced event,
surprising, never entirely within our control.

Seek true conversation with yourself, your spouse, children, parents, brothers and sisters, neighbours and work colleagues.

This Advent live your life as a conversation!
“Love is patient; love is kind; …. it does not insist on its own way ….”
(1 Corinthians 13:4-5)

Advent Prayer

(To be said each morning)

“Lord, keep my heart always set on You today,
so that from it will flow the springs of life.
Protect me from crooked speech,
and put devious talk far from me.
Let my eyes look directly forward,
and my gaze be straight before you.
Keep straight the path of my feet,
and all my ways will be sure.
Let me not swerve to the right or to the left;
turn my feet away from evil. Amen”

(Adapted from Proverbs 4:23-27)

Week Two

Read this poem out loud thoughtfully several times:

Out in the dark, I know, sing a thousand voices;
and the owl, the poet’s bird, and the saint’s white moth
blunder against my window, the frog in the rain rejoices.
I pledge to the night and day my life’s whole truth.
And you, who speak in me when I speak well,
Withdraw not your grace, leave me not dry and cold,
I have praised you in the pain of love, I would praise you still
In the slowing of the blood, the time when I grow old.

(Judith Wright, “Prayer” in Judith Wright: Collected Poems,
Angus & Robertson, 1994, 229)

“At that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech,
that all of them may call on the name of the LORD
and serve him with one accord.”
(Zephaniah 3:9)

Advent Prayer

(To be said each morning)

“Lord, keep my heart always set on You today,
so that from it will flow the springs of life.
Protect me from crooked speech,
and put devious talk far from me.
Let my eyes look directly forward,
and my gaze be straight before you.
Keep straight the path of my feet,
and all my ways will be sure.
Let me not swerve to the right or to the left;
turn my feet away from evil. Amen”

(Adapted from Proverbs 4:23-27)

“Set the believers an example in speech and conduct,
in love, in faith, in purity.”

(1 Timothy 4:12)

Week Three

The art of asking open questions can help with true conversation.

An open question is a question which I ask but do not answer.

Learn to just listen!

Practice asking yourself open questions as you go about your day:
What is happening here?
What is happening inside me?
What is happening between us?
What am I feeling?
What might he/she be feeling?

Open questioning will often surface obstacles to relationships.
Simply face what surfaces, ask the next open question and listen.
Resist the temptation to analyze.
Trust the truth of it.

The truth will set you free!

“Life is not so much beginnings and endings as it is middles, middles that don’t measure up — and our happiness depends on how we come to terms with the pale reflections of our dreams.
(Paul D. Zimmerman, “Middles and Muddles,” Newsweek, September 27, 1971, 106)

Advent Prayer
(To be said each morning)

“Lord, keep my heart always set on You today,
so that from it will flow the springs of life.
Protect me from crooked speech,
and put devious talk far from me.
Let my eyes look directly forward,
and my gaze be straight before you.
Keep straight the path of my feet,
and all my ways will be sure.
Let me not swerve to the right or to the left;
turn my feet away from evil. Amen”

(Adapted from Proverbs 4:23-27)

“We exist solely for this, to be the place He has chosen for His presence, His manifestation in the world, His epiphany.”
Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master – The Essential Writings, edited by Lawrence S Cunningham, Paulist Press, 1992, 425

Week Four

It is well nigh impossible to have true conversation at speed!

Slow down – with yourself and with other people.

Choose to do some ordinary things each day deliberately:
Making a cup of coffee.
Setting the table.
Eating a meal together.
Washing your face.
Walking along the street.
Making the bed.
Learn to wait upon the moment. Dwell. Abide.
Listen with the ear of the heart!

“Nothing is ever completed … Incompleteness is a part of nature and it takes
great art or great wisdom to know when to lay down the brush …
we should always avoid perfectionism.”
(Jean Monnet, Memoirs, Trans. Richard Mayne, Doubleday, 1978, 521.)

Advent Prayer
(To be said each morning)

“Lord, keep my heart always set on You today,
so that from it will flow the springs of life.
Protect me from crooked speech,
and put devious talk far from me.
Let my eyes look directly forward,
and my gaze be straight before you.
Keep straight the path of my feet,
and all my ways will be sure.
Let me not swerve to the right or to the left;
turn my feet away from evil. Amen”
(Adapted from Proverbs 4:23-27)

“When you visualized a man or a woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity — that was a quality God`s image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.”
(Graham Green, The Power and the Glory, Penguin, 1971, 131)